Airlie Beach

So the next stop was Airlie Beach.  Buuuuuut, I got to have a really lovely stop over in Brisbane for a few hours to visit Jon and Kieran - friends from back in Vancouver for those that don't know.  They're living in Brissy for a couple years while Kieran goes to law school.  So fun!  Anyway, it was a quick stop but I got to see their apartment and enjoy a few beers on a patio with them before jumping back on the bus for the dreaded EIGHTEEN hour Greyhound ride.  I've gotten pretty used to riding the bus again, but eighteen hours is just too long!  Enough griping though.  Obviously I survived.

And the ride did provide for one interesting stop.  One of our meal stops was fairly late at night and it was quite dark out.  Sitting outside waiting to reboard the bus, I could see something flying between the trees but couldn't quite tell what it was.  At first, I thought they were crows, and quite large crows at that, even though that would have been really weird for them to be flying about at night.  They turned out to be bats.  GIANT bats!  As I found out just a couple days ago on a wildlife walk, these are Australia's version of fruit bats.  They can grow to have a wingspan of something like 6 feet.  Good thing I didn't have any fruit on me.

I was quite happy to arrive in Airlie Beach to a beautiful day (luckily a few days after the dreaded 100% humidity day), tropical blue waters and the prospect of a shower.  I ended up sharing my room with some really great fellow Canadians: Danielle, Steph and Jason.  Before Steph and Jason arrived, Danielle and I dominated the hostel trivia night with a whopping 18/20!  Okay, the guys we were paired up with got one or two of those, but us girls were the real reason that we won our bottle of champagne.  The quiz master was particularly impressed that we knew how many squares there are on a Scrabble board (225).

The next day I spent checking out Airlie with the rest of team Canada.  There's not much to see in Airlie Beach.  There isn't even much of a beach.  This is pretty much one street of town with some resorts that acts as a launching pad for sailing the Whitsunday Islands.  We went swimming at the "lagoon" (an irregularly shaped pool with palm trees around it) and did a little shopping and got ice cream.  At least there's a pretty view:

Enjoying the "lagoon"

The highlight of the day was definitely the didgeridoo lesson!  It was really quick (about 20 minutes) and mostly just a gimmick to try to get you to spend $300+ buying one (but it's a really good deal because they'll pay the shipping!), but super fun.  I even managed to make a legitimate sounding didgeridoo noise!  We left feeling a bit gross though because the mouthpiece of a didgeridoo is just a bunch of wax molded over the end of the wood which ends up all around your mouth.  Wax mouth is not very pleasant.

Jason, Me, Danielle and Steph rockin' our didges

Danielle, Steph and I attempted to dominate trivia again that night, but quickly learned that we weren't as smart as we thought we were.  Oh well.  Who needs to be smart when you're going to sail the Whitsunday Islands the next day?!  (Okay, that doesn't make any sense, but I've got nothing better.)

Since the Whitsundays were such an adventure, they get their own post.  Onward!