Maroon me on the Whitsundays please

I am sitting in an Airlie Beach internet cafe right now and they just finished the playing the Jesse McCartney album and have now switched it over to Jewel. Add it to my list of reasons why I love Australia and all of it's glory. We just got off the Whitsundays yesterday which can really not be properly described on this blog. Buuuut before I get ahead of myself, let's review the past few days. Lots has happened.

Between the time of getting off the ferry from Magnetic Island and jumping on the greyhound we had about 45 minutes to grab food. Which you would think would be enough time to get to McDonalds and back, right? Well, if you are like us, you thought wrong. We asked a nice man who was either very turned around or just wanted to mess with us how close it was and he said like 2 blocks away. Add a zero onto the end of that number and thats how close it was. 20 blocks away. We found this out the hard way, and also arrived right about feeding time for the kiddies so it was like a Twilight convention with Big Macs. Kill me. Cut to Sean and I dead out sprinting through the streets of Townsville with McDonalds bags in hand and you can understand why people were pointing and laughing. We did however make it to the bus just in time to realize that our driver was the crankiest old man ever and we had to not only sneak the food onto the bus but sneak taking bites while the old man wasn't wheezing about switching seats. Seriously it was like being back in elementary school all over again. Claire also snuck a popsicle onto the bus after we stopped at the grossest pit stop ever and she had to literally shove it between the seats so old man river wouldn't kick her off the bus for having it. I laughed so hard I cried when I saw the look on her face and subsequent panic at realizing he was walking towards us while she had a mouth full of ice cream. Things I wish I had on videotape...

We got into Airlie Beach and took a nice overextended stroll to find our hostel. The town is really cute with lots of fun shops, restaurants and bars. Though the ratio of live music to people who actually like it is very out of whack. On the bright side, the ratio of mullets to normal hair cuts is like 2:1 so I have spent probably 60% of my time laughing and pointing out said hair dos to anyone that wants to see. Which is alot, in case you were wondering. Our first hostel came complete with no working lights and no sheets so that was just great. Really classy establisment. We grabbed some dinner in town then came back and made friends with a group of English boys who were playing drinking games on the patio. We played several rounds of a variation of the game Zoo that had all of us dying laughing. Then it was out to Mama Africas where I went for something different and alternated my time between spotting every mullet in the room and dancing like an idiot. The night ended as every night should-at McDonalds discussing the different pronunciations that Americans and English have for the same word. I think we got stuck on "yoghurt" for at least 10 minutes. This was clearly more fun than going to sleep so we didnt hit the non-existent sheets til 4 am and had to be up at 7. Smooth move.

The Whitsundays were just....so many things. I think we set the tone for the trip the night before and that only continued. We were late getting into town and registering with the boat so we had to do that in the morning and the woman behind the counter seriously would not stop talking. Then we ran across town to the marina to get the boat and of course purchased 3 giant boxes of goon on the way. You can imagine the looks we got from our fellow passengers when we rolled up looking like hell with as much booze and you can carry at 10 am. We quickly realized we were in the minority what with bringing booze and liking to have fun. We met two really fun girls from Canada- Mariel and Meghan- the only other two who got the BYOB memo. The rest of the boat was mostly couples with a few randoms and then this funny old Italian family that we were all skeptical about but actually ended up making the trip. There were 3 little old Italian ladies who just hung out in bikinis all day..and one who was such a diva. She pursed her lips and every bikini she had was adorned with either sequins or jewels of some sort. So funny. The first day out we sailed to Hook Island and did some snorkeling complete with stinger suits (think full body lycra) and then some actual sailing in the afternoon. We parked the boat and had dinner and then played games with the crew at night. A fair amount of time was also spent looking up- with no light pollution you could see thousands of stars. I think we were all awed into silence for a least a half an hour just looking up at all the constellations. Claire, Sean and I were supposed to camp on the island but we finagled a spot to sleep on the boat instead-in the sail. Yes seriously, we all cocooned up in the sail and after some moving around it was actually quite comfortable. Illegal too I'm sure, but quite the experience none the less.

The next day we set off for Whitehaven Beach which I am going to ahead and say is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I'm sure everyone has seen pictures-white sand beaches, crystal clear water, vivid blue sky. Absolutely unreal. We took about 9000 pictures there and not one does the spot justice. It really is just incredible. I got to use the underwater capabilities on my new camera which was quite fun and we ended up with some really fun pictures! Poor Meghan tried to do a handstand and dislocated her shoulder so she had to get off the boat that afternoon to get it taken care of! But she's ok now, she was such a trooper she didn't even complain once. After getting her taken care of we went snorkelling and sailing some more before doing dinner and drinks again. We played games down in the cabin and the Italians were just fascinated. They kept trying to figure out how we were playing and what was going on, it was so cute. One of the grandmas took a liking to Sean and kept stealing his nose. Like your grandma probably did to you when you were five. So funny. We decided to venture onto the island to the only bar for a drink and it was a bit of a shitshow of University students so that didn't last long. Getting back to the boat, our Host, Rachel fell into the water! And we had just had a conversation about how we were both deathly afraid of the ocean at night...thankfully her cigarettes stayed dry so she was happy. Back into the sail we went, until Sean tried to climb out later and snapped one of the sides. Ooops. But it ended up being ok (fixable) and we got to steal someone's bed so that actually worked out for the better. Leave it to us to break something on the boat. The next morning we headed home and yup, the power steering went out. So we had to jump on this little dingy to get in from outside of the marina. Definitely a fantastic trip-I know I'm not describing it that well and it's probably one of those "had to be there" things, but really so much fun.

We got back to Airlie and decided to go swimming at the local watering hole and on the way over I ran into Tristan and his girlriend LeAnn! Small world, Tristan and I worked together at Blue Hour and we knew each other was coming but to just randomly run into him was so funny! We went swimming and then tried to do internet stuff but my computer has been rather rude lately so that ended up with me fuming mad about not getting any pictures up. It was definitely one of those "I'm turning into my mother" moments. Love you Mom! Then it was goon time. After the boats get back its a tradition to get a table with the crew at one of the bars and get drinks and have fun. We saw our English friends too so that was great fun, and then in another small world story I saw Andrew Aaberg! Just sitting a table away from me! He's here working for a year and I had no idea (we went to SCU together) so we caught up for a while which was really nice! Then one way or another we all ended up back at Mama Africas on the dance floor. On our way there I saw a couple making out heavily on the ground (like sitting up..in an alley....classy) and the guy was wearing neon yellow underwear. So I dared Claire to go give him an atomic wedgie. She did. I cried. It was fantastic. We danced till the wee hours of the night and then took a little walk down the bay and saw the town by night. Again, very pretty.

Today it's been internet galore! And now we have an overnight bus that leaves at 6 pm and gets into Hervey Bay at 7 am and then it's time for Frasier Island! I'm mentally preparing myself for being covered head to toe in sand. I can't wait.

Until then...love and miss you all!!!

Jen