Sailing to paradise – Whitsunday Islands trip on Apollo

Everyone we’ve spoken to that’s travelling the opposite way to us and going north up the east coast has two massive highlights – Fraser Island and the Whitsunday Islands. So these were top of the list of trips we wanted to do and, as we’re heading south, the Whitsundays were first up!

We booked our trip with Apollo via Happy Travels as they said it would be a happy medium between the party boats and the expensive trips that have just a few people on them. It set us back $550 each for a two night/three day live aboard sailing trip around the islands, which included all food, snorkel hire, and one scuba dive. We were literally jumping with excitement the night before haha

I was pretty surprised when the 26 of us that were sailing got our first glimpse of Apollo – it looked tiny! I couldn’t see how we were all going to fit, but the cabin (shared) was bigger than it looked and although it was quite cramped it didn’t feel like there were 26 of us on board.

We set sail from Airlie Beach and sat back and relaxed on deck for the two hour cruise to the jewel of the Whitsunday Islands – Whitehaven beach. We were taken over on the small RIB in groups of seven to land on a small, pebbly beach, which was on the other side of the headland to Whitehaven. So even though we were practically there, we still couldn’t see it. So Eugene, the skipper/chef/cleaner/guy who appeared to do everything, led us up through the trees to the Hill Inlet lookout point.

As we got closer we could see the blue sea gleaming through the trees, but we couldn’t see anything properly until we got to the lookout point, which added to the wow factor as we emerged and were suddenly met with the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen! I’ve seen loads of pictures of Whitehaven beach, but absolutely nothing compares to the real thing. It’s just on another level of beautiful. The way that the clear and brilliantly blue sea swirls together with the white sand looks like someone has painted it with watercolours. If I couldn’t have seen that the sea was moving, I don’t think you could have made me believe it was real! We went back up a few hours later too to see the view at high tide and it was just as beautiful, I would’ve loved to have stayed there longer.

We had a few hours to enjoy the beach and it was so lovely down there. The sand was so fine it was like caster sugar and weirdly wasn’t hot at all to walk on! If you scuffed your feet it also made a weird squeaking noise, which being a child I enjoyed ha! It was so lush having a dip in those clear waters, even if we had been scared into wearing stinger suits. It was crystal clear and we saw five or six big sting rays, which was exciting! We didn’t take our snorkels, sadly, but the sea was clear enough to see them pretty well. I’d recommend taking a snorkel down though!

After about four hours at Whitehaven it was back on the boat to enjoy the sunset, some nachos, and goon! (This is cheap wine sold in four or five litre bags/boxes.) We were really lucky with the group on the boat and we had two great nights being silly on the boat playing drinking games and the crew’s excruciatingly awkward ice breaking confession game.

The scenery on the whole trip was so beautiful and we had some really nice snorkelling and diving. There was loads of weirdly shaped and brightly coloured coral, and we saw some turtles! And we had good fun jumping off the boat most days!

The food throughout the three days was also really, really good! We had stew, risotto, barbecue, pasta salads, steak… Lush! The trip was hilarious from start to finish and, although I was glad to get back to a normal bed on land, I loved every minute 🙂