well, have been rather lapse in my blogging of late, so will just quickly say i hope everyone had a good christmas and new year, and get straight on with telling you about fiji and new zealand.
arrived in fiji very confused. we set off from rarotonga at midnight on friday, flew for 4 hours and arrived in nadi at 2am sunday. not sure where the day went - something to do with the date line - but am still trying to find the office where i can claim it back!
we joined the feejee experience in nadi. all good fun, but a bit like a school trip. lots of 'make sure you go to the toilet, then be back on the bus by 3'.
we started off with a bbq on the beach. got sunburned, even tho i already had a tan, and it was cloudy! NB: if you go to fiji, where sun screen, even if you think you don't need it!
went to a traditional fijian village. i must say, the fijians seem obscurely proud of their cannibalistic heritage. a load of missionaries turned up to 'save' the locals, so they ate them. not that i disapprove of bashing missionaries over the head and eating them. what else are you supposed to do with them?
later in the day we went for the less traditional, but hilarious past time of dune surfing. basically, sliding down a sand dune on a boogie board. wicked fun! but the walk back up is a killer!
that night (and a few after) we stayed at mango bay flashpacker resort (like backpacker, but flash, obviously). very tropical paradise. lots of coconut tree climbing and husking (the staff, not me, the trees are very tall!) and crab racing, which is more fun than you'd imagine.
and the kava welcome. kava is a local drink made from tree roots. fijians seem to love it. it tastes like muddy water, but gets better the more you drink. it's not alcoholic, but it does make your face go numb. for the ceromony you have to clap a lot, shout bula (hello, cheers, happy friendly island welcome greeting), down a cocnut shell full of the stuff, then shout 'mather saka', which obviously gets ruder the longer the ceremony goes on.
because of the (non-existant) coup, there were a load of cancellations, so we got a free upgrade to a 'safari tent' with double bed and en suite with hot water. thats my kind of camping! did wish i had a beige suit and a pith helmet though.
whilst we were there they had a huge bushfire on the hills above the resort. turns out some guy was burning rubbish in the forest - as you do - and fell asleep! we were kind of worried the fire would reach the resort, which would not have been fun, çause all the buildings were wood. the owner called the fire brigade and it took them an hour and a half to arrive, and the truck looked like a relic from the 40s and didn't have any water in - they had to pump it from the pool. apparently, the fijian fire brigade don't do bushfires, only property fires, so they just sat in the bar and waited for the fire to get near the huts! when i get chance, will upload a genius photo of them playing vollyball whilst the fire rages in the background.
got back on the big green play bus, and went for a two hour hike through the rainforest. incredible. but absolutely exhausting! the first half hour was up hill in the burning sun, followed by a trek through a knee deep river, then back down. going downhill was harder than going up, spent more time on my arse than on my feet! but everyone else fell over too, so that was ok. the rest of the day was much more relaxing - floating down river over rapids in an inner tube and riding speed boats. piss wet through by the end of the day!
went through suva, the capital on our way to the hostel, and after all the fuss about the coup, we saw 3 soldiers. they had very impressive ak47s, but no bullets in them. and they posed so we could take photos. bizarre!
got up in the morning aching from head to toe, and headed out to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere to meet the chief in a kava ceremony. after the formal stuff, the boys chatted with the chief and drank more kava, and the girls got to weave little bracelets from coconut leaves. frankly, would rather have been drinking kava! then we headed out to the river for games and bamboo raft races. they're actually quite difficult to steer. but my team won çause the other team's raft fell apart. ha!
stayed at voli voli backpakers near raki raki - i'm not making this up. most of the time it pissed it down. and when it rains here, it means it! there were a couple of nice days, and we went scuba diving, so it didn't matter about the weather, we were wet anyway! diving was wicked, evn though it was with the most pikey dive company ever - no safety checks, dangerous dive lengths and they didn't even fill the tanks properly. and the dive master was worryingly reminiscent of pops from league of gentlemen.still, saw loads of cool stuff, weird fish, coral, giant moray eels, and even an 8ft leopard shark! oh yeah, but i absolutely ruined myself. by the time we got back to shore i had coral scratches on my arms and legs, 5 toes in tatters from badly fitting shins, and one leg covered in bruises from smacking it on the propeller, trying to climb back into the boat in choppy water.
on the way back to nadi we went to the mud pool. it just looks like dirty water, but you get in and sink to your knees in thick, warm mud. it's heated by the volcano underneath. very odd. obviously, being consummate grown ups and mature, sensible travellers, it took about 5 minutes before we were smearing mud all over ourselves and each other. there were a load of local kids there, and they were cleaner than us. we went to the hot pool to wash off (a bit). and when i say hot, i mean hot. heated by magma. if it was a bath, you run more cold in! we got to the hostel dripping wet and covered in slimy filth. they must have loved us!
