Hey look, we found some more pictures from yesterday!

Snack time
Lots of snacks
Yummy and pretty
View at snack time
Island
Rainbow as clouds came in!
Fishy!
Pretty Lady watching the sun disappear
Dusk
These squid jumped on board at dusk, trying to get away from predators
Sun is starting to set
Close to sunset
Sunset
Setting Sun
Pineapple snack

 

Okay, so now onto the next day….

Today was to be our last day on the boat, but the captain wanted to arrange one more snorkel for us after another delicious tropical breakfast. This time we were in an area where he was allowed to feed the fish to bring them to the surface. All the guests gathered in an area and as soon as he threw the fish food into the ocean we were swarmed. It was a really magical experience – our GoPro footage just could not do it justice! Right at the end you can even see a fish saying hi to one of the snorkelers!

After an hour or so in the water we reluctantly got back on the boat to dry off as we sailed back to Airlie Beach. The whole experience really was magical, I cannot recommend it enough.  As you can see, we even sailed some – this is the deck-hand raising the sails

A final wave goodbye
No Stepping on Shadows!
Snack for the cruise home
Bed is stripped, ready for our exit
The winds took us back to the port

Back at Airlie we dropped off two of our co-guests into town, because, as we found out, they were not yet old enough to hire a car and drive themselves and were doing the whole trip by bus – the boat trip had been a gift from their parents, and they had saved for over a year to pay for the remainder of this trip.  If they had been traveling the same direction we would have given them a lift – as it was we recommended the turtle sanctuary 😀

We had a few hours more of driving to do today, so we stopped by Bowen for a smoothie just because it was on the way. Turns out they only had milkshakes, but close enough. To stretch our legs a bit we decided to quickly head up to the lookout and…  well, look out.

The Beach
More beach
Pretty beach
Pretty flowers… With hidden Bird!
Exploring
The bridge to the lookout
The look out
look out!

And we were back on the road.  At some point we were driving through some roadworks, which had left unsealed roads when a semi trailer came the other way.  Sure enough a pebble flew up and smashed into our windscreen….  After that we noticed a crack. Had that been there before!?!  Damn.  Ah well, there would be nothing we could do about it right now, other than to watch it and make sure it doesn’t get worse.

A few more hours of driving and we arrived at our accommodation at Cape Pallarenda in the early evening feeling pretty tired, but both REALLY looked forward to fully functioning showers.

When we go back we decided to  head to town to try a well-reviewed pizza place.  Turns out it was a good recommendation – the pizza was pretty nice!

It was only around 9pm when we got back, but we dropped into bed exhausted none the less.