Hi all you loyal followers friends, family, randoms
Please turn your skype on and leave it on, you can change your status to away, or DND but then we can at least call you, and if no one picks up none is home just like the phone :P We don't always know when or if we will have reliable internet and it is hard for us to set a time as things change from day to day for us. We do try to get on around 5-7 Alberta time but no one is ever on skype and it costs us money to sit and wait for someone to log in.
A and Ray
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wellington the Kiwi capital
Waitomo to Wellington....
We drove as far as we could towards Wellington then got tired so we stopped in Levin for a nice rest (2.5 days drive from Waitomo). Actually a really nice campground, just kinda rolled into it. We woke up to rain, and it rained, and rained....oh wait did I tell you it rained. It did not stop raining for like 2 days straight. We sat in the van in Wellington the first day, the next day we went to the Te Papa museum because it was raining and guess what so did the rest of Wellington and tourists and did we mentioned it was school break.
Today we woke up, Friday, to sun finally, and took the cable car to the botanical gardens, which was nice but the cable car is a rip off since you could walk it up and down no problem, or just take it up and walk down. We bought a pass for return so we walked dowen teh trails, then walked up so we could use our return pass down. We have been walking around the wharf, lots of reaturants, libraries, and shops teh town of Wellington is quite nice a good mix of modern and old. We are not sure if we want to cross the ferry to the south island on Saturday or Sunday. Not a lot to do in Wellington and its very expensive, $20 just for the bus into town from the campground and back. We drove down the first day in the rain and paid $20 for parking for a 1/2 day.
Sofar we have seen the museum (rain day), rode the cable car, walked the park, and walked around looking at stores. We have decided to leave tomorrow (Saturday) to start the south island.
We drove as far as we could towards Wellington then got tired so we stopped in Levin for a nice rest (2.5 days drive from Waitomo). Actually a really nice campground, just kinda rolled into it. We woke up to rain, and it rained, and rained....oh wait did I tell you it rained. It did not stop raining for like 2 days straight. We sat in the van in Wellington the first day, the next day we went to the Te Papa museum because it was raining and guess what so did the rest of Wellington and tourists and did we mentioned it was school break.
Today we woke up, Friday, to sun finally, and took the cable car to the botanical gardens, which was nice but the cable car is a rip off since you could walk it up and down no problem, or just take it up and walk down. We bought a pass for return so we walked dowen teh trails, then walked up so we could use our return pass down. We have been walking around the wharf, lots of reaturants, libraries, and shops teh town of Wellington is quite nice a good mix of modern and old. We are not sure if we want to cross the ferry to the south island on Saturday or Sunday. Not a lot to do in Wellington and its very expensive, $20 just for the bus into town from the campground and back. We drove down the first day in the rain and paid $20 for parking for a 1/2 day.
Sofar we have seen the museum (rain day), rode the cable car, walked the park, and walked around looking at stores. We have decided to leave tomorrow (Saturday) to start the south island.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Cavers
We followed a secondary highway along ariver with some more of NZ beutiful picturesc scenery. Stoped for luch in a shithole town ate in teh van and headed off for Waiotomo caves a few Km away. We arived and it was to late for any cave trips so we settled into a campsite and booked or tour for the following day.
After the morning routen we headed down the Waitomo Adventures, to check in for our day of Blackwater rafting (tubing in underground rivers) We had a group of 9 and 2 guides. Piled into a van and headed off to the staging area. We all got outfitted into some wetsutes, helmets, and gumboots. And set out on a short hike through a farmers sheep feild to the enterance to our caveing adventure.
"A" was feeling brave and headed down the hole first, after sqeezing through teh opening she was told to lead on in and wait at the water marker... "ok...." I was second and I had to lower myself down the ladder with my hands as the hole was to small for me to step my big feet down the rungs of the ladder. Afeer sliding through a tight squeese to get into the cavern the guide toald me to head on off after "A" and wait for everyone. After stumbling throught the uneven rock floor I found "A" smiling from ear to ear waiting for me.
