At the beginning of our trip to Fiji we saw ads for swimming with the manta rays. The ad showed these huge rays that were like the size of a small whale or something so we really wanted to do that. Apparently the only way to do that is to fly to an island up north and stay a night on a resort out there. Sadly Manta Rays were not in the vacation budget…

So we had two other things on our list of things we definitely wanted to do… 1) Snorkeling and 2) Surfing. We kind of wandered around talking to different people that arrange trips from Port Denarau and Nadi and it was looking like we would need to rent a car or take a taxi to go surfing. Since we didn’t feel really 100% safe when we were in Nadi we decided that renting a car and venturing out on our own would be a bad idea.

So this left us with just snorkeling…while walking around Ndi there were tons of people that arrange touristy trips from the resorts and they all say a different trip is the best trip and come off as complete snake oil salesmen. I can only imagine this is how Merf comes off when he is selling urinal pucks and garbage bags. “My urinal pucks are carcinogenic free…blah blah blah”. All the pamphlets for the day trips sound the same too….so we decided to just pick one and go with it since there was no way to know what was garbage and what was good.

We went with Robinson Crusoe Island…I think what got us was that it had snorkeling and there was a full day with 2 meals. The lady that sold it to us was adamant that this was by far the best deal and the best trip and that she did not receive any commissions and was completely unbiased.

They picked us up at the resort and we were greeted by a dude in a grass skirt and guitar named Tequila. Kind of an unoriginal name but other than that Tequila kept the mood pretty high on the bus and said some really stereotypical stuff about Fijian people. The day was looking up…it was before noon and we were drinking beer and singing along to Tequila’s Fiji-accent rendition of The Gambler.

Fun Fiji Fact: They love Ann Murray, Kenny Rogers and Elvis….if you go up to someone playing a guitar in Fiji and request anything by those three they would know it. I am convinced The Gambler is their national anthem.

Boat going to Robinson Crusoe Island

So after a hour bus ride or so we arrived at the wharf and got on a boat that went through a mangrove type river thing and out into the ocean.  First activity we did was snorkeling…it sucked…it was too choppy and they kept us close to the shore so all we saw was sea grass and a few fish here and there. Was really unimpressive and a huge disappointment…

A fish (Snorkling at Robinson Crusoe Island)

Next activity was sea turtle viewing…they gathered everyone around a pile of sticks and told some story about how the turtles come up to the shore and dig holes and lay eggs. Then the pulled the sticks off a turtle shell and they brought everyone in closer. Then a dude jumped up with the turtle shell on his back…so turtle viewing was actually a dude with a turtle shell on his back. I don’t think we were the only ones that felt a little ripped off after that.

Sea Turtle Viewing at Robinson Crusoe Island

Next activity was a group conga line thing…basically everyone got in a conga line I had Sheila behind me and a girl in front of me and this dude asked if he could get between me and the girl in front of me because it was his fiance. Makes sense whatever… so now I am behind this dude in the conga line. The guy that was organizing the dance pulled me and a goofy awkward kid out of the line and made fun of us for being behind guys in the line and basically called us flamers in front of the whole group. Awesome… so I move in behind a girl that is like probably 12. Me being behind a dude made me gay so I guess by the same logic me being behind a 12 year old girl makes me a pedophile….which apparently they are completely fine with on Robinson Crusoe Island.

Fire Walking at Robinson Crusoe Island

The next disappointment… fire walking. Fire walking to me means a long fire pit with red hot coals and some dude walking the length of it. Fire walking to the Robinson Crusoe people was a lame fire pit like 2 feet in diameter with nothing red hot and a dude walking on the non-red hot rocks. The looks on the peoples faces standing around the fire pit said it all..boredom.

Fire Show at Robinson Crusoe Island

As much as I hated Robinson Crusoe Island I must say their fire show was pretty legit. They twirled fire and did all kinds of cheerleader type pyramid things….was kind of cool.

In addition to the day trips Robinson Crusoe also offers multi-night stays where you can stay in their huts. I can’t imagine how much fun that would be!

We have been back from Fiji a month and change and I am just now getting to posting pictures…you would never know I am on vacation…

I decided to split the Fiji trip into a few different posts…mostly so I can write about how crappy Robinson Crusoe Island is…

We have been to Mexico a couple times and stayed on all inclusive resorts so we knew that going to Fiji and staying in a pay per meal/pay per drink resort would be a little different. Aside from having to pay for everything the biggest difference was just the mood on the resort…it was super calm and chill…a lot of families and older couples.

