Hamilton Island and Whitehaven Beach

The second day of our tour with Fantasea we took a much larger ship to Hamilton Island and Whitehaven Beach.  This meant there was less bobbing and open air, which I think most people appreciated, but I was a little sad about it.  When we arrived, we saw that Gary the photographer had already cornered Katy who was being very patient and kind with him, but looked pretty relieved to see us.

Hamilton is a resort island, for as Katy said, "A certain class of people."  That was a good way of putting it.  Had I been rich, I would have stayed there.  It was 5 star luxury in the middle of gob-smacking beautiful scenery.  For example, here is a picture of just one of the pools at the resort:

And here's the view from the 22nd story glass elevator of another swanky resort:

And here's the resort lobby:

And here's all their yachts in the marina they drove to get here:

We took the free shuttle around the island and mainly just gawked.  Katy and I also went in a few shops and to a couple of art galleries.  She's a girl after my own heart.  She loves art, taking pictures of flowers, and feels the need to eat chocolate frequently.  I think Daniel was a bit relieved I had someone to do those things with so he could just lounge on the beach.  We found an Australian souvenir store, and I made Daniel wrestle with a croc:

After Hamilton, we board the boat again and ate lunch and then had the afternoon to enjoy Whitehaven Beach, rated one of the top ten beaches in the world.  It has this powdery fine sand that is all silica, so it's really soft and pretty.  Here's Daniel with a fist full:

You can't actually dock the big boat on Whitehaven, so they anchor it off shore, and then take you on this little platform to the beach.  Daniel kept calling it Normandy transport:

But then you arrive at the magnificent beach:  

We decided to take a bush walk for part of the time, so we went into those forests and hiked up.  We were rewarded with an amazing view of the island:

We also got to see green ants (named for their green butt) building nests.  We didn't get too close though, as they are nasty biters.  Our guide told us that the Aborigines eat the green part to help sore throats.  She said it sort of had a lemony flavor but she didn't care for it.  

The rest of the time we swam and enjoyed the beach.  Daniel was a happy camper.