Sailing the Whitsunday Islands

Thursday morning started way too early. 4:30am to be exact. In exhausted silence, the six of us dragged ourselves, half asleep and totally incapable of forming words into the van to begin our pilgrimage up to the Whitsunday Islands for the weekend. The van ride down to the train station is relatively foggy, and it’s completely possible that I had actually managed to sleep walk throughout the entire experience, but nevertheless, Team Bond Uni made it to the airport by 7:45 for our 8:55 flight north and landed (happily) at the Whitsunday Airport by around 10:25am. From here, our travel movements were characterized by communal confusion as well as an entire lack of any form of information on the whole, however between the initial six of us from campus, as well as several other off campus students who we met up with after landing, we managed to sort things out. A weathered looking man in his mid 60’s retrieved us at the airport, hustled (and I mean hustled) us into van number two for the day, and took off down the dirt roads in a crappy stick shift van/bus easily reaching speeds upwards of 80kmph complete with passing on turns and hills as well as the most aggressive tail gating that I have seen in quite some time - and I’m a New Yorker. Molly was borderline positive that this was the end of our lives - a thought that was by no means entirely out of the question. Apparently road rage exists in Australia as well and lord help whatever poor tourist this lunatic scared the life out of. As if driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car wasn’t life threatening enough as it is. Eventually, we lived through the drag race of an airport transfer, and after much confusion and a few raised voices, we finally made it to the correct hostel, instead of the strange hostel down the road that our angry driver man was convinced we were supposed to stay at. Sorry buddy, you were wrong, but thanks for playing. 

Base Hostel was an awesome hostel. Each room was basically a little bungalow set back from the road with four rooms with five beds to each building. Each room had 2 bunk beds, one solo bed, it’s own full bathroom as well as a half kitchenette thing. This being Molly’s first hostel experience, I had to break the sad news that not all hostels were quite like this one - if they were more like this one, I would never stay at a hotel again. Actually, that’s a flagrant lie, but you get my point. Lacy, Molly, Emily, and one other girl who lives off campus and I were in one room, while James and Kristina bunked with the other three off campus students who we didn’t know at the time, in the room next to us, making an ideal configuration even though it was only for one night. By 11:30am we were already exhausted not only from being up at such an unreasonable hour, but from the combination of travel itself, the death defying van ride, and especially the brief episode of chaos in which nobody seemed to know where were supposed to spend the night. In an effort to wake ourselves up as well as calm our recently frazzled nerves, we set off in a group to explore Airlie. The town itself was pretty cool, consisting of basically one long street that ran parallel with the ocean, littered with bars, night clubs, pubs, pizza shacks, tourist trinket shops, surf shops, and local clothing stores. We settled on the open air bar with big fans and a massive long wooden tables as a place to grab a quick but comfortably greasy lunch. Kangaroo as well as crocodile was on the menu, but I figured I had better save my first kangaroo/croc ingestion experience for a place who’s tables were not still sticky from the night before. After recharging our batteries with some healthy deep fried food and several Pure Blonde pitchers - or, sorry, jugs - for the table, we split up and wandered around Airlie for the better portion of the afternoon. Lacy, Molly and I checked out the iconic Airlie Beach Lagoon even though it was a bit cloudy and then weaved in and out of the maze of little stores throughout the main strip. By 5:30, it felt like midnight and we decided that dinner time had arrived, even though nobody had invited it for such an early hour. We met back up with James, Emily and Kristina and, too tired to put true effort into searching for a nice dinner spot, we defaulted for the first pizza shack we found and inhaled a sizable amount of several different pizza species. We took our time from here and waited until happy hour to make our slow crawl back towards our hostel for the night. At some point, we found ourselves back at the same bar which we had lunch at, except by now it was absolutely packed to the gills and had $10 jugs which was enticing at the time. Worth noting at this point in my recap, is the group of around 15 Australian guys all wearing matching blue tank tops proclaiming that they were a footy team on their end of season break, in Airlie “to get pissed for the weekend.” Translation: they’re a rugby team spending the weekend in Airlie to drink for four days straight. I’m sure their doctors (if they even have them) are psyched. So, with this in mind, the six of us, plus one random German who we had picked up somewhere along the way, were sitting at one of the back tables, talking amongst ourselves and couldn’t help but notice that nobody was on the dance floor even though there was a live band. And by live band, I obviously mean a guy with a a guitar, a microphone and a laptop that plays all of the other necessary instruments for a band, and probably also projects the words to any given song as well. Anyway - it was better than a bad DJ any day. So, seeing live music and an empty dance floor, Lacy and I couldn’t resist but to go claim the dance floor for ourselves and see what happened. At the time, it seemed like a good idea for me to do “the worm” across the dance floor in an effort to get people’s attention and get some more bodies out there. It worked. After picking myself up from my extremely physically taxing worm display, I was instantly greeted by one of the guys in blue who felt the urgent, pressing need to show me up - I might as well have had a bull’s eye on my back. He proceeded to do the worm, then a backflip, front flip, break dance, and some other acrobatic move I can’t even come close to describing. What kind of trained gymnast prays on poor white girls who think they can dance? Rude. Regardless of my bruised pride, and semi broken knee caps from the cement floor, the dance floor was soon packed with most of the guys in blue as well as some unworthy overly intoxicated floaters who would appear here and there before stumbling away. We had some competitive swing dancing maneuvers as well as a lot, a lot of lyrical interpretive dance, to songs like Summer of ’69 and Wild Thing. All in all, it was a bizarre night in a casual way that made it one definitely worth remembering. It was no surprise that Team Bond crashed no later than 11:30pm that night - we had all been awake for far too many hours as it was, and the insane dance riot that we had ignited definitely took whatever energy that was left in us right out. 

