Airlie Beach & Whitsundays / Australia

29/09/17 - 08/10/17

After a 17-hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Airlie Beach and were shocked to find out that we couldn't go into the ocean anymore. The jellyfish season had started and unfortunately, there were a few deadly ones among them. Oh well - so we were left with only the hostel pool or the lagoon (public pools) by the sea.

Airlie Beach itself is nothing special. The 'town' consists of a single street that can be walked through in 5 minutes 😀 There is also no beautiful beach here.

How are we supposed to spend 9 days here? 😀 We actually extended our stay by 3 more days because our friends from Sydney, whom we had already met in Noosa, were joining us. Well - in the end, even without swimming in the ocean and without a beach, we had 9 very cool days!

On the first day, it rained for the first time in 7.5 months, which every Australian was excited about, except for us of course 😀 We went fishing at the sea, well Markus fished - I can't do anything with it 😀 He even caught two bigger fish, yeaaaaah 🖒 The other two days we spent at the lagoon and the pool.

On Thursdays, we went on a boat to the Whitsundays with snorkeling twice and the Whiteheaven Beach 😍 When we arrived at the Whiteheaven Beach, our jaws dropped and barely closed! We had never seen anything so beautiful in our lives! 'Dream beach' is really an understatement! It was soooooooo breathtaking. Even the pictures can't capture how amazing it really was. The sand is so white - you can brush your teeth with it, wash your hair, and rub it all over your body. That's why it's the most valuable sand on Earth and taking sand from there results in a fine of $200,000. Even a backpack with a zipper is forbidden because the valuable sand can collect in it - crazy 😀 The water is as clear as tap water. Furthermore, you can walk up to 800m in certain places. AMAZING! After that, we went to two snorkeling spots with millions of fish (some were bigger than me and were swimming right in front of our faces) and beautiful corals - what else, that's what the Great Barrier Reef is known for.

Back at the hostel, our favorite travel mates finally arrived! From then on, there was no more 'boredom' 😀 They managed to sleep at the campsite next to our hostel for one night until they got kicked out - what a record 😀 But it should be mentioned that the reason for that was completely abnormal: at the back entrance of the hostel, there was a huge pile of bulky waste with sofas, chairs, etc. To make the pitch a bit more comfortable in the evening, the guys carried one of the old sofas over. Stupidly, the hostel apparently wanted to make money, knocked on the windows of the car at 7:15 in the morning and forced them to leave the premises, as the sofa was apparently new and they had stolen and destroyed it... Completely absurd, but unfortunately, no chance. Well, a new pitch was quickly found and we immediately took advantage of it for a barbecue 😀

We then experienced a second 'highlight' in the evening back at our hostel. An Irishwoman came into our room, put her backpack down, and a huge cockroach fell down and disappeared under one of the beds. DISGUSTING. But instead of taking care of removing the cockroach, she just lay down in bed and mumbled to herself saying 'yeah, I don't know where it is now, it will show up eventually'... Oh great, how are we supposed to sleep peacefully knowing that there is a creepy thing crawling around... So we had to go on the hunt. Problem: you can't hit the bugs because then they drop their eggs and so many more hatch. After a long search and disgust, Markus managed to catch the cockroach with a tissue and flush it down the toilet. Phew 😀

There wasn't much else going on there - except that we finally ate Cordon Bleu again after over a month 😀 A dream come true!