Oz and beyond

OooooK, well we are finally back at the end of a year that already feels like it was more or less just a surreal dream, back in time for the UK summer, and happy to see everybody after such a long time. In the spirit of this blog though, I feel I should rapidly back-pedal in order to tell it chronologically, lest some nugget be forgotten. If it was hard to remember everything we did whilst we were travelling, it is surely twice as hard to remember now that we are back, and even the events of a week ago feel like several months ago. I’ll do my best, so bare (bear?) with me.

Los Angeles was a culture shock to say the least after the Yasawa Island archipelago, a million people dashing in a hundred different directions, and that was just the Airport. We were staying in a hotel in the middle of Hollywood, which some people advised us against as being a bit of a crumby neighbourhood, but to be honest, that was its appeal! It is Hollywood after all. The primary purpose of our stay in the USA was to break up our flights home from Auckland in order to make the shock to our system marginally less horrific. Then once we decided we were staying we thought we would do it properly: 5 nights in Hollywood, 2 nights in Las Vegas.

There is not an awful lot that can be said about staying in Hollywood, other than we set about spending whatever was left in our coffers, kicking it off with an upgrade to a Comfort Inn, after hearing disastrous things about all the L.A backpacker hostels. Fortunately we were able to save money elsewhere by eating cheaply ($8 worth of Pad Thai was a gut-bursting dinner, and a pretty comprehensive left-overs lunch as well, but I think thats the US way), and wandering around in the sunshine freak-dodging on the Hollywood Boulevard. Even managed the token culturally enriching architecture tour as well, including my first ever Frank Gehry (only took me 6 years, I’m clearly the worst architecture student ever). The time soon rolled by relaxing, enjoying TV for the first time in several months (enjoy being used very generously in this instance), tucking into huge complementary continental breakfasts (which apparently means cakes and donuts) and mooching Santa Monica & Downtown to boot. Then it was back to LAX (man I hate that place) and onto a 1 hour domestic flight to Las Vegas.

It didn’t take long to get immersed into the famous Vegas culture, or lack thereof, there were 30 or so one-armed bandit slot machines in the arrivals lounge, for people whose fix couldn’t wait until they made it to the Casinos obviously. It also didn’t take long to hear Tom Jones played over the PA, or see some bloke in an Elvis suit handing out fliers to some hideous tribute show. It may sound by my ragging that the time would have been better spent elsewhere, but there is something perversely fascinating about Las Vegas, that just has to be seen to be believed, and both Claire and I were keen to see if it really is as bad/good as it seems. Bad/good is definitely a precise way to describe Vegas: if you stop to think about a 60 foot fake plastic sphinx overlooking a pyramidal Egyptian-themed casino, so large that it contains 3 different Starbucks stores, words like “tacky” and “tasteless” hardly seem appropriate. But that this place exists at all, let alone along-side recreations of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower (similar in scale and identical in fakeness), is a testament to how badly people need escapism from their daily lives into a surreal dream-like world. It’s unclear also whether or not the thousands of people in Vegas were there because they genuinely thought it was great, or because it’s such a bizarre spectacle, they wanted to experience it first-hand. I feel like I’m being quite unfair actually, scratch all that business above, we both really enjoyed it and threw ourselves into the melee headfirst. This is Disney land for adults, and they really should be old enough to know better.

We stayed in previously mentioned pyramid casino The Luxor, and spent most of our time wandering the casino floors looking for cheap games of blackjack, or just fiddling with brightly flashing slot machines of in-determinate purpose or operation, drinking alcoholic slush puppies and generally going with the flow. Neither of us won any exceptional sums of money, and as predicted we ended up much worse off most of the time, but we did have a good time wandering the strip ticking off all the Vegas must-sees: The lions in the MGM Grand, the Volcano at The Mirage, the fountains at The Bellagio & the shopping at Cesar’s Palace. Drop in as many free beers as we could get hold of, and a few meals so enormous we really only needed one to cover any 24 hour period, and it was a strange 2 nights. But alas, it was our last 2 nights, of the whole damn year, and we were back onto a flight to LAX, shimmying between terminals, and getting ready to board our plane home to Heathrow.

