During my last week in Australia Jill and I traveled to the famed Whitsunday Islands, a group of 74 islands off the northeast coast of Australia along the Great Barrier Reef, absolutely beautiful. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and stayed until Friday, a very relaxing 5-day getaway. Our apartment that we rented was on top of the tallest hill in Airlie Beach – the resort area that we stayed in. We got a good workout just walking back to our place each night, I was puffed after climbing back up the top. A couple of times we even took a $5 taxi ride, haha, we had some tiring days!
We flew up to the whitsundays along the coast, and I couldn’t help but take photos out of the plane window. Not the best quality, but I think the majority of the coastline was beaches. Around Moreton Island I saw this strange water pattern – I would guess it has something to do with the water temperature, or maybe some wierd cloud cover casting crazy shadows.
After we landed we were met by a limousine to take us to our resort about 30min from the airport. When we topped the hill in front of the beach the view was breathtaking. I wasn’t taking photos from the car, but check out the view we had from our pool.
Jill and I took a day ‘off’ to hang around Airlie Beach and explore the small town, buy groceries, and relax before embarking on our Great Barrier Reef trip. We took a taxi to the harbor and board a catamaran for a two hour boat ride out to the reef. Once there we docked at a floating platform where we could go scuba diving, snorkeling, swimming, eat, and relax. It was a blast, much more fun than the first time I went snorkeling on the reef because this time Jill was with me. (More of these photos on on Flickr)
During our off day we decided to try one of the trails nearby for some scenic overlooks. We ended up doing a 7.4 km loop and getting some great views of the surrounding islands. The end of the loop took us by a coral beach. The entire beach was made of coral, no sand to speak of. Not easy to walk on unless you were wearing sandals, but the water was warm.
On Thursday went on our island-hopping tour. We went to Daydream, Hamilton, and Whitehaven Islands. Whitehaven is an uninhabited island with one of the world’s top 10 beaches. It was Amazing! Daydream and Hamilton are both resort islands. Daydream is really small, and the whole island is basically the resort, while Hamilton is much larger and hosts several resorts and a nice beach. We didn’t get to see much of Hamilton because of the boat schedules, but we were there long enough to snag an ice cream after the beach. Click to enlarge the panoramic to a much bigger size.
The vacation was fantastic, then it was back to Brisbane for a couple of days before heading back to the States. More on the firework show “Riverfire” some other time. Check out more photos from my trip on Flickr!
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