Fly us into Fantasea - YEAH!

Fish on the reef - can you ever bore of these shots?

Hardy Reef & Reefworld from the air

We'll start by saying hope you're all enjoying the updates from our holiday and if you weren't already jealous you will be after this day of adventure!!!

First Officer Chalky

After hearing about Trav & Dan's fantastic New Zealand holiday and how they took a helicopter ride to the top of a glacier we were determined to do some activity on holiday in the air but not counting the flight to get to our holiday destination. There were helicopter flights on offer but we decided on a seaplane trip to the outer Barrier Reef and a day on the Reefworld pontoon on Hardy Reef, we would spend the day snorkelling, I was planning on giving Scuba diving a go, enjoy a buffet lunch and then cruise back to town.

It was another early start but Chalky wasn't fazed, he was quite excited about the flight...there were 2 other people + the pilot on the plane and we were sat in the front row, Chalky had a birds eye view out the front window and out the side window. The flight took us over Airlie, the Whitsundays, Hill Inlet, Whitehaven Beach & Hill Inlet, and the Reef.

Hill Inlet & Whitehaven from the air

The pilot seemed in no hurry and encouraged us to look out for whales, dolphins and if they looked like they were going to play he would take us down for a closer look... we did see a few whales - a mother & her calf but they were happy to just to float at the top and weren't interesting in jumping about, we also saw a few other whales and dolphins and sea turtles but we won't bore you with those aerial shots when we have loads from the water...

Groper in the water

Flying was the way to go as we were first on the pontoon - we got to see a big Queensland Groper fish called Mildred enjoying a few bits of frozen fish...this shot is her opening her mouth for a feed, I wish we'd got a video of it but all we've got is this shot!

This shot is not just gorgeous blue water but millions of little fish

And one naughty fish chasing them all away

I missed out on scuba diving - we needed to book in advance - so we had great fun snorkelling together, the water was so warm and the day was perfect, you had to remind yourself that we were about 30kilometres from land and swimming in the Coral Sea.

Chalky swimming into the horizon

more fish shots - we've got around 250!

Crusing home

Chalky with Chalkies Beach behind him

Video of Chalky out on the reef apologies if you can't hear him but the camera was in the waterproof casing.