Once everyone was gathered inside and after a bit of a does and dont's we started caving our way down towards the underwater river following one of the guides. A few minutes of squeesing, ducking, crawling, in and out of water we got to another meeting area. Stoped for a head count and I was asked to lead for a while :) I plunged of with a smile on my face all the time taking in the amazing formations above and below, aswell as to the sides. A quick stop to put mud on our faces for "camuflage" from the cave monster and one of the other girls was volentold to lead on down to the next rest area where we turned off our lights and checked out the glow worms NZ caves are famous for. After a few minutes of in the dark we were told to leave or lights off, turn to the left and put our hands on the person infront of us shoulder. We made a conga line in the dark and "A" got her foot stuck, while I waited for her the conga line went on without us... We cought up and started crawling as the roof was getting lower and lower, as we started going through a small hole "A" freeked a bit and turned her light on ony to find out the guides had everyone going through a small crawlspace when there was a perfictly good wide open walkway going the same place, we took the walkway.
A Little farther down we pickedup our tubes and climbing up onto a rock we held our tubs over our ass's and fell on back to a nice freezing cold splash, a laugh and all waited for everyone to board there tubes. Hooking feet to the next persons arms lights out we headed on down the river laying our heads back to enjoy the glow worms on the celing in the dark river. Once at the end we disembarked from USS Tube in the dark "A" being the most gracefull sliding off for a big splash. Some more caving and we stoped for hot drink and a snack.
We continued on with warm bellys over some really cool parts where our rcokclimbing skills came in handy as there were big holes we had to shimmy over and some ledges to side climb over to avoid getting stuck. When we reached our second bit of tubing we ended up smimming it as the water was really high and we wouldof hit our heads the whole way. Right at the last of the swimming was the scarryest part, with barely enugh room for your face we had to go feet first through a tunnel, head layed back and a face full of water ti was a bit freeky.
One pinball ally later, fast moving water feet first and arms crossed we saw daylight. Our time as cavers was over, one last sqeeze and we crawled out into the forest, hiked our way upto the hut to peeled of the wetsuit and have a hot shower.
Grinning ear to ear we made our way upto The Shearing shed where they have Angora Rabbits, we arrived just in time to see a Rabbit get shaved. Was a funny sight how fluffy these critters are and how silly they look shaved.. or half shaved as in this case.
We were wet, tired, bruised and hungry so we head onward to New Plymouth for the evening, nice drive but man are we tired and too old for crawling through holes in the ground.....
Rotorua....mud and rotten eggs...
We rolled in to Rotorua and it was quite apparent where all the tourists were, they were not up the tip top of the north all here in Rotorua. The information place was sure easy to find, picked up some maps, things to do and where to stay. Found a quaint little place and settled in as the night. The driving was getting to us so we stayed here for a couple days. After a decent shower, food and rest we woke to head off to town and look around at some of the shopping, then we had our next plans to enjoy some geothermal highlight of the area.
Hells Gate was our destination, for a short hike around a volcanic geothermal area, then to some sweet hot mud where Ray and I covered each other in boiling hot clay colored mud. This mud was actually nice to put on as opposed teh the Fiji mud, felt like silk on your skin as apposed to mud. They cook you in the mud for 20 minutes which is suppose to help with medical conditions such as skin problems/disorders, arthritis, aches and pains and so on. It did feel kinda neat, then you shower off the mud and head towards the sulphur mineral baths and relax. All this while you smell the rotten egg smell all around you. We rinsed off and headed back to our campsite.
We have been watching Lord of the Rings as we travel along too, just kinda felt like the movie series to watch as we are surrounded by alot the scenery.
In the morning we packed up and headed down to the Gypsy Fair, dirty gypsys, wierdos, and a piercing shop in a gypsy van that screem hepititis, so we booked it outta Rotorua and made our way down towards Lake Taupo, just a pit stop on our way to Waitaimo caves which looks interesting. We went to another geothermal walk with a cool cave, and saw a waterfall on the way. Wishing everyday the weather would clear but nothing we can do about that, it had been raining since we got here with small breaks of sun if we are lucky once in awhile. Caught a bad system over NZ when we landed and have been waiting for it to pass since.
There and back again a hobits... wait... a Twowanders tale... of Matamata...
Yeah that's right Ray and I have been to the Shire. After a drive back down Highway 1 we turned off towards Matamata to go see some hobbits. Before we got there we did stop at a wierd and interesting sculpture park, which was a conservation project for the last 20 years, going on 21 now....use to be an old quarry. They have done a great job at restoring the area and some of the art was cool. But the flora was better than the sculptures. Made for some cool photos for sure.
