Doing the Whitsundays, Kinda
27th January, Whitsunday Islands, Australia
We started the day much as we had finished yesterday - in McDonalds. I was the piggie eating a Maccas breakfast.
We then had a decision to make - do we head on again down south or do we take a look around the Whitsundays? This may seem like a daft question ("Go see the islands!" scream a thousand backpackers in unison) but we'd just come back from an island, we'd seen countless beaches already and had island-hopped in Fiji. As such, we weren't bothered if we missed out here. But then there's that niggling little doubt: what if we missed something good here by speeding on ahead?
We found a trip that we could do in one day - a two island trip that took us from Airlie Beach to Hamilton Island (the most developed resort island in the South Pacific, so I believe, where everyone drives around on golf buggies, I kid you not) and then on to Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. For those confused at this stage, the area is Whitsunday, the island group is known as the Whitsundays and the largest isand is Whitsunday Island. That's that cleared up then.
The Whitsunday Island group.
We really didn't get to see anything much of Hamilton Island other than the harbour, jetty, a few golf buggies and even, a skyscraper! - so it's difficult to say how good the place is. Whitehaven Beach, on the other hand, is definitely worth a look. The beach is 6 kilometres long and the sand is incredible. It's the whitest, finest sand I've seen and when you walk on it, the dry sand squeeks; the wetter sand that is exposed at low tide (but has dried off somewhat in the baking sun) crunches underfoot with a sound like that of snow being compacted (but without the cold, naturally!).
Whitehaven Beach.
I had a swim for about 20 minutes in my lovely skin-tight stinger suit (very fetching). If I looked daft, it didn't matter, as everyone else in the water was wearing one. Stepping into the water it's clear why - I counted at least three jelly fish washing about in the surf, each one roughly twice the size of my hands. They don't call this 'stinger season' for laughs.
How do I look? Super? No really, does my bum look big in this?