After the relaxation of Cook Islands & Fiji (where there was time to watch the clock and contemplate the countdown of days), USA was refreshingly frantic, and we didn’t have many moments where we could stop and think about the final flight looming over us. I think this was the best way to go, as even though we were glad to be heading home to see everybody, when you stop talking about it and start actually doing it, you feel the urge to squeeze every last drop out of your remaining time. Which was more or less the entire purpose of 48 hours in Las Vegas. But soon enough we were boarded, fasten seat belts, take off, movie, dinner, movie, sleep, movie, breakfast, movie, fasten seat belts, land, taxi, disembark, grab bags and go. As we concluded our 13th flight of the year, we had become quite seasoned veterans of the whole process, but neither of us are in any particular rush to fly again in the near future. It was great to see our parents at Heathrow, big thank you to all of you for coming down, certainly better than transferring to a train or coach as we have done in every other airport, and after 11 months away we could just crash out in the back seat and lethargically consider all that has changed at Reading M4 services.

Alright so there it is. Time for some profound conclusions I guess. Well it’s impossible to sum up really, it’s the most ambitious thing either of us have ever done in our lives, and its only on reflection that we see how lucky we were all the way round: be it finding jobs and flats in Sydney in record time, or dodging bush fires and swine-flu pandemics by often less than a day at a time. Living in Sydney was absolutely beautiful, such a vibrant exciting city (which just happens to be set on a stunning natural harbour with about 100 beaches inside the city limits), would love to go back there in the future. All the time spent exploring New Zealand and the South Pacific was awesome too, we’ll take the memories with us to our deathbeds. Can’t say there is a single thing I regret doing, I’m just so glad that we had the cheek to plan it, and the balls to actually do it. My advice to anybody would be just do it, stop wishing it, write it in the diary and stick with it until you’ve got the sand between your toes, because you certainly won’t be wondering what you’re missing back home.

Thats about as philosophical as this is going to get, so nothing else to say but this is the end. No more posts for Mr.Travelblog. He is done. Hope it’s been good reading, it was mostly quite fun to write, and certainly better than collective e-mailing. To those we haven’t seen yet since our return, hang in there, we’re currently doing the rounds. Cheers!

Chazz & Claire xx

Just a quick update to say we are shortly catching a flight out of Fiji, thus ending our 5 week soujurn in the Islands of the South Pacific. Happily it did finally stop raining, as soon as we left the Fijian mainland and headed out along the string of idyllic islands known as the Yasawas. The Yasawas are basically entirely tourist resorts which are reached by a hop on hop off ferry which goes all the way to the top and back daily, creating essentially a sun soaked backpacker playground with lots of Fiji Baby (local beer) and happy hour cocktails. Although we have been making huge efforts to avoid that sort of revelry for most of our tour, it was actually really fun to get stuck into it, if only for a week.

Anyways, we stayed on 3 different islands, and got up to all sorts of fun, highlights including: dangerous night time treks through the rocky bush up to the clifftop viewpoints, loads of fijian blokes dancing and chucking fire around, snorkelling with a 4-meter wide Manta-Ray and reef sharks, and finally trying out some scuba diving in a marine protected reserve of world class coral and fish. I even saw an Octopuss! That just about made my year right there.

Photos of all of that soon hopefully, not the underwater stuff though, because of my old school above-water camera, but of us on the beaches looking brown and lying in hammocks etc. Hope you're all good, only about 10 days til were back. Bring on USA. Take care everybody

Chazz & Claire xx

p.s: Drawn to my attention that in below blog-post I said we land in Heathrow on June 31st, clearly this should say May 31st, and it was in fact the worlds most elaborate typo.

Hello to one and all, or should I say "BULA!" (Fijian for hello, welcome, how are ya? oi! and many other things besides). I believe last post saw a brief update from the Cook Islands? Well perhaps I should take it from there.

Our flight off Rarotonga back to Auckland was at 2a.m, and our check out from our hostel room was 10a.m, so we had a nice long day sat watching over our bags in the lounge room, kicking off what turned out to be a 36 hour waiting marathon. The flight was pretty painless, even managed to get an hour or so sleep, which is quite unlike us, before getting into Auckland 7a.m local time. Our flight OUT of Auckland to Nadi was at 3p.m that afternoon, so we hunkered down and made that International Departures Lounge a home. Fortunately we kept ourselves busy by purchasing over priced coffee, and re-arranging travel plans with the folks at Air New Zealand over the phones. More on that later.