Short detour now onto Matamata, we thought we would go look at the Shire and do it the next day since it was getting late but we arrived just in time for the last tour. OOOOHHHHHH so excited, I have been talking about seeing this since I knew we were coming to NZ, now we are here. We have signed a clause agreement that we are not allowed to post pictures or tell about what we saw since they may be making a movie there or not in near future, hush, hush...it's no secret but hey I understand if I spent billions on these series of movies and such I would sue people for ruining it too. You will all just have to wait untill we get home to see the shire upclose.
We started out greeted by some little friends who go BAHHHHH....so cute, watched some sheep shearing and got to feed the hungry little guys who will probably be someones Christmas dinner here soon enough. Made me a little sad I helped fatten him up. Then on to the tour. They have a magnificient piece of land around the film setting, rolling hills so green, littered with sheep and stunning views. I think that is all I am allowed to really write about that, the rest is for you to see later possibly. Pretty cool thing to see, if your a fan, and we are.
We made our way to Matamata town, or as the sign says "Hobbiton", awesome, we found some hot spring pools and campervan site and they were water logged on the grass, so we stayed in there parking lot for the night and got to use the pools so it was ok.
Another restless night and rain and we made our way our again, Ray's sore back and all.....luckily we didn't have to go far, off to Rotorua, the most poplular tourist destination in the north it claimed and it was....
Kauri Forest
Once we left our farm early in the morning we headed for the ferry crossing, again the wind was insane. The ferry was smooth considering the weather and we arrived in one piece with some laughs.We have just finished our first week in the van and we have quickly realized it is not the way to go. All of the campervan sites have self contained units, full kitchen and bathroom facilitys and usually a TV/common living area. If we could choose again we would opt for a car and travel much more comfortably, and cheeper on gas. With that being said it is handy to have somewhere to lay down easly, and we have cooked in the van quite a few times.
We headed toward the Kauri Forest, to scope out some of these magnificient trees and forest. The first one was breathtaking and beautiful, then we made our way up to the hike area to the forest walk. We were greeted by a friendly security man who stays by the cars at all time because of car break in, which he explained does not really happen anymore since they have been there. The hike was easy and very pretty, this is definetly a sight to be seen and not missed if you go to NZ. After our hike, we headed to the Kauri Museum which once again was alot bigger than we imagined. Museums have been a shock, interesting, big and well done. Lots of cool history about the forest and the trees. Ray really liked all the old machines in the museum, like a kid in a candy store.
We popped up the road for a place to camp, there was really only one place so that will do I guess....it was fine till early morning. Then I swear the van was going to tip over and it was hailing and howling. The door almost ripped of it's hinges as we tried to get in and out and I was getting pushed around by the wind as I tried to carry dishes and things from the common area. Ray had a heck of a time trying to fill the water tank, he looked a little nervous the van might fall on him.
We finally headed off towards Auckland again to drive through and find our way to Matamata, and if none of you are familiar with this town you will be by the next post......hehehhehe!
around the tip... of the north
We headed on to Waipu cove where we got a campsite after driving around aimlessly with no plan that day. We were tired and worn out from the day and ready to get going fresh the next mornning up north further. We had plans to see the Bay of Islands but somehow missed the turnoff and hit Kerikeri isnstead and saw the oldest rock house, a park, waterfall area and walk. Some of these small town are so quaint and adorable. Kerikeri seemed like a surf town sort of by some of the shops and some guy I overheard had been out earlier that day, I cannot imagine the wind and trying to surf in that.
After Kerikeri we headed off and before we knew it we were at the deciding point to drive to the very northern tip of NZ or head back on down the East coast of the Nothern reagion. We drove on down andopted to save the gas and driving for making our way back south. We saw 90 mile beach but there was no way to possibly consider an ATV in the weather.
We were getting close to where we had to take a ferry across at a straight and it would have been closed down for the night. We found a farm where they had a cute area setup for campervans, basic and just a place to park off the road for $10. Our own cows as our wake up call, and watchdogs around the farm, very cute.
After Kerikeri we headed off and before we knew it we were at the deciding point to drive to the very northern tip of NZ or head back on down the East coast of the Nothern reagion. We drove on down andopted to save the gas and driving for making our way back south. We saw 90 mile beach but there was no way to possibly consider an ATV in the weather.
