Day One of Agnes Water and i’ve spent the morning lazing around the hostel, it’s days like these when I don’t see the point of travelling. I’m not experiencing anything other than the muggyness of the weather and I just feel like i’m dossing about. Now that i’m about 3 weeks away from going back to Sydney and hopefully earning some money i’m really looking forward to doing some work, enjoying eating out and seeing more sights in Sydney and hopefully saving some money in order to see Uluru and New Zealand before going home, not to mention seeing my best friend in Cairns when she visits this September.
I was really excited to join the Scooter Roo tour in Agnes Water for an afternoon, i’ve never driven a motorbike before but i’ve always been a bit attracted to the idea of riding one, not that my parents wouldn’t flat out forbid it, despite my age. Turns out the 20 minutes we had to practise on the bikes wasn’t really enough for me and I just didn’t feel confident driving the roads so I hopped on the back of one of the crew. It was so much fun, we sped past everyone and drove so fast which was a massive thrill. To be honest there’s not much to see around Agnes Water but we stopped at the 1770 Marina for potato wedges which was awesome and then rode back to Southern Cross hostel like lightning.
My phone signal hasn’t worked at all in Agnes Water, the perks of using Vodafone are endless in the UK and Australia apparently. I would have picked up an Optus sim which is apparently the best but I’ve only just loaded my Vodafone one with a months worth of data. Turns out there’s really nothing to do in the area anyway so i’ve been using the non-free wifi in the hostel – I really think if you have to pay for wifi it should be top-notch, good quality internet…and yet here I am three hours into downloading Bad Neighbours from iTunes and it’s not even half-way done. Our bus to Airlie Beach is at 9.40pm tonight and takes 9 hours so I figured renting a movie to watch would kill at least 2 of those hours. Apparently we stop over for 3 hours in a place called Rockhampton so that’ll be delightful at crapoclock in the dead of night.
When we arrived in Airlie at 7.30am in the morning we couldn’t believe the heat, everyone has said it’s pretty much hot all year round toward the north of Queensland but I thought i’d be waiting until Cairns for that, Airlie Beach weather was glorious on the first day we arrived, it was so humid it reached around 30 degrees – not to shabby for winter weather. Magnums hostel looked great from the outside with its attached bar, club and massive TV screen however, after waiting around till 12 to check-in we finally made it to our room which can only be likened to that of a prison cell, probs not my fave. Its only redeeming quality was we had some pretty awesome cell mates for the night.
Rachel and I booked ourselves onto the Powerplay boat trip around the Whitsunday Islands for 2 nights which was awesome, the catamaran was small but clean and comfortable, we had a tiny little ‘room’ to ourselves which was just a double bed but still, better than sleeping in the kitchen which some had to do.
We went snorkling in three different spots around the islands, where we had the opportunity to find Nemo! And swim with so many different species fish, none of which had any problem swimming right next to me, all of which accidently got a flipper to the face when I panicked and swam away.
On our one and only full day on the boat we took a trip to Whitehaven Beach, with it’s pristine white sand that is so rare you can actually be fined a bucket load if you dare try to take any away with you.
We were with a great group of people on the boat who all seemed to get along and Damo, our captain and Nora, the host were fantastic at keeping us entertained the entire trip.
Despite potentially catching sun stroke, I loved the Whitsundays tour and definitely enjoyed it more than Fraser.
