Whitsundays | loveliness.

Tag: Whitsundays
- whitehaven beach: whitsundays
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on October 22, 2014
  
  The day we visited Whitehaven beach was probably one of the best ones I’ve ever had. There really isn’t anything I can say to describe Whitehaven, you just really need to go and see it for yourself.
  
  Our boat captain set us free for a few hours to explore, but warned us against trying to walk all the way down the beach, because it’s seven kilometers to the end and lots of times people try it and miss their ride back.
  
  The sand on the beach is exactly the consistency of brown sugar. I spent about ten minutes taking close up photos of the sand so I wouldn’t forget. It didn’t taste like brown sugar though. I’m assuming…I obviously didn’t lick it just to be sure.
  
  We ate lunch at a little picnic area back in the trees, and it was really nice, except for the monitor lizards creeping around everywhere. They have been living there for so long, and seen so many people come through that they aren’t afraid anymore, and they will literally crawl over your feet hoping you’ll drop some food for them.
  
  At least 3 times I turned around to find one directly behind me. Luckily I was too terrified of them to take a step backwards without checking first, otherwise I would definitely have lost a toe. It didn’t help that we had just been to Indonesia, and these little guys looked exactly like baby Komodo dragons.
  
  There were also a few snakes around, one in particular would not be deflected and kept trying to crawl up the table legs while we were eating. The boys thought this was quite entertaining, but me and the other girl at the table were not very amused and ended up standing on top of our chairs to finish our meal.
  
  After lunch we wandered off into the trees, there are a few different walking trails that take you to different places around the island. The one we followed was only about ten minutes of walking before we arrived at an amazing lookout point.
  
  Eventually we tore ourselves away and went back down to the beach to walk as far as we could before it was time to go. We only had about 3 hours on Whitehaven beach, but I loved every second of it.
  
  It’s kind of crazy that places that beautiful even exist in real life, and it’s even crazier to think that I got to see it for myself.
  
  Posted in Australia, beach, travel | 1 Comment | Tagged Australia, beaches, boating, travel, whitehaven, Whitsundays
- low tide
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on October 20, 2014
  
  During low tide in Airlie Beach, which happens around noon (and then presumably again at some point during the night, but I wasn’t generally in any condition to investigate this) the water goes out hundreds of meters, leaving a very wide beach, tons of tide pools, and access to some small islands on foot.
  
  At first, I was just wandering along the beach looking in the tide pools, but then I decided to brave the unknown and walk out to the island that was quite far out, but walkable at that moment. I was a bit worried that I would get out there just as the tide was rushing back in and I’d be trapped out there for the next 12 hours, but I must have read Baby Island a hundred times when I was young, and it gave me (probably false) confidence in my ability to survive alone on a desert island.
  
  I started squelching my way out there, it got very muddy after awhile, and even though it was only about 6 inches of water, I was convinced there was one of those sharks that blend into the bottom to lure innocent fish waiting for me to step on it. Again, why someone with such a rampant phobia of sharks spends so much time around the ocean is really anybody’s guess.
  
  I finally made it out there, with both ankles intact which was no small feat when you consider the mud I had to slog through, followed by the millions of slippery, jagged rocks that made up the rest of the path, and started to investigate, keeping an eye out for any signs of buried treasure or Tom Hanks.
  
  As far as I could tell there was only one other person out there, a middle-aged German lady who had followed me to the island. I thought it was courageous of her to trust me, a perfect stranger in a floral print onesie, not to lead her into certain doom, but there we were.
  
  Just as I was turning the corner beside the first mandrake, an older Australian gentleman poked his head around the tree and cheerfully announced that there was a dead tiger shark on the island, just up the way, and then continued strolling along back towards the beach.
  
  I passed the message along to my new German friend, but instead of turning around and heading the other way, she got very excited and rushed off to find it. Even though I really didn’t want to try to find the shark (it was probably dead, if it was, in fact, on the island, but it could have been an elaborate ruse) I felt sort of responsible for her being out there in the first place, so I went along with her.
  
  We walked all the way down to the other end of the island along the rocks, searching for the shark, but we couldn’t find it, although at one point we both noticed a putrid smell, but we couldn’t see where it was coming from. I think we were both looking for a small animal washed up right along the water.
  
  We were about halfway back to where I’d met the man, when all of a sudden she stopped and and gasped and pointed at something wedged in the mandrakes.
  
  It turned out to be a massive, dead shark, and also the source of the smell we hadn’t been able to place earlier. It was really scary, and also really sad.
  
  After that my companion and I parted ways. I crept around the island a bit more, but once there are sharks in trees all bets are kind of off, so I was too jumpy to explore by myself for much longer, and I started the long, muddy journey back to the main beach, checking carefully for buried sharks before each step.
  
  Posted in Australia, travel | 0 Comments | Tagged airlie beach, Australia, islands, low tide, sharks, Whitsundays
- airlie beach: whitsundays
  
  Posted at 6:28 pm by jasminedesirees, on October 16, 2014
  
  We spent almost a week in Airlie Beach, and I loved every minute of it. It was so beautiful there, it was kind of like a dream.
  
  It actually really felt like a dream because to get to Airlie Beach, you have to drive down this quiet highway through small farming communities, it actually really reminded me of the small towns in Saskatchewan where I grew up.
  
  But then you take two rights, and drive 20 minutes past a field full of kangaroos, and emerge on a beautiful white sand beach and turquoise sea.
  
  We stayed at the Magnum’s Backpackers, and it was great. Magnum’s is right in the middle of town, so it’s really easy to walk everywhere, and it’s right beside the Woolworth’s, and it has a nice big kitchen, so we were able to save a lot of money by cooking almost all of our meals, rather than eating out.
  
  Also, they have live music almost every evening, and falling asleep to acoustic guitar music every night was lovely.
  
  We also did the Airlie Beach Pub Crawl one night, and it was actually really fun. We met a group of Aussies from Brisbane who were in Airlie on vacation, and a girl from Texas who was WOOFing in Australia on a chicken farm, and had a great time with all of them.
  
  Airlie Beach has a huge park along the water with a gigantic, free swimming pool for everyone to enjoy, and it has a walking/biking path that stretches 5 KM along the ocean. We rented bikes one day and cruised the boardwalk.
  
  We also found a hike that would take us up to the top of the hills to see the view of the Whitsundays, but we only made it about ten minutes in before we saw a snake on the path, and then we spun around and ran as fast as we could back the other way.
  
  Airlie Beach is a pretty small town, and it doesn’t have a lot of diving, so even though our original plan was to stay there and try to find jobs, we decided pretty quickly we wouldn’t be able to stay there long term, but our time there was amazing, and I would absolutely recommend it to anybody who is traveling through Australia.
  
  Posted in Australia, travel | 0 Comments | Tagged airlie beach, Australia, beaches, islands, Whitsundays
- today
  
  Posted at 1:53 pm by jasminedesirees, on August 13, 2014
  
  Today was cruising around the Whitsundays, fighting monitor lizards for our lunch, and hiking with snakes and spiders the size of dinner plates.
  
  Today was sudden rain storms and almost being swept overboard by an errant wave.
  
  Today was practically perfect in every way.
  
  Posted in Australia, travel | 0 Comments | Tagged Australia, hiking, nature, travel, Whitsundays
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