Cruisin' the Whitsundays

When we were planning our trip, we were told that "the Whitsundays is an absolute must." Unlike Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, we really hadn't heard much about Airlie Beach or the Whitsundays. Of course, turning to Google, we came across pictures of beautiful beaches and knew it had to be added to our list.

Airlie Beach is completely a backpackers town.. random people bathing in the sun, with literally all their possessions laying right next to them (and a roll of toilet paper hanging off their bag) and just wandering along, waiting for their next adventure to stumble upon.

 When we were booking our shuttle to Airlie Beach from Mackay Airport, the email responses we got were "sorry... it's too late in the evening, we don't want to have to deal with kangaroo crossings... better if you just changed your flight." Now did we change our flight? Nope... we decided to rent a car and drive the 2 hours to Airlie Beach at 10:00 p.m. Let's see... after 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to exit the airport, we were on our way! Luckily, Parimal is a fantastic driver and knows how to get around the deers (all those years of driving in NY finally came in handy :) ). Despite driving through dense fog, stretches of road without any lights, we were doing great and kangaroo free! Parimal pointed out a baby kangaroo on the side of the road and then all of a sudden a larger (perhaps his big brother) kangaroo starts jumping across the road in front of us!!!  With a quick left and then right, we managed to avoid to the kangaroo and were safely back on the road... You'd think that'd be it but then about 15 minutes later, a large hawk comes swooping down on top of our car! These animals have a thing for headlights or something!

Moving onto actually being in Airlie Beach. Our adventure happened to be a jet ski tour around the Whitsunday Islands. With a quick "how to maneuver your jet ski" lesson and posing in our very sexy wet suits, we were off... Parimal tearing through the waves on a jet ski and Piyusha hanging on for dear life until she got used it.  At one point we got up to 54 mph (yes miles per hour) and we went for about 70-80 km on this adventure.

We stopped for a bit to check out some manta rays (similar to a sting ray, but doesn't sting :))... They were huge and they were attracted to the bottom of the skis since they were black as well.  Afterwards, we cruised over to a secluded beach where we jumped off our skis and did some snorkeling.  From there we continued on, attempted to find some whales, which unfortunately didn't happen, and made our way back to have some good eats. We also saw some cute baby kangaroo, at a distance, with none running in front of the bus (whew).

Seriously the smallest car ever!

We left Airlie Beach a little early so we could check out some of the stops we saw on the road back to Mackay Airport... such as the beach front view from the Holiday Village near the Laguna Quays Resort...

and the beautiful beach view from Midge Point....

As you can see, they were "must see" stops... we're surprised they aren't on TripAdvisor :)


Parimal was a regular Aussie on the left-side of the road and we made it back to Mackay Airport in one piece.


Off to Cairns... for some sun, fish, coral and a whole lot more!


Trip Count... no changes and healed knees!