Airlie Beach
My Cabin
I made it to Airlie Beach to meet up with the A-team from Fraser Island. I arrived a day and a bit before the trip to the Whitsunday Islands which gave me a bit of time to relax – like a cruise isn’t relaxing. The weather had been good but windy, I had mixed feeling about that, the wind was making progress on the bike difficult but high winds also made for interesting sailing. I wasn’t sure if I’d get seasick or not but rough seas is more like adventuring so thats what I wanted – bring on the monster waves!
The deal when booking the tour was to include two free nights in a hostel in town. I booked after the others but the hostel couldn’t take my credit card over the phone so I had to deal with the operator direct. I got shafted out of my two free nights as a result. When I got to Airlie Beach I went to the booking office and was annoying until they gave me a refund on the cost of 2 nights – result! So I checked into the hostel and got lumped into a cabin with 3 rowdy Canadians and a german girl. It was cool though, they were a good laugh and I swapped some music of mine for some episodes of The Family Guy. The first night as I was calling it a night the German girl came back and we got chatting about places to see, she gave me some good info, it was her last night in Oz before flying home and she’d just come from the Northern Territory so I picked her brain for a bit. When her travelling companion arrived back, she suddenly got very sleepy. He was trying to wake her so they could go out for a ‘talk’. It was priceless, the poor guy was trying and she just wasn’t interested.
The A-Team were parked in the same hostel as I was so I hung out with them, the weather wasn’t the best for sunbathing which suited me fine, I’m red enough already. A tent site at the hostel was $15 and a bed in a cabin was $16 – what would you choose? I knew nothing about our boat – Habibi – so I wandered to different tour operators to see what they had to say. Most gave the marketing blurb but in one place I got the magic ‘look’ when I mentioned the name of the boat. They asked how much I paid and despite telling them a figure about half the cheapest deal they had going the knowing nods said I paid about the right amount for what I was getting. Not confidence inspiring, I wanted a memorable experience but would it be safe with the winds as high as they were? Soon I would find out!