We were getting close to where we had to take a ferry across at a straight and it would have been closed down for the night. We found a farm where they had a cute area setup for campervans, basic and just a place to park off the road for $10. Our own cows as our wake up call, and watchdogs around the farm, very cute.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
into da van
Heading out of Auckland for the first time was a bit of an adventure in its own, thrown into a van where we I am siting on the wrong side and everyone drives on teh wrong side of teh road here. I have to take my shoes off to drive as the drivers seat is even to small for "A" and I can use all the room I can get, there were some cargo shifting bars behind the seat which I quickly removed as to be able to recline the seat farthur back. We made it to our first stop not to bad but there has been crazy weather here, rain hail and 100+ MPH winds. The van feels like it is going to blow off the raod sometimes while driving.
First night in the van was not to bad, the wind shook us up a bit and woke us a few times but we made it through the night, 2Km after leaving our first camp driving up a big hill... 2nd gear, 3rd, downshift to up the rpms, go to shift into 3rd... blew the shift.. no wait shifting linkage jamed.. WTF... unable to shift to any gear I was forced to fire up the hazard lights I backed down the hill riding the brakes the whole way down, flaged a car past and settled into the shoulder at the bottom of the hill.. on the wrong side but hey It was a wide shoulder.
We walked on down to a cafe/diveshop "Seafriends" where a really nice lady made the phonecall for us to our campervan company and explained where we were and how to get here. We sat around for 30-40 minutes waiting for teh return phonecall to tell us what the scoop was. Since it was a Sunday they said they will tow out a new van and we would halve to wait around till they could get out to us.
The nice couple at Seafriends offered up there car for us so we coulk Tiki Tour around the area. We were quite taken aback by this hospitality and took them up on the offer. To our surprise we found some amazing sites which we would have blewn by if the van had not gone kaput. Things always happen for a reason we said and just enjoyed the day. We went down to a marine reserve just down the road where they snorkel and scuba dive out, which seemed a little cold for our liking. What a view though!!!
After that we drove to Pakiri Beach which was a big open ocean view with white sand dunes. Gorgeous again but very windy so made quick work of stop there. We returned to Seafriends, waited a bit and the van replacement arrived. We switched our gear and supplies to the new van and headed onward.
We headed on to Waipu cove where we got a campsite after driving around aimlessly with no plan that day. We were tired and worn out from the day and ready to get going fresh the next mornning up north further. We had plans to see the Bay of Islands but somehow missed the turnoff and hit Kerikeri isnstead and saw the oldest rock house, a park, waterfall area and walk. Some of these small town are so quaint and adorable. Kerikeri seemed like a surf town sort of by some of the shops and some guy I overheard had been out earlier that day, I cannot imagine the wind and trying to surf in that.
After Kerikeri we headed off and before we knew it we were at teh deciding point to drive to the very northern tip of NZ or head back on down the East coast of the Nothern reagion. We drove on down andopted to save the gas and driving for making our way back south. We were getting cloase to where we had to take a ferry across a straight and it would have been closed down for the night we found a farm where they had a cute area setup for campervans, basic and just a place to park off the road for $10.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Kiwi country
Kiwi country
Well after hanging out on Fiji time for 11 days we decided to change our tickets and head for our next stop. Fiji was nice and relaxing but very hard to get around and nothing to do there if you dont golf, dive or sunbath. We had a wonderful stay at Beachside Resort in Nadi where we spent the majority of a time. A lovely Kiwi couple Philip and Jane who ran a really nice place, had a friendly staff and made it feel like home away from home.
We landed in Auckland around noon yesterday (Sept 15 over here). Had a quick bit to eat and jumped on a Airbus(airport shuttle). Heading into downtown Auckland we were really excited as the place is immaculate kept, clean, rubbish free, and well maintained. The outlying areas are quite quaint and we could easily see ourselves living in one of those types of neighborhood. We got to the busy downtown metropolis of Auckland to be overrun with crowds of people walking around, there are a lot of cool side streets with neat shops and you cant go 10 feet without passing a cafe.
