Whitsundays Day 2

Day 2 of our whitsundays sailing trip started with a nice brekkie and then a short dingy ride to Whitehaven beach, which some people also call Betty's beach. Whitehaven beach is stunning, it has the softest pure white sand which looks beautiful against the blue of the ocean. We walked for miles up the beach, everyone walked together for a bit and then we all split up into pairs.

I spotted somewhere to drop our beach bag, so we crossed this small, knee deep inlet to get to it. Alan looked down whilst we were crossing the water and saw about 10 Stingrays swimming around and then burying themselves in the sand, so we were a bit careful as we wadded through the water as we didn't want to step on them.

We dumped our stuff, put on mossie repellent and sun cream and raced back to this inlet to see what else was swimming about in there. We didn't have to wait long before a small reef shark swam up to us and Alan ran up and down the sand trying to get a picture of it. He then went up to the deeper part of the inlet to see if there were any bigger sharks and left me standing knee deep in the water with a shark swimming about half a metre away from me. I'm obviously not as attractive to sharks as I am to mossies.

After our morning on the beach, it was then time to have a look at the Great Barrier Reef close up. We put on our lovely stinger suits and were given our snorkel, masks and flippers if you wanted them. Alan and a few others jumped straight in, whereas me and a couple of the others had to have a lesson in snorkelling first. Alan taught me how to snorkel in Fiji but a refresher never did any harm.

I was taken in the dingy with another girl who wasn't confident in the water, out onto the reef. Andy (our hostie) tried everything to get us out of the boat and into the water, but I was NOT getting in without a floatation device, so Andy gave us each a noodle (a long thin piece of foam) and demonstrated how it WOULDN'T let us drown.

After 20mins and 2 attempts of trying to get into the water, I finally slipped (or got lowered by Andy) off the side of the boat, screaming into the water. Once I found I was floating, not drowning and my hair was still dry I put my face in the water and had a good look around. The coral and fishes were amazing. The coral wasn't as brightly coloured as I had imagined that it would be but the fishes were.

After lunch we went to another section of the reef, this time I hopped straight in (or I climbed down the ladder of the boat) and took a nice big mouthful of sea water - yuck! Steve (the captain) pulled me out to the reef and Andy showed me a Nemo, which I was chuffed about, unfortunately I then panic'd, swallowed more seawater and Andy took me spluttering back to the boat.

I saw my Nemo though, which was an awesome end to my Whitsundays tour.

When we stopped at the first reef, Steve let us well snorkelled people straight in. Once in the water it was a short swim to the reef where there were loads of brightly coloured parrot fish that you could hear munching on the coral. As I swam around there were hundreds of fish everywhere that seemed complete unconcerned by my presence. The coral was also bright colours.

When I got out of the water having used up most of the photos on the underwater camera, we were then told that we were going to a second spot where there would be clown fish like nemo, I was well miffed!

After lunch it was time for the second site and as soon as I got in I wished I had more camera film. The coral was much brighter than the first spot and there so many more fish. Steve showed us a giant clam which you had to dive down to actually see but which was so much better than the ones in the aquariums. Despite looking hard and everyone seeing one, I didn't manage to see a nemo which was the only bad thing about the whole trip.

However we will be definitely snorkelling in the future.