Airlie Beach and the Whisunday Islands

After leaving Townsville we headed further south and arrived in Airlie Beach. We'd come here as this is the jumping off point for the Whitsunday Islands. Everyone had told us that we have to do the Whitsundays, and we also still hadn't been out to the Great Barrier Reef, and this would be our last chance because it's quite far from the Australian coast line and doesn't go much further south.
So first thing we did was book a day trip to the Whitsundays, which included a bit of snorkelling so that we could practice for when we did the reef. We got in a little boat which sped us over to a snorkelling point just off the islands where we had over an hour to see some reefs and fish. We were on the lookout for turtles, but only ever saw them from the boat, although we were warned about the turtles chasing us as it's mating season. Afterwards we hopped back on the boat to a track on the island which led us to a lookout point over Whitehaven beach.The view was really nice, with the pearly sand and beautiful colour of the sea.
We then got back in the boat and sailed to the south end of the beach and departed to have lunch and relax on Whitehaven beach. The sand was so soft and so good, not hot at all despite being in the sun all day. We had a really nice lunch, then spent the afternoon swimming in the sea (with our trusty stinger suits on, of course) and lying on the beach, before heading back to the mainland.
After this day we decided we definitely wanted to see the Outer Reef and do some more snorkelling, so we booked a tour for the next day.
We had to be up a 6am to get on the boat which left at about 8am. After quite a long boat journey, around 3 hours, we arrived at the reef and the pontoon where we would spend the day. The first thing we wanted to do was more snorkelling after enjoying the previous day so much. The reef and fish were even better than the previous day. The coral was beautiful and there were all types of fish swimming all around us. We snorkelled for well over an hour, but eventually swam back to the pontoon to rest after spending a lot of time swimming against the current. After some food, we went on a semi submersible to see the coral and try and take some pictures, but they didn't come out anywhere near as good as what it was like to see through our masks when snorkelling.
Back on the pontoon we went on a super slide that dumped us in the sea after twisting and turning about in the tube. This was Annastasia's second favourite activity here, although Colin managed to injure himself on the slide and didn't like it as much after this.
We enjoyed the snorkelling so much that we went back in for another round and stayed out until they called us back onto the boat to return to Airlie Beach. We had a fantastic day, so pleased we did this. And before anyone asks, we didn't take any photos of ourselves in the stinger suits... they were ridiculous and we didn't want the photos to remind us how awful we looked in them.