After checking into our hotel for 3 nights (we are going to see if we can move up the pickup on our camper van) We headed out on the town to walk around and get a feel for the place. We walked around a few hours and returned to the hotel to figure out a plan for the evening and the next day. I't was late in the evening and most things were closed for the night so we wandered down to the cinema a few blocks down and decided to check out a movie. Imax was $2 dollars more and we figured what the heck. We watched Inception, with about 10 other people in the theater. Movies are about 6-8 months behind us and the "coming soon to a theater near you" movies are out on bluray back home. Movie over we wandered around a bit looking for a bite to eat. Not wanting fast food we decided "Turkish Delight" sounded delightful... Popped back upto the hotel, tiniest room on the planet by the way and the bathroom is straight out of a space shuttle, ate our felafel's. watched some tele and attempted to sleep... the city is retardedly loud at night, it is way more quite during the day.
Today we are updating the blog because we have some decent Internet and heading out on the linkbus, to check out more than the few blocks we walked around in.
Well after hanging out on Fiji time for 11 days we decided to change our tickets and head for our next stop. Fiji was nice and relaxing but very hard to get around and nothing to do there if you dont golf, dive or sunbath. We had a wonderful stay at Beachside Resort in Nadi where we spent the majority of a time. A lovely Kiwi couple Philip and Jane who ran a really nice place, had a friendly staff and made it feel like home away from home.
We landed in Auckland around noon yesterday (Sept 15 over here). Had a quick bit to eat and jumped on a Airbus(airport shuttle). Heading into downtown Auckland we were really excited as the place is immaculate kept, clean, rubbish free, and well maintained. The outlying areas are quite quaint and we could easily see ourselves living in one of those types of neighborhood. We got to the busy downtown metropolis of Auckland to be overrun with crowds of people walking around, there are a lot of cool side streets with neat shops and you cant go 10 feet without passing a cafe.
After checking into our hotel for 3 nights (we are going to see if we can move up the pickup on our camper van) We headed out on the town to walk around and get a feel for the place. We walked around a few hours and returned to the hotel to figure out a plan for the evening and the next day. I't was late in the evening and most things were closed for the night so we wandered down to the cinema a few blocks down and decided to check out a movie. Imax was $2 dollars more and we figured what the heck. We watched Inception, with about 10 other people in the theater. Movies are about 6-8 months behind us and the "coming soon to a theater near you" movies are out on bluray back home. Movie over we wandered around a bit looking for a bite to eat. Not wanting fast food we decided "Turkish Delight" sounded delightful... Popped back upto the hotel, tiniest room on the planet by the way and the bathroom is straight out of a space shuttle, ate our felafel's. watched some tele and attempted to sleep... the city is retardedly loud at night, it is way more quite during the day.
Today we are updating the blog because we have some decent Internet and heading out on the linkbus, to check out more than the few blocks we walked around in.
Island adventure!!!
Island adventure!!!
So the next adventure in Fiji is the Yawasawa chain of Islands. We booked a short stay only because we have horrible luck with arranged tours usually. Just not our thing really....we were correct once again they really are not very good at all. Everyone piles onto these tours out to the Islands, and one company really has the monopoly of it all. Unless you have the money to have a private boat or plane, we do not.
We got on the boat fine, headed to the largest of the islands out there. The water on the way there was clear and deep. Now everyone supposedly goes out here for the swimming, snorkeling, etc.....the tide is out so far and the coral has been ruined by tourists and boats that just don't know any better. From far away your island you get dropped at looks gorgeous then you get up close and BAM...whole other story. We picked one called Korovou eco resort, which there was nothing eco about it and had not been fixed up the 20 or 30 years it has been there. The only eco thing was the shower didn't work, so no water was wasted the whole time we stayed there. I did see Nemo's dad though, pretty cool when we could snorkel.
Our problem is we don't sit and sunbathe all day, and that is what people do here, and drink, oh yeah we don't really do that either. So not really the place for us to say the least.
Fiji is beautiful at times but we have seen better for a whole lot less money. Tan is looking pretty good though, guess we will work on that while we are here. Getting a little stir crazy, you can only relax too much, feel like we should help clean or something at the nice Kiwi owned hotel we are at. They have been amazing to us, very helpful and accommodating.
Well....NZ maybe here we come early...lol.....
So the next adventure in Fiji is the Yawasawa chain of Islands. We booked a short stay only because we have horrible luck with arranged tours usually. Just not our thing really....we were correct once again they really are not very good at all. Everyone piles onto these tours out to the Islands, and one company really has the monopoly of it all. Unless you have the money to have a private boat or plane, we do not.
