oh the places you'll go....: Chapter 5: The best for last

Part 1: Airlie Beach. We arrived late in the evening on the bus and as the story goes, there was no room at the inn. Apparently Airlie Beach it a popular place to be for New Years Eve. In the end of course we managed. And stayed long enough to discover what an interesting little place this was. This tiny little town consisted solely of hostels and hotels, travel agents, and bars/restaurants. With the occasional shop for your sunglasses, hats and of course the abundance of suncream. And it was packed, packed with people.

Part 2: Sailing!!!!!! This is definitely at the top of my favorites list. From Airlie Beach we took a 3days, 2 nights sailing tour of the Whitsunday Islands and the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef. I'm pretty sure I love every minute of it. Okay, maybe not the minutes at night when I was trying and failing to sleep in the beastly Australian heat. But everything else was fabulous!

Absolutely nothing but ocean, us and some far off islands. And I couldn't have been happier. :)

Cruisin'

On our way into the beach to hang out for a bit and do some snorkeling and even some diving!!! Those exclamation marks are more for reflecting my angst than excitement regarding that last activity. I've seen Finding Nemo! I know what's down there! Jens and I also went to the Aquarium in Sydney and I also know that the cute little sharks and rays in the Disney version are not so friendly off the screen. More than that though I just find snorkeling (and diving is way worse) to be disorienting.

This is pre-dive, hangin' out on the cool coral beach. Do I look a little nervous? I was waiting my turn and watching all the others go in and come our raving. Not that any of them could convince me not to be nervous.

By the way, those stinger suits are pretty hot, huh? Yes, I said 'stinger suits'. That's because they are meant to protect us from death by stingers!! It's a dangerous world out there.

Hahaha. Okay, so the diving story is this.....
Our diving instructor, Max, gave us a little lesson here in the shallow water before we went under. We practiced breathing, the hand signs to use when we were underwater etc. Then we started our dive. Or at least the others did. I tried. But then I was feeling so anxious and my heart was racing and then I couldn't get the silly breathing thing down because my breathing was much faster because my heart was racing because I was freaking out!! So...I resurfaced. Max came up to talk to me, told me there were some "cool fishies that wanted to say 'hello'" or something ridiculous like that, that made me feel like I was 5 years old and then we went down together to join the rest of the group.

Now this is more like it. Relaxing in the sun. I'll admit that the diving was cool, I'm glad that I've had that experience. But my heart never stopped pounding the whole time and I was very relieved to be back above the water in the end.

Back on the boat watching the sun go down. Incredible.

I'm so happy to be on a boat!!!

We were on a boat with quite the lot of characters. It was great actually to talk with everyone and hear their stories. We actually had four other Americans on our boat and three from Cananda. An Irishman and a Scotsman(that was fun). A few Danish kids, and don't forget the Germans. So we entertained ourselves with talking. And then of course we were entertained by The Trio. That's what I'll call these guys, the two in the water attempting some kind of flip and the one taking the photo. That's the Irishman, the Scotsman and a guy from Georgia. They've been traveling around Australia together and they were always up to something.

Hangin' out at the beach. What a great life...

Hey!!! I just swam with a family of Turtles!!!

This was a sad day, back to the harbor. Except I was really, really looking forward to getting some sleep.

And sleep I did at this gorgeous resort!! After we returned from out sailing trip we took a ferry out to Hamilton Island to this fancy pants resort for a couple days.

If you don't know the Dahlgren family we don't really do resort vacations, so this was a new experience. There were five pools (overlooking the ocean), one even had on of those bars that you swim up to (not that we could pay for one of their 6 euro drinks if we wanted to), a few different hot tubs, and of course, the beach. There were shops, movie rentals, a gym and of course everything you could need or want out there on the water.