First of all it's raining again. At least it should clean some of the bugs off the car. Second the miseries at the YHA won't let us leave the car there even though only one other car was using it [the car park]. We walk off into the rain in disgust. It seems there's not a lot to do in Airlie Beach in the rain, indeed, unless you're looking to get very drunk there's little to do at all. We did a little shopping, a little Internetting -- Google now has Lunanbay in it's directory! -- then went back to the car for a quick spin.
The road goes out to Shute Harbour which consists of a car park and a harbour, then [we went back] out to Proserpine where we had lunch and wasted the afternoon writing journals. Then a bit more mooching about before a quick McDonalds -- we should have done better but left it too late -- then joined the throng at the dive shop.
The dive boat appears a touch antiquitated by recent standards but presumably functions well enough. Of the fifteen passengers only three are not taking a course, a worse ration than Cairns, and our buddy seems to be a bit of a bullshitter. Oh dear. Given this is the same company as Cairns, ProDive, they have a very different much more matey, ha, ha, even less professional than Cairns style. The first person to talk to us en masse is the cook! We're left non-the-wiser for a while. Finally we get some introductions but the boat hasn't even left. In the meanwhile the power system has failed three times. It's not looking good. Still, we're here for the diving.
The Tuesday morning mooring, Grear Barrier Reef S19.74795 E149.35164 Elev. 4m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.