We got on the boat fine, headed to the largest of the islands out there. The water on the way there was clear and deep. Now everyone supposedly goes out here for the swimming, snorkeling, etc.....the tide is out so far and the coral has been ruined by tourists and boats that just don't know any better. From far away your island you get dropped at looks gorgeous then you get up close and BAM...whole other story. We picked one called Korovou eco resort, which there was nothing eco about it and had not been fixed up the 20 or 30 years it has been there. The only eco thing was the shower didn't work, so no water was wasted the whole time we stayed there. I did see Nemo's dad though, pretty cool when we could snorkel.
Our problem is we don't sit and sunbathe all day, and that is what people do here, and drink, oh yeah we don't really do that either. So not really the place for us to say the least.
Fiji is beautiful at times but we have seen better for a whole lot less money. Tan is looking pretty good though, guess we will work on that while we are here. Getting a little stir crazy, you can only relax too much, feel like we should help clean or something at the nice Kiwi owned hotel we are at. They have been amazing to us, very helpful and accommodating.
Well....NZ maybe here we come early...lol.....
Monday, September 13, 2010
Fiji Time...
Fiji Time...
Well we are 9days into the Fiji experience... Sorry for the slow updates, internet is not the best here 1 out of 5 times we tried to log into our blog it has failed to work. So to catch everyone up.
After landing and spending the first few days jet laged, we decided to go on a 1/2 day hike/mudbath. The hike was beautiful, although it is in the dry season here and everything is quite brown. We sweated our asses off hiking though the non shaded paths they had cleared for the tourists. We finally got to a sad excuse for a waterfall, it was quite nice setting but hardly any water was running. We decided to head back to the village instead of continuing farther up the cleared paths to the "bigger" waterfall. At the village we walked into a smoke filled inferno, the field of sugar cane next to the village had caught fire and was burning out of control, the smoke was so thick we could hardly breath and could barely see, our eyes and lungs burned, muscles ached from the hike and all we wanted to do was head off t the mud bathes and get back to the hotel for a cool refreshing dip in the pool. The villages invited us into there traditional Bure, this is a sacred building, which they use for church, weddings and apparently showing off to tourists. 4 young men invited/forced us into taking part in a Kava ceremony, which consisted of one of the young men washing his hands in some dirty water in the traditional Kava bowl thing, then they added the Kava which is a pounded white powder made from the Kava plant root. After stirring the milky dirty water with his "clean hands" after all he did wash them in the bowl he was now mixing our drinks in... We were offered "high tide? or low tide?" . Having no Idea what they were talking about I picked high tide and they offered me up a full half of a coconut cup full or dirty root water. I politely took a sip, looked at A with sad eyes suggesting it tasted awesome >.> I offered the cup back but apparently I was to dink all of it... I regretfully slammed the whole cup of dirty root water and passed the cup back. Now it was A's turn, she had learned from my mistake and took the low tide, her cup was only half full and when she took the first sip I saw in her eyes what I was thinking when I first took a sip of dirty root water.
After our Kava ceremony we were forced to wait around for a few hours with eyes and lungs burning from the smoke waiting for our driver to return to pick us up. After what felt like an eternity we were of to the mudbaths.
We arrived a few miles down the road to a field full of children playing below a village, and a kind lady took us around the area and explained to us the culture and beliefs of the mud bathes and how some of the Fijian use it for sun protection as well as war paint, and homeopathic remedy. She took us over to a muddy pool of water and said jump in. A looked at me warily as I made her jump in first as to get a photo of he being covered in mud. A few of the kids jumped in to help Her apply the mud, and I jumped in soon after. After being covered form head to knee in a thick yellow/brown mud we climbed out so the children could plaster the rest of us with mud, and were asked to hang out and let the mud dry. By this time the sun was already starting to set and the mud was taking forever to dry, after what seemed like and eternity we were finally dry enough to jump back into the mud puddle and rinse the mud off, we were then herded over to the hot spring which felt like a million bucks after crawling out of a dirty mud pool. We soaked for only a few minutes and headed of to get pickup up by our driver who waited for us this time, back off to the hotel for a hot shower.. we had mud in more places we wish to mention.