The next morning, we checked out of the hostel, grabbed a quick breakfast at the cafe on our street and then headed down to the marina to meet the boat called Wings 3 that we were about to spend the next two days on. Wings 3 was a 50ft catamaran captained by a Kiwi named Pete, who governed a support staff of two. There was the dive master, Rich, or “Richie, Richie Rich, Richster, RichMan” or whatever other self proclaimed nick names he addressed himself as, as well as an American girl named Amanda who kept us shockingly well fed throughout the trip. After boarding the boat, and after the understandably necessary but equally painful, if-the-boat-sinks-and-or-all-hell-breaks-loose-procedure lecture to sit through before we shoved off from Airlie Beach and finally headed across to the Whitsunday Islands. It was such a breath of fresh air (literally and figuratively) to be back on a boat for more than a few hours and I had an avalanche of Geronimo memories come washing over me as if I had locked them away for a while and then they were suddenly triggered to come racing back to the front of my mind. I hadn’t thought about that trip for quite a while so it was nice to sort of re-live it all in my own way. So anyway, after the we made a quick 2(ish) hour beeline for Hook Island and dropped anchor promptly at a dive site called Mackerel Bay upon arrival. 

Once here, we had our first chance to hit the water and get a taste of what Australia’s famous Barrier Reef had to offer. The answer is jellyfish. Australia has jellyfish to offer. Thanks to National Geographic’s seasonal special entitled, “Killer Jellyfish,” every single one of us on the boat had a quiet, nagging concern about the lethal box jellyfish - you know, the one that sends you into cardiac arrest within 3 minutes? Not good odds, but thanks for playing. Before we finally worked up the courage to jump in, someone squeaked out a question about the chances of seeing one of these nasty little stingers. The response was not to worry - they only come after the rains. There was a long, pregnant pause before James said in a very monotone voice, “It rained yesterday.” Luckily it was eventually clarified that “the rains” referred more to the seasonal rains, not the daily ones, so we were apparently in some sort of a safe zone, or at least thats what they told us. I would lie to us too at that point. The visibility was not exactly Bahamian clarity, but it was still clear enough to see what needed to be seen. The coral was incredible. I’ve never seen coral so huge, so colorful and so alive, but then again, I’ve never spent time on a Pacific Ocean reef, let alone on the Barrier Reef, so I suppose it’s to be expected. This is not to say, however, that the coral I am used to is sub - par, because it’s quite above par if I do say so myself, it’s just totally different from this and, and I was in no way prepared for such vibrant life to be pouring out of each coral head. I saw giant clams with blue lips for the first time, real life Nemo’s popping in and out of their anemones, massive parrot fish and groupers, eels, turtles, the list is endless. Despite the water being absolutely freezing, it was an awesome introduction to the Barrier Reef. 

