Unfortunately we couldn’t find a couchsurfer for Airlie Beach, also nobody answered on our request, but ok. That’s why we started to search for a camp ground. As we had to drive through the city centre, we were really shocked and were close to turn around, because Airlie Beach is absolutely THE tourist city. There is one souvenir shop next to the other, travel agencies, hostels and not to forget tour bookings were offered everywhere. You only reach the Whitsunday Islands by booking a tour at one of the numerous providers. We really didn’t know what to do: on the one hand the Whitsundays are a big highlight of the Australian east coast, because there the famous Great Barrier Reef starts and the Whitehaven Beach situated on the main island can be found each year under the top 10 of the most beautiful beaches in the world. That’s why we wanted to see it in any case. But on the other hand, there was no chance to go there on our own, like we usually did, because actually we didn’t want to be part of an Asian travel group. After the first shock in Airlie Beach we arrived at our camp ground and asked again at the reception if there is any chance to go there without a tour. Unfortunately no. Therefore we booked a one-day-tour the next day for the day after (at Mantarays). The same day, we made our way to the Conway Observation Park hiking a short way to a lookout. The way to the lookout was quite sweat-inducing (Kerstin: “good that we already start hiking at 9h, it has only 32°C”), because the further north you go, the more tropical and humid the climate becomes. Due to the high humidity one sweats permanently! But the way was not only sweat-inducing, but we also saw some wild animals: 2 small snakes, this time probably no deadly venomous ones (so quite boring), heaps of butterflies, a pretty huge lizard (goanna) and a so called stick insects, which are the insects that can disguise as a branch. The way led over the beach, which was exceptionally no sandy beach, but full of dead and stony pieces of the reef. Arriving the lookout, we had a beautiful view over smaller islands of the Whitsunday Island group. 2 hours later, we were back in the car and we saw surprisingly that it was 40°C now. Afterwards we went to a waterfall, but due to the high amount of tourists we disappeared fairly quickly and drove to a quite nice beach. In order to cool down from the sweaty sightseeing, we went to the beach of Airlie Beach and didn’t go swimming in the sea, but in the pool situated directly next to the sea. It is a clear minus that there are deadly jellyfish in the sea during this time of the year (November-April): the fingernail big Irukandji and the box jellyfish, which is 20cm huge and has 2-3m long tentacles. In addition, there can be crocodiles in the sea during the whole year. So you have a crystal clear water in front of you, but can’t go for a swim……..
The next day we got picked up from the camp ground at the crack of the dawn and got driven to our boat (it looked a bit like an over dimensioned fishing boat). There we could wake up fairly well with another cup of coffee. After around 2 hours on the ship shortly before our first stop, we were told “put stinger suits on”. That was cue to the jellyfish, but apparently just because we were driven to the beach in a little motor boat and had to get off it in 20 cm deep water. It makes sense, maybe an angry jelly fish could have waited exactly there to kill us… Anyway, we survived this part and went up to the Hill Inlet Lookout which took around 20 minutes and allows a stunning view on the Whitehaven Beach. Once we arrived uphills, we were the only ones who were not completely flashed away from the view. It’s hard to describe, if you see the picture you might say it’s breathtaking beautiful, which is absolutely true. BUT: we were already annoyed to be part of a stupid travel group which follows their travel guide on every step he might take. He even didn’t have very many or good information about the area nor did he want to start a conversation, something which is not typical for Aussies. After we enjoyed the view (sweating in the stinger suit), we finally wanted to cool down at the Whitehaven Beach, where we were told: “Now you have one hour here” NERV!!! We just thought: “No we want to plan for ourselves and stay much longer here!!! We didn’t have a choice, however, so we went quickly for a swim in the water to make the best of the time we had. We soon spotted some animals, which like to play around in the shallow water of Whitehaven Beach. Manta rays and lemon sharks. We saw the rays from around one meter apart, the lemon shark was, however, a bit shyer why we couldn’t get closer than around ten meters. After this hour of cooling, we went back to the ship where we could eat from the buffet and drove to our next stop, the Hook Island, by the time. There some snorkelling was on the schedule. The Whitsundays count as the western part of the Great Barrier Reef and every island is surrounded by the reef. Every passenger got snorkelling gear and a noodle and we had two hours to explore the reef. Of course touching was completely forbidden, which is a very good thing, because the corals will die out because of that. The captain drove around with the small motor boat in order to look out for some turtles. He spotted one very soon, which was directly next to Tobi. Once we saw it and came back to the top, we were surrounded by 30 other members of our touring group who all wanted to see the turtle as well. WUAAAH, we just wanted to escape from this silly group of people. Besides that, the reef was really nice and colourful, a lot of small and bigger fish and another 60cm big turtle (even though all the others found that it was at least a meter). However, the masks were pretty crappy, so we had to empty them every couple of minutes and we drunk a lot of salt water why we got back on the boat a bit earlier. On the two hours way back we got some sweets, biscuits, fruits and coffee and then the tour was already over. Overall it was nice to see everything, but we’ll never become big fans of such tours which organize everything for you. We just like the adventures of self-containing. That’s why we decided to come back once we got enough money to just rent a boat and go around the islands for a week or so 🙂