And so 4 hours after all that we found ourselves touching down in Nadi, the not quite capital city, but pretty much 2nd biggest city, of Viti Levu, the largest of over 300 islands which make up Fiji. First impressions? Hope that rain doesn't last long. We managed to meet up with our pickup and get to Mango Bay resort. We figured a few nights in a classy resort would be just what the doctor ordered after all that terrible self catering food endured in the inapropriately named Cooks. Upon arrival we found the whole place was so quite we had ben given an upgrade for free to our own beach frotn hut. Result! It even sported its own private outdoor shower. Which took some getting used to. Particularly in the rain!

Mango Bay was a nice place, but it didnt stop raining the whole time we were there, so we contented ourselves with eating lots at the restaraunt, and enjoying "movie night" 3 nights in a row. Soon we turned our attention to the Village Homestay which would be taking up our next 3 nights. We honestly had no diea what to expect from this, other than the assurance that we would be seeing "The Real Fiji", and not any of that resorts crap. What the real fiji was going to look like, we couldnt tell you. Fortunately for us, by mentioning that we were staying at the Homestay, we soon found that half the people who work at Mango Bay infact live in the village, and are in some way related to the family with which we would be staying. So they even managed to hook us up with a lift on the staff mini-bus on the day!

What to say about the Homestay? I dont really know, its still fresh in my mind, but still so different to anything done before. First to go with the obvious: 1) everyone was unbelievabley friendly and welcoming, and we were treated like one of the family from the first moment we stepped into the house, and 2) The food was really really good, there was loads of it, and we had tried hardly any of it ever before we got there. In fact, we had hardly even heard of any of it. But it was all good. Seeing that we were skinny backpacker types, it seemed Rosa & the girls in the kitchen made it their mission to feed us up til it hurt at all 3 meals of the day, which were included in our accommodation price. The famil consisted of Simon & Judith, 2 of their 4 children, and 4 of their lord knows how many grand children, as well as most of the village wandering in and out of the house as their fancy tickled them. And yes, Claire and I were the only guests there, and the only white people in the village.

Anyways, as soon as we were finished with the customary Kava-drinking Welcome ceremony, we were officially in with the gang. Kava? Let me explain. A root grown underground not dis-similar to ginger that you smash up with a rock, pound & grind down, mix with water into a soggy muddy puddle looking beverage, and knock back when presented by the chief, and after 5 or 6 cups, more or less fall asleep. It is traditional for the visitors (us) to present the chief with a big bag of kava upon arrival, and then to show respect by drinking with them. It was a very strange ceremony, and the taste of the stuff actually grows on you. It has a peppery-toothpaste type after taste, and makes your lips and tongue go fuzzy & numb. Anyway I should probably wrap this up, when not getting high on the local home brew with the gang, we were sitting in on the church services, checking out the beach with the kids, and visiting other local villages and handicraft places to pick up souvenirs. Should probably also mention that yes it was still raining during all of the above. Bummer.

Anyways, on our last night a bus tour of Australians and Canadians came to stay as a part of an orgaised tour of Fiji, and we had a good time eating a massive feed with them and generally enjoying the village atmosphere, particularly that we were no longer the only guests! Crazy stuff on offer to tempt the palate included: Tapioca, Taro, Yams, Kumara, Platain, Crazy asparagus/leek stuff, ferns, loads of tuna, fish and of course coconut. And it was all awesome. We soon had to say goodbye and catch a local bus (that was an adventure too) to Suva, the capital city, and home of the military/government, whom are one and the same at the moment in Fiji. And so we arrived yesterday at the Raintree Lodge, out in the lush rain forest, perfect for tramping the local trails, when it isnt raining of course. And fingers crossed the sun will come out tomorrow, today has been spent lying low and chilling, and claire has been sleeping off a reaction to something that she ate at dinner last night. But fear not, we are both well. Looking slightly chubbier thanks to Rosa & the girls back at Namatakula, and into our last few days on mainland Fiji. Next we have a week island hopping in the Yasawa Islands, where I am assured that the sun does always shine, even if its still a part of Fiji, which is in my experiance wet ALL THE TIME.

Right I think that covers it all, I could go on for ages about what living in the village was like, but you'll have to ask us about it when you see us. Should probably mention that we changed our flights around and are coming home a little bit earlier, landing on the 31st of June. Combination of getting tired of beaches (it can happen), and wanting to spend a little bit longer in USA when we get there in a few weeks time (Vegas baby!). More news soon, hope everybody is well. Bula, Veenaka! (Hello, thank you!)

Chazz & Claire xx

p.s: Sorry for any typos, this keyboard is really terrible. Take care!

