Unfortunately the next day was overcast and the dark clouds looked as if they were about to let the rain fall, but luckily they didn’t. I had packed my new hat in hopes of a sunny day and before I even got on the boat the string on it broke, and they wouldn’t even give me a new one later because I had thrown away my receipt.
We spent some time at Whitehaven Beach where there was the whitest and softest sand I’ve ever touched. Apparently it is good to polish jewelery on which I can attest to since I polished my old tarnished earrings in similar sand on Fraser Island, and they really did shine. The tides were really remarkable and the changes were dramatic. We were on the beach until the tides started to change and the water receded from the banks creating a stream. We had to leave or the boat would get stuck in the sand. But before we did I took a walk in the “creek” and on my way saw a stingray.
Our boat on Whitehaven Beach
Me on Whitehaven Beach as the tide goes out
Next we were going to go snorkelling amongst the coral and on our way there we saw a whale. We didn’t get very close but we could clearly see it breaching. I’ve never seen a whale in the wild before so I thought it was pretty spectacular. Then at the end it dived into the water and its fanned tail stuck out of the water and slowly sank like I’ve always seen in movies. The sun had even come out when we arrived at our snorkelling site which was nice, but the water was still cold. There were some beautiful fish and I spotted another stingray. There was a lot of Staghorn coral which is coral that looks like daggers and sometimes I’d follow a fish into the shallow end and realize that only a few inches bellow me were only spikes which was a bit frightening since the coral is sharp. Nevertheless, I avoided being stabbed.
When we arrived at the dock we noticed that instead of one flight of stairs (which we had climbed down) to get up to land we had two. The tide had uncovered a whole flight of stairs, with shells growing all over them. I thought that was pretty remarkable.