After all my camping, I was ready to relax and not drink in Rainbow Beach for a few days, but I kept running into people. On the first night after my Fraser group left, I ran into an English guy named Greg that I had shared a dorm room with previously, so I ended up drinking with his tour group. A German girl in his group told me I have the softest hands she’d ever felt, softer than any girl's. Universe 12,347 - Sean 0
The next night, Fleur and Simon, from the previous night's group found me eating alone and told me to come join them, people are too nice :). Thus my commitment to not drinking was sidetracked as I returned to the table with a pitcher of beer, much to their amusement. I also ended up in the same room with an English couple I had stayed with in Noosa. Every night I shared a room with them I was the last person to get back, I can only imagine what they thought of me, I mean other than my feminine skin and undeniable charm...
I also got to see some compassion in my final days there. A girl woke up crying in her bed, because her boyfriend broke up with her via text message, so another girl climbed down from her bed and offered her a hug so she wouldn't feel so alone. I would have offered her a hug as well, but I was laying in my bed, wearing only underpants, so it probably would have been weird. It's not always the grand gesture, sometimes it's just the small things that can turn someone else's day around; A little bit of kindness can be a powerful thing. In order to escape the unspoken hatred of men that had to be brewing in that room, which other than me, contained only women, I forced myself to work out for 3 straight days and get my body into bathing suit shape for my Whitsundays trip!
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| Airlie Beach |
My trip to Airlie Beach was via an overnight bus, so by the time I got there I was disgusting. When I hopped off the bus, I randomly spotted Alejandro from my Fraser group, so I caught up with him before setting off to find my hostel. I got there at 9 am and was informed I couldn't check in until 12:30, so here I am after a 14 hour night bus, sweaty from lugging my bags across town, looking like pure shit, roaming the city, putting out the vibe. When I could finally check in, I showered and then ended up grabbing dinner with a couple girls from my room, Brianna (Canada) and Carmel (England) as well as their friend Amanda (Finland).
After bumming around town for a few days, I bought some booze and ventured towards my boat, the Wings 3. I've never been on a sailboat, as they aren't very prominent where I live, 13 hours inland from the Ocean, so as soon as I stepped aboard one thing was running through my mind, "Fuck Land, I'm On A Boat Motherfucker"! (Lonely Island reference, drink!)
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| If i had a boat I would name it Elicious, so it would be referred to as being Boat Elicious |
The wings cruise was the best tour I've done in Australia. It's so amazing to be pampered, all your meals are catered, including snacks, appetizers, and desserts; You don't have to do your dishes; And you can drink underneath the stars. It was a welcome relief after making all your food/doing your dishes on the previous tours. The first day we went snorkeling/diving off of Hayman Island and I discovered that snorkeling is my favorite activity ever. It's so cool to be a stranger drifting through a foreign world, swimming around in a giant aquarium. Plus the wetsuits you wear are made to be buoyant, so you don't even really have to swim, you can just be super lazy and float there. After everyone had their fill, we got back on the boat for some biscuits (cookies) before heading to the Nara inlet where we parked our boat for the night.
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| Beautiful sunset |
It was pretty cool, each night after dinner we could all start drinking and then we watched a slideshow of pictures from the day. There were 29 of us on the boat, making it really hard to interact with everyone, so we kind of ended up into two drinking groups. English, Irish, Australian and North American comprising one group and the rest of Europe making up the other. I spent most of my time with Andrew (Irish), Garett and Lindsay (Canadian), and Stu (Australian).
The next day we headed to Whitehaven beach on Whitsundays Island, which is the second highest rated beach in the world. The sand there has a really high concentration of silica, which is what makes the beach so white. NASA actually uses the sand from Whitehaven beach to create the Hubble telescope lenses. It was definitely one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen and I was able to set up a few time lapses while I lounged lazily in the water.
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| Whitehaven Beach |
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| Someday I will stare at views like this from my front porch |
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| The Whitsundays are magical |
After we hung out on the beach for a few hours we sailed to two more spots, Luncheon Bay and Mantaray Bay. I lent the divers my GoPro so they could get some cool pictures of the deeper waters, but got it back once they surfaced to get some more snorkel photos/video. The bays were teeming with life, allowing me to get up close and personal with a giant sea turtle.
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| Such bright blue waters |
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| Never in my life would I have imagined I'd swim with a turtle |
That night we gathered back around to review pictures, grab dinner, and polish off the last of our alcohol. We also had an appetizer of nachos and let me just say that eating nachos whilst sitting in a jacuzzi on a boat is pretty damn amazing, especially when there's a sunset in the background. I also had an excess of beer and cider, so I shared with my various boat mates to make sure everyone had an acceptable buzz. The next morning we rolled out to Blue Pearl Bay for a final snorkel, where I was lucky enough to see more turtles and even a sting ray! The ray was a little freaky because that is what killed Steve Irwin, so I was a little nervous about how close to get, but you only live once.
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| Loving the ocean sunsets |
Unfortunately Blue Pearl Bay was our last stop, so we had to start making our way back to Airlie Beach, which was pretty sad, but the tour group had a table reserved for everyone at Down Under Bar for later in the evening. There wasn't a very big turnout, 3 of the French Guys, the 2 Swedish girls Emelie and Anna, Andrew, Stu, myself, and a few of the boat crew members. I knew I was in for a rough night when I'd already polished off a pitcher of beer before the third person from the group arrived. After getting some free drinks, which I'm 80% sure didn't actually contain any alcohol, we made our way to a dance club, Phoenix.
You know a club is legit when there's smoke machines pumping fog all over the dance floor at regular intervals. It was also here that everyone caught me making out with one of the Australian girls that worked on the boat, but as my life coach once told me, everyone has random drunken dance floor makeout sessions....sometimes I worry about her. After Phoenix we ended up heading back to one of the hostel bars, Magnums. At 2 or 3, I called it good since my bus left at 9 in the morning, but the Swedish girls kept going even though they were leaving at 7. Would I survive my hangover on the journey to Magnetic Island...Absolutely not, but that my friends is a story for another blog.
Random GoPros
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| Priscilla...This giant fish used to be a female, because there is only allowed to be one male per cluster, but the male died, so as the largest female she literally grew a pair and took over as the male. Fish are fascinating creatures! |
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| Such a colorful fish! |
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| I saw these fish everywhere |
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| I'm on a boat! |
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| Whitehaven beach, GoPro style |
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| I look increasingly worse in each underwater photo |
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| Point proven |
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| How cool is that?!?!?! |
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| Some corals only grow an inch every 4 years, which is roughly the same rate as my facial hair |
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| An amazing boat! |
Some people have asked me to start adding video to my blog, so here you go. There's no preview, so I don't know how they'll turn out, but hopefully I didn't upload any of the ones of myself dancing and singing Party in the USA...not that there's 14 of those so far or anything....
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