Nanuku Island

While staying at Maqai we took an overnight trip to Nanuku Island. It's really small and takes about 3 hours to get there from Maqai by a small speedboat. On the way there, we stopped at one of the nearby villages to pick up Meli, the son of the chief of Maqai and Nanuku. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to walk much around the village as there was a big meeting with all the chiefs from surrounding villages and islands. Five guests went including us, Dan and Fiona from Jersey and Isabel from Switzerland with six staff, Meli, Simon, Do, Lucy, John and Pela.

The island is so small that it couldn't be seen until we were almost there, and as we approached we realised just how small it was. The tiny sand island takes ten minutes to walk around the outside and is surrounded by crystal clear waters with coral.

All around the island there were various turtle tracks heading from the sea up into the bush in the middle. So during the night, Do, Simon, Dan and I went for a walk to see if we could find some, we didn't see any so it turned into a hunt for coconut crabs. We climbed through the bush barefeet looking for piles of coconuts that the crabs had been eating. Both Simon and Do caught one each, but neither me or Dan fancied grabbing one barehand as they use their strong claws to open coconuts for food.

The next day while we spent a bit of time snorkelling on the one of the reefs. The visibility was incredible, I thought it was good when we had snorkelled Australia and Thailand but Fiji was far better. We were in the water for around 20 minutes when Do swam up to the surface shouting for Meli to bring the boat over, and Pela (who was on a kayak) was shouting at us to swim to the shallow water over the coral, although I wasn't sure why until Isabel from Switzerland screamed shark! I looked under the water but I couldn't see anything and quickly swam towards the shallow coral. We did see plenty of reef sharks though.

While out snorkelling, Lucy and John prepared the coconut crabs for lunch before a quick rest and heading back to Maqai in the afternoon.

Whitsunday Islands

Yesterday we had an early start to the day... getting packed, checked out of our hotel, store our luggage and then be collected for our tour of the Whitsunday Islands, all before 8am. We took the Whitehaven Xpress boat, which I had been on when I visted Airlie 3 or 4 years ago. I knew the day wouldn't consist of purely snorkelling, and would give us the opportunity to see Whitehaven beach. They started by taking us to Whitehaven Beach to chill out for a few hours on the beach before cooking us a 'traditional barbee' of steaks, chilli burgers and sausages (Whitehaven Xpress is the only tour company that are authorised to cook a BBQ on the beach!). The boat moored about 75 metres off the beach, and we could either hop on a smaller boat to be taken ashore, or we could hire stinger suits (to protect you from deadly jellyfish in the area) and swim. Izzy kindly took my bag in the boat, and I went on the roof of the boat to jump in and swim to shore. It was quite tiring work in a saggy stinger suit with no flippers!

Whitehaven Beach has pure white sand which is made up of 95% silica. It is so fine it is almost impossible to get off your body like normal beach sand, and it squeaks as you walk across it. Unfortunately the beach had a lot of natural debris on it that had been left from cyclone Yasi, but it was still very beautiful.

Next stop, the Hill Inlet Lookout. The boat moored up 75 metres or so off the beach again to take us to shore on the dinghy, where we could take a short walk through some rainforest to an amazing lookout over the clear waters.

Finally, we carried on further north to Rass Bay (named after the many Maori Rass that are seen in this bay). Back on with the stinger suits and back in the water, this time with flippers and a snorkel mask. Annoyingly on this trip, every time I go snorkelling my mask lets water in! Having a hairy upper lip stops the mask from creating a proper seal. It makes snorkelling quite difficult, especially while trying to take photos because I have to try and hold my mask tight to my face with one hand, hold my camera with the other and then I'm starting to run out of limbs to balance. The simple answer would have been to either have a shave, or as I found out after snorkelling put vaseline on my face to help create the seal.

It's just my luck that because I was worried about jellyfish I would see several! I jumped off the back of the boat and started swimming towards the reef, as I got closer I looked down at my hand to see what looked like lots of saliva on my palm. I paused for a few seconds to figure out what it was because I didn't think I had spit in the water. When I had stopped moving it started to swim and that's when I realised it was a jellyfish! Apparently it was harmless but still, I didn't like being anywhere near it!

Last night we took the 11:45pm Greyhound down to Agnes Water, which took 10 hours! It was pretty uncomfortable, as the chairs hardly reclined, the only saving grace was that some seats were free so you could lay across two of them. Agnes Water and 1770 are two very small towns (1770 only has 60 permenant inhabitants), but it's a good stopping point for a break between Airlie Beach and Fraser Island.