Hello to everybody, it feels like its been absolutely ages since we have written anything on this thing, so time for a super quick update. We have been about as far away from a decent internet connection as you can get for 2 weeks, so rather than fight the inevitable we decided to enjoy being cut off for a little while.

We flew into Rarotonga about 2 weeks ago, which is the capital island of the Cooks, and even though its the busiest its really small and quiet as you can imagine: The entire island is about 32km in circumference and can be travelled around by bus in less than an hour! All the way around the edge is a reef which encloses around 100m of lagoon along all beach coastlines, making swimming and snorkelling ideal. I would love to upload some of the photos of us shading ourselves beneath coconut trees or wading through the waist-deep luke warm lagoon, but unfortunately none of these crappy "internet terminals" have USB holes, so you are just going to have to use your imagination!

After Rarotonga we took a small "domestic" flight to Aitutaki, about 50 minutes north in a tiny 40 person plane, to find an even smaller, even quiter, even more idyllic island, with a bigger, warmer lagoon containing more breeds of tropical fish than you could wave a harpoon at. Needless to say the internet connections were even worse there too! We spent some of our days there kayaking on the lagoon to uninhabited islands, and taking cruises down to some of the more innaccsessible but beautiful snorkelling spots. And reading whilst lying in hammocks. Lots and lots of reading. We are struggling slightly with the diets here on the islands, there seems to be hardly any fresh fruit or vegetables, apart from potatoes and watermelon, and most of your meal options are based around a staple of tinned tuna or mackrel. After 2 weeks it is starting to take its toll on our digestion shall we say? I hope that Fiji has a few more options on the supermarket shelves. It has been quite hard to adjust on the whole after the break-neck speed of New Zealand, although we enjoy lying around on the beach, i find myself pacing around by 4pm in the afternoon ready to run a mile or catch a flight. I only hope I can get over it, because as was the point in all this time in the Pacific at the end of our travels, once were back to UK and started in jobs/uni, we wont get 2 weeks to lie around doing nothing at all for a very very long time.

We are now back in Rarotonga, and fly out to Auckland tomorrow before continuing on to Fiji. So we may be out of contact for a while longer, but dont worry thats a good thing! I've only just heard that theres a global break out of swine fever (apparantly), but dont worry, i dont think ive got it. Just keep your fingers crossed that we arent held in quarantine at LAX when we get there. Hope everybody is well

Chazz & Claire xx

Hello again, it has been a very busy little while since our last post back down in Rotorua, we are currently reclining in comparative comfort with our Wwoof hosts Stephen & Jill in Whangarei, 2 hours north of Auckland. It’s a very beautiful spot, and a much larger place than the farm we stayed at outside Christchurch back before we picked up the van. Speaking of the van (sniff, sob) is has been returned now to its rightful owners after 43 days.
First things first we should recap our last few weeks of road trippage, before getting into the Wwoofing stuff and the rest…

Day 34: Arrived in Waitomo, the wonderland of limestone caving opportunities. Although we didn’t indulge in any of the wet cramped kind, we were there to see the famous glow worm caverns, and they weren’t disappointing. We took a tour through the cave network ending up on a boat drifting underneath hundreds of thousands of them all over the stalactites in the pitch black darkness, like a mini supernova. Very cool. We also did a few tramp tracks around some of the more mad natural phenomena in the area. A lot of arch ways, bridges, cracks & crevices. Ended up camping in Leamington, just outside Cambridge, North Island.

Day 35: Tauranga city stop off, a very crazy city to navigate due to the fact it is spread over several small islands in a delta, and connected by many bridges in various states of on-going road works. Took a quick dash up Mount Manganui at the end of the beach to survey the whole crazy place, and had a bit of a lie down on the beach after a safe descent. Next stop Coromandal.

Day 36: Coromandal is a small peninsula just east of Auckland which is known for its crusty ragged west coast great for fishing, and its lovely sandy east coast, great for swimming. Today was our first rain for ages so we thought we would hit up the west coast first. Not being fishing types this day wasn’t that pretty, the chief town of Coromandal being Thames, doesn’t have much to say for it. But we did buy masks & snorkels! Camped in a lovely campsite on the beach at the very very top of the northern tip.

Day 37: Welcome back glorious weather, out of the campsite and down to Cathedral Cove, a big arch in the rock between 2 idyllic bays. Kind of overcrowded, and overrated compared to the limestone arch in Waitomo, but very pretty none the less. I tried testing the snorkels in Gemstone Bay, but the sea was too cloudy to view anything, and I got bashed around a little bit so retreated. Got to Hot-Water Beach at high tide so couldn’t benefit from any of its miraculous thermal qualities. Had a lovely sit down though so cant complain.

