Snorkelling in the Whitsundays

Snorkelling in the Whitsundays

Whitsunday Islands, Australia, Australia

As expected I was awake this morning at 7am without having slept a wink last night. The twin bunk was uncomfortably small so every time I moved I kicked a wall. It was so annoying that at one point I tried laying on the floor to sleep, but it turns out there was a small leak and the floor was wet. Not cool.

I went up for breakfast and decided that I wouldn’t do any scuba diving on this trip. Today was the only day for diving or snorkeling and I wasn’t really feeling up to a dive. And if I was going to spend $100+ dollars for a single dive I had better enjoy it! The breakfast on this boat is excellent. I went up to the dining room and got myself a plate full of fruit plus a couple pieces of toast (one with peanut butter and the other with Nutella…mmmmmmm). Then I realized that the chef had made pancakes with raspberry infused maple syrup as well! Don’t worry, I didn’t let anything go to waste.

We waited around till about 9am and then hopped in the little lifeboat and went to shore at Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island. We walked in from the shore and got in a good hour of diving. There were hundreds of really colorful fish swimming in the shallow coral reefs. I had bought a disposable underwater camera on shore before I left Airlie Beach, so I had 27 pictures to take. I tried to be really particular about the shots I was taking but by the end of our one hour snorkel, I had taken 21. Oops!

We got back on the boat and headed over to our second stop for the day. We arrived at Luncheon Bay on Hook Island at about 12pm and had lunch before another snorkeling trip. This bay is more well known for the different types of coral than the fish. I tried to get some shots of different fish and coral than I had seen at Hayman Bay, and those eight pictures went very quickly. After the hour of snorkeling we got back on the boat and Chris (an Aussie on the boat) was nice enough to share his pictures he had taken while snorkeling with his underwater digital camera. I won’t get my pictures back for a little while now, so it’s good to have some shots of what we saw.

We sailed over to Scrub Hen Bay on Whitsunday Island and anchored for the night. We enjoyed another amazing dinner from Sheree and then relaxed for the night playing some cards and watched the movie Thank You For Smoking. We were called outside to see a shark feeding where a school of Bruns Whaler Sharks came around to feed on meat scraps for dinner. The sharks were also chasing a huge school of squid, which were probably attracted to the salmon that was being thrown in the water. Later on tonight we were visited by a few dolphins. They weren’t being fed, but were just very curious and wanted to have a look at what we were up to.

It was a very cool day, and we got to see so many things that we weren’t expecting to. Tomorrow we will be sea kayaking and walking along Whitehaven Beach. I’m hoping I get a better night of sleep tonight. I’ve moved up to the top bunk where the bed is bigger, so I should be able to fit comfortably. The only problem will be if I have to get up during the night and forget I am about 6 feet off the ground. Also, there is no ladder, so this could be interesting…

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