The lady running the hostel wasn't so keen on the parrots. She told us that her neighbour feeds them at 5am every morning so the squawking starts then and doesn't stop all day.
The main reason for our stay was to visit the nearby Whitsunday islands, so named because they were discovered by Cook on Whitsunday, 1770. We booked a boat trip with the appropriately named Whitehaven Express, a small company who were only too happy to take us round the islands in exchange for a large wodge of cash. Our first stop was Tongue Inlet on Whitsunday island. Making our way onshore, we saw some interesting looking rock formations on the beach.
We then walked up a path through the forest on our way to the lookout point. On our way, we had quite a shock when we met our first Big Scary Spider of the trip:
As you can see, there is also a colourful insect in the picture. At first, we thought that the insect was in trouble, what with spiders having a reputation for eating insects and all. However, it was the insect that got the better of the spider. It grabbed hold of the spider and started dragging it away, off the path and through the forest. I'm sure that we witnessed some vital part of the forest food chain.
We then made our way to the lookout point, which had some spectacular views, one of which we posed in front of.
From this lookout point, we could see Whitehaven beach, which was to be our next destination:
Our guide, Shannon, explained that Whitehaven beach is the second best beach in the whole world, due to the excellent quality of the sand. It appears that there is a fault line between Haslewood Island and Whitsunday Island, where two tectonic plates rub together, emitting very fine and pure silica particles which form the sand on the beach.
After we returned to the boat we donned stinger suits, which we needed in order to safely enter the water at this time of year. Once the boat anchored off Whitehaven Beach, we were able to dive into the water and swim ashore, which was great fun. We spent a few hours on the beach and our guides cooked us lunch on the barbie. While eating lunch, we were joined by some very friendly lizards, which I think are goanas:
The next stop was a coral reef off Hook Island where we donned mask, fins and snorkel and swam over some fabulous coral. I regret not having bought an underwater camera by this point because the views underwater were truly stunning, with coral swaying in the breeze and shoals of brightly coloured fish swimming past.
All in all, this was probably the best day of the whole trip.
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