February 22nd, 2024
Yesterday was a sea day and since we are traveling down the coast of Australia it was a very smooth sail. It continues to get warmer but we are also in the rainy season so very cloudy which helps keep the temp down.
Smooth sailing with a 3/4 moon rising
Today was a place called Arlie Beach in the Whitsunday islands. It was a cloudy day and we were anchored about 30 minutes away from shore. They offered a sailing trip around the islands as the included tour but we opted to do a Trip Advisor Segway tour. We took one of the first tenders into port and I followed a couple of the ships lecturers into a field where they were taking pictures of these 2 ducks and they told me they were laughing ducks. It would have been cool to follow them around on the island and they said we were welcome to come but we were waiting for our tour to pick us up.
Laughing ducks
There were 4 of us from the ship on the tour and the tour guide named Zak. He picked us up and drove us up into the rainforest. We did a quick refresher and then off into the rainforest we went.
The trail through the rain forest
We stopped several times along the way for our guide to explain the flora and fauna.
Us on our segways
There were several of these large Goanna lizards on the trail. They are harmless and not aggressive
I think this was a fig or ficus tree that was so large we could stand in it.
We rode through the forest to a river bank and had a small picnic where Zak made us hot tea or coffee and we had a little lunch box with an apple, blueberry muffin and brownie. Zak’s wife is a pastry chef so she made the snacks for us.
Our picnic site
After the picnic we rode back up the path and then Zak drove us back to where the tender dropped us off. The last tender was at 1pm and we got back to the port at 12:35. We had no time to see the town but we had a nice day.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reading and watching us sail out of the Whitsunday islands. We are now sailing to Cairns which is the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and we are going snorkeling although it is supposed to rain most of the day.