Could we be more excited? 14 hours on a bus ahead...
After the jolly 12 h bus ride we finally arrived to Airlie Beach. The name is misleading because again we were to discover that there is no actual beach and the place to be was another man-made lagoon. But that was okay because unlike Cairns, it seemed that Airlie Beach was a party town. The hostel we stayed at was Magnum’s, which turned out to be a real hostel/bar/restaurant/night club-combination filled with HEAPS of people. I immediately liked Airlie beach where everything seemed to be packed and happening on the small beach street.
Airlie lagoon
Some of our Finnish crew were staying at Long Island, one of the Whitsundays islands (and yeah apparently the house specialty was indeed long island ice tea)so a day trip had to be organized. It seems that everywhere we go we bring rain with us and Long Island was no exception. It wasn’t a particularly sunny day and in a resort there isn’t much to do so we girls decided to do some exercise and hike into the rainforests again. We did a 2-3 hour trek around the island and yes, sweating reached a whole new level.. Here’s some picture material from the trek. Poor girls had to hear me sing to myself as I was afraid to see hairy spiders.. (didn’t, but encountered other yucky creatures).
First trek behind us.. we got lost and ended up taking the shortest one he he he 
At the end of the bushwalk there were some pretty nice views and some actual air to breathe, but don't ask what's happened to my clothes!!!
Ugly creature number 1
Never seen rain come down this hard. My camera didn't properly caption the amount and the size of the raindrops. Amazing! 5 minutes and it was over.
Just like Cairns, Airlie beach was also mainly a gateway to the reef and the Whitsundays islands. We decided to book a sailing trip that was to take us around the Whitsundays. Btw, one of the Whitsundays islands, Hamilton’s, is the island where the guy with “the world’s best job” lives. He got stung by a jellyfish the other day! Therefore I was pretty scared to enter the water as there was so much talk on the deadly jellyfish (we did of course wear a stinger suit but it doesn’t cover your face, neck or palms. Apparently the most severe situation is if you get stung near your heart, but in anycase it was quite scary.. for meJ There’s two types of deadly jellyfish, the Irukandi (or as we called them, Ichiban!) and the box jellyfish. The box jellyfish can have tentacles up to 4 meters! And it has the world’s fastest working venom in its tentacles. Yaiks! The Ichiban on the other hand is so small that you can’t really see it. And yes I’ve become overly obsessed with Australia’s deadly creatures… Fascinating! I didn’t enjoy snorkeling at the reef as much as I did in Thailand, mostly because of the fear of jellyfish. There were many non-poisonous ones and they kept stinging me in my face and neck and all I could think was, the Ichiban is lurking just around the corner…
Box jellyfish
Stinger suits are so sexy.
So we circled around the Whitsundays, got off at Whitehaven beach, which was the ultimate paradise beach, but as you can see from the pics, what we experienced was a little different from what they print in the brochures. Bad luck I guess, again the shitty weather followed us. Second snorkeling spot was also rubbish, there were so powerful currents that the water was completely blurry and even if you tried to swim you just kept moving backwards. Still the islands are quite impressive, very similar to Thailand’s islands, but quite honestly the experience wasn’t as good as it could’ve been due to the weather. (I did manage to sunburn myself though, even though it was cloudy and rainy. Go figure.)
Whitehaven beach through my lense...
...and as it's presented in the brochures.
Our Camira boat where we had an "all inclusive" buffet, aka 3 % beer and cheap wine. Yummy! The boat was extremely cool though, had two trampolines in the front where you could sunbathe (or rain bathe)
NYE was a blast, we decided to hang back at Magnum’s and that was a good call. There was an awesome live band (or two?or three? can’t remember) playing rock classics, reggae, even Lambada! And even if our fireworks didn’t match up to the ones in Sydney, they were still pretty amazing. A very fun night indeed, too bad we had to go to bed pretty early as we had the above Whitsundays cruise departing at 7.15 am the next day.
Snakebite jug 12 dollars! Awesome stuff, half beer, half sider and on top some red liquor. Extremely tasty.
Some people took NYE to a whole other level. I felt underdressed compared to these genious'
Magnum's
After Airlie beach the roadtrip began and we rented a car heading south to Noosa, Rainbow Beach, Fraser’s and Byron Bay. More about that next time.
