Airlie Beach

The There & Back Again Tour to FNQ

A picture-postcard day. Perfect weather. Not too hot, not too windy. We had decided to stay a few extra days to make up for the wet start we had here at Airlie. So we had our big reef splurge ~ the Panorama Tour with Air Whitsunday.

There were only four on the plane (plus the pilot) and we flew out to the Great Barrier Reef on a small sea plane. We landed on the water, transferred to a private semi submersible inside a coral ringed lagoon for some underwater viewing followed by snorkelling. Out in the middle of nowhere on the reef. Awesome! Then we returned to our seaplane and flew off for a picnic lunch on Whitehaven Beach - a long stretch of amazing, fine, white sand edged by aquamarine water.

I shall post a photo album soon! It was a great overall experience.

I fell in love with snorkelling in Maui ... and Alphie said that I HAD to snorkel the GBR to get the benchmark. Sadly our experience yesterday wasn’t up to his earlier memories or mine of Maui. Maybe the coral was suffering damage from Cyclone Yasi, but visibility wasn’t terrific, the coral wasn’t colourful and there were few fish.

And Alphie promises to post a blog entry from Cardwell ... where we hope to do some Barra fishing