Well we are 9days into the Fiji experience... Sorry for the slow updates, internet is not the best here 1 out of 5 times we tried to log into our blog it has failed to work. So to catch everyone up.
After landing and spending the first few days jet laged, we decided to go on a 1/2 day hike/mudbath. The hike was beautiful, although it is in the dry season here and everything is quite brown. We sweated our asses off hiking though the non shaded paths they had cleared for the tourists. We finally got to a sad excuse for a waterfall, it was quite nice setting but hardly any water was running. We decided to head back to the village instead of continuing farther up the cleared paths to the "bigger" waterfall. At the village we walked into a smoke filled inferno, the field of sugar cane next to the village had caught fire and was burning out of control, the smoke was so thick we could hardly breath and could barely see, our eyes and lungs burned, muscles ached from the hike and all we wanted to do was head off t the mud bathes and get back to the hotel for a cool refreshing dip in the pool. The villages invited us into there traditional Bure, this is a sacred building, which they use for church, weddings and apparently showing off to tourists. 4 young men invited/forced us into taking part in a Kava ceremony, which consisted of one of the young men washing his hands in some dirty water in the traditional Kava bowl thing, then they added the Kava which is a pounded white powder made from the Kava plant root. After stirring the milky dirty water with his "clean hands" after all he did wash them in the bowl he was now mixing our drinks in... We were offered "high tide? or low tide?" . Having no Idea what they were talking about I picked high tide and they offered me up a full half of a coconut cup full or dirty root water. I politely took a sip, looked at A with sad eyes suggesting it tasted awesome >.> I offered the cup back but apparently I was to dink all of it... I regretfully slammed the whole cup of dirty root water and passed the cup back. Now it was A's turn, she had learned from my mistake and took the low tide, her cup was only half full and when she took the first sip I saw in her eyes what I was thinking when I first took a sip of dirty root water.
After our Kava ceremony we were forced to wait around for a few hours with eyes and lungs burning from the smoke waiting for our driver to return to pick us up. After what felt like an eternity we were of to the mudbaths.
We arrived a few miles down the road to a field full of children playing below a village, and a kind lady took us around the area and explained to us the culture and beliefs of the mud bathes and how some of the Fijian use it for sun protection as well as war paint, and homeopathic remedy. She took us over to a muddy pool of water and said jump in. A looked at me warily as I made her jump in first as to get a photo of he being covered in mud. A few of the kids jumped in to help Her apply the mud, and I jumped in soon after. After being covered form head to knee in a thick yellow/brown mud we climbed out so the children could plaster the rest of us with mud, and were asked to hang out and let the mud dry. By this time the sun was already starting to set and the mud was taking forever to dry, after what seemed like and eternity we were finally dry enough to jump back into the mud puddle and rinse the mud off, we were then herded over to the hot spring which felt like a million bucks after crawling out of a dirty mud pool. We soaked for only a few minutes and headed of to get pickup up by our driver who waited for us this time, back off to the hotel for a hot shower.. we had mud in more places we wish to mention.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
the endless saturday
LAX, what a huge place, confusing and busy. I thought it was cloudy out, but it was supposedly just a bad smog day. By the time we got our bags, ate some lunch, we would only of had 4 hours in LA and we had our bags because Air Canada does not connect with Pacific Air with baggage transfers. Wasn't to bad a wait but, we were ready to get to Fiji and the time was not passing fast enough. Plane was packed and I don't think you can find an older plane in the air, you know when ashtrays are in the armrests of the seat you know your in for a rough ride.
Air Pacific was nothing to write home about so how about I don't and keep this more positive. 10 hours of pain and agony got us here finally. I have never seen so much luggage, I know it was alot of people but I heard someone say 16 pieces for their family, WHAT!!!! Probably for a week or two long trip too, we have tiny little packs for a year or longer, Crazy people!
Our plane landed early, 4:40 am and we made it to Beachside Resort in one piece. Cute little place out of the way to relax and get organized for the next 24 ish days here in Fiji. We have slept( sort of ), ate, swam, settled in, and soon will make some plans, maybe mudbaths. AWESOME!
Everyone feels so far away, and it's been hard to wrap our heads around not working, how to just relax and enjoy the ride. It's only the first day which just happens to be Saturday here, how fitting, plenty of time to get on Fiji time.....miss you all, family and friends, keep in touch.
Will post pictures soon.
A and Ray
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)