An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
We were again serenaded by the wild cawing of the local aviary population for our wake-up call. We made our way along the boardwalk through the thick rainforest to breakfast, where we grabbed the remaining little chocolate croissants, had a couple delicious toasted english-muffin type things and some fresh fruit.
Then it was into our car for the ride back to the Cairns airport. Certainly a much nicer drive in the daylight, along the rugged coastline of the Coral Sea, with thick forested hillsides on our left. The airport, like all we’ve visited down under, was pristene and quiet, and even had a juice bar where we were reunited with our beloved watermelon juice. The flight to Hamilton Island was about an hour, on a small but uncrowded plane. There, we boarded the large luxury launch (with honeymooning couples from all over the world) for the 45 minute boat ride through the Whitsunday Islands to Hayman.
The area is fabulously pretty - set along the Great Barrier Reef there are hundreds (at least) of small tropical islands in this bluest, greenest ocean. Hayman is fairly small, and the resort is the only construction on the island. This place is as spectacular as its surroundings! Nestled into the hillsides, on its own beach, with a few pools (one being one of the world’s largest, a wrap-around octagonal shape), copious water activities, several restaurants, etc. We settled into our lovely room and slid open our patio doors so we could enjoy the white noise of the beach and the cool sea breezes.
We lunched at the Beach Pavillion restaurant, starting with a Caesar salad and some prawns and oysters; mains were pasta with red sauce, broccoli and some crustacean meat (which they call bugmeat, but was actually quite tasty) and a salad nicoise with seared tuna. It was all wonderful, as were our two blenderized fruit juice concoctions. Dessert was some tasty nougat-flavored ice cream (even though the sea breezes had by that time made us a bit chilled).
We walked around the grounds, stopping at the medical center so Milton could get approved for Wednesday’s beginners’ dive, and since their Chiropractor was in on Mondays, we figured it had been almost 7 weeks, why not? She was American-trained and was originally from Kentucky but has been here for 9 years (quite the amusing accent she now has!) She uses “low-force” adjusting - as opposed to the cracking we were used to; it was so low that we’re not sure it really did anything.
We then went back to the room for some reading (we’d picked up 2 Int’l Herald Tribunes in the airport for the first time in weeks!) and relaxing, then Milton went for a workout, and learned that their 6:30 aerobics class would have just been him, so opted for the little gym instead.
The rest of the evening was relaxing, with the winds and waves whipping up an active symphony for us.