Hamilton Island

Hamilton Island did not live up to expectations for only one reason. It rained for two days!

The first day we arrived, we knew the forecast, so we took a hike to a private beach.  It was a tough hike and there was some complaining from Micah, but in the end we were all proud of our accomplishment of having hiked up and down hills for almost 3 hours.

The food on the Island is quite expensive, even the groceries, so we did a combination of restaurant visits and cooking in our rather large one bedroom apartment with two sofa beds.

On our second day in the Whitsunday Islands, we took a day at Reef World to visit the Great Barrier Reef where the snorkeling was as amazing as we remembered from 13 years ago. Unfortunately, the trip to and from the reef included some very choppy waters and the entire boat of passengers got extremely seasick. Luckily, none of the Blooms threw up, but we were not feeling great!  Some ice chips helped Micah on the way there, and on the way home, three of us took seasickness medicines called travel calm that they were selling at the bar.  :-)  It helped me immensely, I didn't feel it at all on the way back.

On our third and final day, we swam in the rain.  Can't stop Micah from swimming!  It was warm enough, but not as much fun as I thought it would be.  We also let the boys play a bunch of video games.  Not your typical tropical island vacation!  :-)

This morning we returned our buggy (also known as a golf cart) that had been our method of transportation for the past few days.  We got wet walking the tarmac to our plane which was NOT fun, and now we are in Sydney catching up on email and internet since we were not connected for the past few days.

Our next stop is China.  See you back in the Northern Hemisphere!