the best part of flying to NZ was duty free, got 400 fags for less than 20 quid! the rest was awful. usual stuff, big fat guy in front with his seat so far back he was in my lap. ugly kid screaming and kicking the backs of the seats for 4 hours. i would have spoken to its parents, but the dad spent 4 hours kicking the backs of the seats too. and despite having enough baby crap to feed, clothe and entertain a whole orphanage for a year, the mum didn't bother changing its nappy, so it stank. just furthered my conviction that all children, and quite a lot of adults, should be kept in cages and only transported as cargo.
spent christmas in auckland. was very strange being in a big city again. took me about half an hour to buy shampoo because there were choices! christmas day was odd. didn't seem very festive - we had a bbq! no presents or christmas soaps, so we all got drunk, which made it more like christmas at home!
a lot of auckland didn't seem very festive, there were some decorations, like a huge beckoning, winking peodophile santa on a department store, but a lot of places didn't bother. christmas is weird in the southern hemisphere, because it's supposed to be in winter, and it's summer here, but all the songs are about snow and being cold. it was very strange to here frosty the snowman in fiji, and see all the locals thinking 'what the fuck's a snowman'!
our hostel didn't bother with decorations. bit of a dump really. it seemed to spend so much time trying to persuade everyone it was the best hostel ever, it ran out of time for actually doing good stuff. it was huge, so it was mpre like a hotel - without the niceties of being in a hotel, like clean sheets, hot showers or emptying the bin! and it was full of the sort of tossers who go travelling with 6 pairs of shoes, a hairdryer and a set of ghds.
auckland museum was good though. the first floor was all about maori and polynesian cultures (kia orana is maori for hello and welcome btw). the second floor was 'natural world' and had a simulation of a volcanic eruption in auckland harbour - could happen. and the third floor was about wars. the kiwis have been in all the wars britain has - go empire - and it was really interesting to see things from their perspective. they had a really moving section on pows, people who visited the museum that had actually been pows were asked to add to the displays and leave comments, which gave it a really personal aspect. they also had a section on the NZ wars, where britain tried to take land from the maoris, and, basically, we got our asses kicked a lot. maoris are hard mofos!
got the bus out of auckland to rotorua. rotorua is lovely. reminded us both a lot of napa in california. a lot of kiwi towns are built on the american grid system, but rr was also very clean friendly and prosperous. but it smells. rotorua is the sight of loads of seismic activity, so it has boiling mud pools and magma bubbling underground. very cool, but the whole place stinks of sulphur. it's slightly unnerving to be wandering around this pretty little town, and suddenly get a whiff of, depending on the wind direction, matches, eggs, farts or popcorn. and pavement cafes are a no no.
whilst we were there we went to a maori hangi (where they bury the food with burning rocks to cook it) and show. the food was delicious - followed by traditional maori chocolate log and trifle. the show was incredible, lots of shouting and stamping and weoponry. and obviously the hakka, which means breath of fire, and uses every muscle in the body. afterwards, we went for a nighttime bushwalk to see the glow worms. they are actually maggots - yuk - but look very pretty in the dark. the only slight dampener was the brats around. one actually brought her own cheese sandwich! i knew she'd be on our table as soon as she got on the bus wearing a stupid hat. one woman had a right go at a couple who brought their baby. it screamed alll the way through the performance (was probably terrified) and the woman told them they should take it out side to stop it spoiling everyone's night. you could see the rest of the audience struggling not to applaud her!
the day of new year's eve we went to the agropark. kiwis have a strange tendency to throw themselves off, down and through things. where an english person would see a hill and think, 'let's climb up it' a kiwi sees the same hill and thinks,'let's slimb up it, then jump off, or roll down it.' the agro park was brilliant. we went zorbing - rolling down a big zig-zag hill in a beach ball full of water, agrojetting - a jet boat around an assault course,and swooping - getting winched up high strapped into a sleeping bag on a rope, and let go! brilliant fun, but the swoop was absolutely terrifying, especially as they pull you up. but would definately do it again, if only fo the lookon my face in the photo after!
for nye we went and got drunk in a bar called the grumpy mole,so pretty much like home really, but with more kiwis.
when we recovered from the hangover, we got the coach to taupo. taupo has a lake. a big lake. that's all i can really think of to say about it. oh, except don't get your hair cut there unless you want to looklike a marine with mental problems. even if it does only cost 10 quid.
after taupo we spent a few nights in napier on the east coast. lovely place. a bit quiet after new year, but it is in hawke's bay - wine country. hic!
we're in wellington now for a few days (whilst n has dental surgery - bless him) then on to the south island. wellington seems really nice. smaller than auckland, but friendlier and with more to do and better bars!
New Zealand
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