Day 38: The drive into Auckland and take care of business day. Went to the campervan drop off point and told them about the mini crack in the windscreen (don’t know if we mentioned that, thank you Mr.Lorry driver who didn’t want to slow down going uphill through re-sealing roadworks, you truly scared the crap out of us!). We got it all fixed up hush hush half price though so no worries! We were sure that would be the end of our insurance deposit. Managed to get online and sort out some more Wwoofing for after we drop off Johnny the campervan, then got the heck out of the city ASAP. Camped at Dargaville, west coast of Northland.

Day 39: Northland is the last run in of NZ, everything else has been well and truly covered. Everybody kind of forgets about it up there, but theres a lot of ground to cover north of Auckland. We stopped by the home of the largest Kauri tree in the world: Tane Mahuta – God of the Forrest. Whoa, that’s a big tree! Camped at the southern end of 90 mile beach. Not quite 90 miles in actuality, but pretty damn long for a beach.

Day 40: The last run up 90 mile beach, stopping by the giant sand dunes at the northern end, and checking out the northern most tip at Cape Reinga, a small lighthouse at the end of a 20km dirt road, overlooking the convergance of the Tasman Sea & Pacific Ocean. All very mysterious and evocative for sure. Camped up at a beautiful little beach not too far down the road.

Day 41: Covered a lot of ground down to Pihia at the Bay of Islands. No time to stop and admire the view, had to pack up our bags and get ready to think about handing back Johnny the campervan!

Day 42: Swung by Whangarei to drop off our bags at the Wwoofing farm and headed down to the North shore of Auckland where we were being put up for a night by very very VERY distant relatives John & Pia Wellingham. Not many of us Wellinghams left, so they were glad we got in touch, and invited us to a BBQ they were having with their friends. It was a really good night, and hey have a really nice place right on the harbour front overlooking the water. It would have been nice to spend some more time but we had to keep moving! Not least of all because tomorrow we return the van. Before we left John showed me some of his family tree research which was very interesting, including some genetic detective work, apparently tracing our genome all the way back through Greece and Turkey to Africa. Not entirely sure I understood how he figured that one out, but he is the doctor, so I just agreed. Nice bunch to be sure.

Day 43: Well that was the end of that! After 6 weeks we finally gave back the campervan that had been our home. The hand off went without a hitch, and we were soon heading out of Auckland back up to Whangarei for the Wwoofing.

The farm we are staying at is 20 acres just outside of town, including loads of cattle, sheep, horses, ducks, chucks & even wild guinea pigs. It has been going here for over 20 years so the whole place is really well established, and there is loads to learn about and et stuck into! We’ve been putting up fences & felling trees for the most part, but got to play on some seriously cool new toys: Chainsaws, motorcross bikes & woodwork gadgetry. We’ve also been trying all the home grown mad NZ fruit that nobody has ever heard of: Tamarillos, Fejoas & Persimmons amongst others. Even got to help slaughtering another sheep, I’m almost getting quite good at it worryingly. But it isn’t all blood and guts, we are hoping to go fishing (and maybe snorkelling) tomorrow down by the sea. First time ever! We'll let you know how we get on.

So there you have it, up to date, and this could be our last post from New Zealand. After 3 months here its going to be very sad to leave (I seem to be saying that a lot in this blog), it truly is a magical and beautiful country, and we have hundreds of awesome memories of some of the most jaw dropping scenery either of us have ever come across.

Still no time to sit back and reminisce though, as next up is 2 weeks in the Cook Islands, and (potentially) 4 weeks in Fiji. I say potentially… I don’t know if its making much news over there in the UK but here its kind of front page at the moment: A lot of political trouble in Fiji just kicking off. Now I know they have had 2 coups in the last decade, and it never affected any tourists, but the more we hear the weirder it sounds. At the moment they have censored all media coverage and booted out all international media. So I guess we wont know what were going to get til we get there? I’m sure its going to be fine, but were keeping a close eye on it, and developing a plan B alternative incase things get any worse. Still have 3 weeks for the situation to sort itself out. Fingers crossed as we were really looking forward to getting there!

Hope everybody is well back home, and don’t worry about us, 4 weeks on the beach in Fiji is hardly going to be something to worry about. We will post some photos of the last few days and work on the farm etc when we get to Auckland, if we get half a chance.

Chazz & Claire