On Saturday morning, we were up to see the sunrise around 5:30am which is always a rude hour, but it was definitely work dragging our tired bodies out of the bunks for. Since the sun doesn’t set over the ocean here, (thank you, southern hemisphere,) a sunrise was the closest thing we’d get to the colors of the oceanic sunsets that we’re used to at home. Shortly after the sunrise photo shoot of some very, very overtired students, we stuffed some breakfast down our gullets and were underway to the most iconic beach of the Whitsunday Islands. We dropped anchor just behind Whitehaven beach around 8am and first set foot on the trail up over the ridge and down to the famous beach on the other side not long afterwards. Whitehaven beach was incredible. 7km of completely untouched natural perfection. The sand at Whitehaven is completely unlike anything in the world as it’s almost entirely made up of silica - not coral, not rocks, and not volcanic sediment - silica. To say that this sand is white would be an embarrassing understatement. The sand is blindingly white - a lot like the choppers of those overly faked tanned women who are simultaneously addicted to teeth whitening, making their teeth into laser beams of light. We spent the next two or three hours being slowly fricasseed by the sun, no thanks to Australia’s apparent lack of ozone layer, as well as exploring up and down the beach and dodging in and out of the crystal water. I remember thinking that the sand was literally like flour as I walked back to our towels from the water. I have never seen sand so fine and so powdery. I chuckled to myself quietly out of guilt as I thought about my roommates, friends and teammates back in Chestertown. Initially I felt terribly guilty that I was basically frolicking on one of the world’s most perfect beaches, while I knew that they were back at school grinding through the daily routine on the other side of the world; and at that moment I would have given anything to have transported them to the beach to share the experience with me. Places like this are proof that nature, entirely in itself, is perfect, and I sincerely hope that at some point in everyone’s life they have a moment where they can see that for themselves. 

Later that afternoon we were back in the water to explore a reef on the back side of Hook Island. The visibility was not quite as clear as the last site, but the coral was far more dramatic with huge coral heads and deep crevasses that were too dark to see all the way through. The life at this site was also much larger with parrot fish on steroids as well as octopus (not the blue banded, thank goodness,) and more Pacific giant clams. I was hovering a few feet above a massive sea anemone watching the clown fish pop in and out when all of a sudden, I felt something cold slide underneath my wetsuit on my neck just behind my left ear. Instinctively I thrashed and swatted at my neck but it was too late, and I immediately felt a terrible burning and stinging sensation where the nasty little gelatinous critter had slipped in. I knew it was a jellyfish, and also knew that this meant that I either had 3 minutes to live, or, I was going to be totally fine, and probably end up with a small rash to whine about later. I calmed myself down and patiently waited for the immanent cardiac arrest to set in as I slowly made my way in the general direction of other people should all hell break loose within my cardiovascular system. After the longest two and a half minutes of my life and no signs of heart failure, I determined that I was going to live and went about my business and quickly distracted myself with what I thought to be a sea snake - another mean spirited Australian animal  that I hope to never see again. Once everybody was back on the boat, the long line for the most claustrophobic shower on earth began to form, and took a solid 50 minute chunk out of our evening in the name of hygiene. That evening, I sat with the captain for quite a while, talking about Australia in general, about sailing, whales, New Zealand and my not-so-extensive knowledge of rugby. As the sun went down the stars began to pope up out of the dusk, brighter than burning torches on a beach at night. The first, and brightest orb to appear in the sky was Venus, made visible by the distinct size and orange tint, as well as its low lying position just above the horizon. By the time the sun was totally gone, the sky was alive with unfamiliar constellations as well as the famous Southern Cross. In that instant I really felt like I was on the other side of the world. That night, I looked up to the sky and did not recognize one constellation, and even the moon was upside down. Whenever I travel, or am away from my friends and family, it’s always a quite comfort to know that when I look up at the stars and the moon, it’s the same night sky that they’re looking at wherever they are - plus or minus a few clouds. Suddenly I was alarmingly aware that I was looking up at a full sky that was totally different than the one that blanketed them in their night 10 hours prior. It was like realizing that the largest commonality I could think of, being the night sky, was no longer common, but was something totally alien and different - and I was fine with it.