Whitsundays with Samurai

We arrived in Airlie Beach fairly exhausted from our overnight coach journey. We checked into local backpackers Magnum's and crashed out for a couple of hours. Once we'd revived we headed out to check out the town. Airlie Beach is a small town and mostly geared for tourists with loads of cafes, restaurants, tourism agencies and hostels. We liked it. We strolled along the beach, went to the internet cafe and generally chilled.

Our tour was booked with Whitsundays To The Max and after a day of chilling at the beach we headed down to check in and board the boat. Our boat was called 'Samurai' and was a 68ft, ex-racing yacht, now used to take up to 20 young things who want to see a bit of the Whitsundays, do some diving and generally party. We hadn't really been up for a party boat but we ended up on one, so no worries, we decided to enjoy ourselves. There were other boats out there crammed with up to 50 people so ours was relatively small. Sleeping conditions were cramped to say the least and we all got extremely hot below deck with lots of people on the edge of suffocation and opting to sleep on the deck. The boat was manned by a skipper, first mate/dive instructor and two deck hands. The dive instructor was our main guide and he was a little crazy looking, having had his head shaved by some friends while drunkenly passed out the night before. There was a fun atmosphere although at times the guide did speak to us as though we were 18 year-olds (quite a few people were actually near to that age anyway).

We sailed (or motored depending on the wind) round the beautiful Whitsunday islands, covered in forest and surrounded by bright blue waters.
On our first night a dolphin swam up to our boat to investigate which was cool and every time we anchored huge batfish would come and hang around the hull, waiting for bits of food to fall into the water. We went to the famous Whitehaven Beach (National Geographic top 3 beaches in the world) – it was absolutely stunning. We swam (in stinger suits as it's jellyfish season) and walked around on the fine, white sand.







After this we went scuba diving at another beach which is part of the great barrier reef. We had to dive with the guide which was no problem apart from the fact that he liked to dive at a ridiculous speed, leaving us far behind and struggling to keep up in our crappy hired fins, not really my kind of diving, but it was fun to see another part of the reef. [Some underwater pics coming soon...]



On our second night we had a bbq and party, some dressing up (university-style fancy dress – one team in bin-bags and the other in togas
– the pervy skipper started telling the girls that the team wearing the least would win...hmmm...), some singing/shouting, and general disorderly behavior. Everyone enjoyed themselves until a slightly random game invented by our guide where we had to stand in line and pass a rope through our clothes. Bizarre... our group managed it no problem but the other group didn't do quite as well and ended up squashed close together, some people got a bit upset as they felt that they might fall into the water and the game ended with no one really knowing what the point of it all was. The next morning Al and I were up nice and early, around 6.30, as the skipper started the engines to change location. We sat on deck surveying the mess from the night before... beer cans, wine bags, cups, cigarette butts, clothes, a pile of wetsuits, some food scattered around and ready to fall overboard... it wasn't a pretty sight and as the crew clearly weren't in a rush to do their jobs we cleaned most of it up... the crew didn't bother to clean the boat once while we were on board, it was pretty gross by the third day and we were pretty unimpressed.

But despite the lack of cleanliness we enjoyed our scuba diving and swimming that day and the general fun and relaxed atmosphere continued.








We really enjoyed the Whitsunday's – it is such a stunning part of the world and amazing for sailing. Next time though (with a bit more money), we think that we will charter our own yacht so we can be more independent... and less Club 18-30.