Not really knowing how much stuff cost we swam up to the swim up bar on Day 1 and looked at the menu. Beer were like $10 and mixed drinks were like $23…boo!  All the restaurants on the resort were pretty expensive as well. We quickly realized that the litre of gin we bought at the duty free was a good decision and would be our savior at least for a few days.

Drinking Gin in the Pool

The resort was really nice…beautiful pools with sand right up to the edge of the water so it seemed like a real beach. Later in the week we walked to a few of the different resorts on Denarau Island and some of them looked a bit nicer but ours had the best pools without a doubt.  It was nice to have a no-kids pool too so you didn’t have bastard kids splashing around and stuff…actually we were pretty much the only ones in the no-kids pool most of the time.

Pool at Radisson Fiji

The island that we stayed on (Denarau Island) is basically 5 resorts side by side and you can go from resort to resort and eat at different restaurants or sneak into their pools. There is a bus that takes you around the resort loop and takes you into the port which we used a ton. The port was super touristy kind of like a fancy strip mall with a bunch of separate restaurants…absolutely no locals that were not working. Most of the stuff in the port was pretty reasonably priced…we had dinners there and they were around $50/person. So we ate there a lot and also killed a lot of pizza on the resort.

Back to the drinks situation…the first day we had a bottle of gin but we had no mix and nothing that we could drink it out of in the pool. Also we didn’t really know if you were allowed to mix your own drinks and take them down to the pool…nobody else seemed to be doing it. We chanced it and picked up some insulated travel mugs and some mix at the port and tried to be pretty stealth about it (Some people later told us that it was pretty obvious what we were doing)…none of the workers said anything about it all week. While we were picking up the mix I took a picture of the same bottle of gin that I paid $70 for in New Zealand the day before that was selling for $140 in Fiji. Crazynesss…

We had planned on doing a bunch of day trips (surfing, snorkling, swimming with manta rays) but it was all pretty expensive so we decided to just chill in the pool for most of the week and only really left the resort to go to the port for dinner, one trip into the neighboring town Nadi and a day trip “cruise” package called Robinson Crusoe. More on Robinson Crusoe later…

Nadi was pretty poor…before we went into Nadi we kind of thought it might be a good idea to rent a car tour around for a day but after walking through the town we kind of realized that it might not be that hard to find trouble in Fiji. Some people looked pretty desperate and it was really run down and dirty.

All in all we had a great trip though…weather was almost perfect (a couple days were overcast but still warm) and we had a lot of fun.

We found a really great beach like 15 minutes from our apartment. I say we found it like nobody else knows about it but it is actually really popular I guess…we just hadn’t realized how close it is to us. It is on the west coast (facing Australia) which is the coast which has the coast that has the more dangerous waves.

Muriwai Beach from top of the hill where the Gannets nest

The first time we went to it the waves were not too bad but the last time we went they were pretty crazy. I had only seen waves even close to that size or quickness during hurricane Juan at Peggys Cove. I don’t think by a lot of peoples standards they were that bad though. I am very nautical so they wouldn’t have been a problem for me…

Like my nail polish?

The beach has black sand which sounds cool but it is actually not that awesome…it gets ridiculously hot on the feet and seems to get everywhere. Sheila’s car is full of it and the other night she tried to take a hit from her puffer and there was black sand in it. So that is my biggest problem in life right now…the black sand. Things are pretty good…

Muriwai Gannet Colony

We layed on the beach and got some sun and also took a walk out to the point where people were fishing. While we were out by the people fishing we found the Muriwai Gannet Colongy…I don’t know much of anything about birds but it was a pretty impressive number of them and they had a bunch of baby birds too which was kind of cool. I hadn’t seen that many birds since they closed the landfill in Kentville…I loved that place.

The water is still really cold…one of these days I will go in it for a swim instead of just wading up to my knees and going back to the towel to lay in the sun. It is still early in the summer!

Sort of fell behind with the updates lately. It is now January 12th and I have a ton of pictures and have done a ton of stuff since my last update. I think I can catch up in 4 updates… Rotorua, Stick Insect, Muriwai and Fiji.

So here is Rotorua…

Sheila had done a weekend trip before I arrived in NZ and one of the places she stopped at was Rotorua. Rotorua has a ton of boiling mud sites, geysers and a M?ori exhibit called Te Puia. M?ori’s are the New Zealand indigenous people and are the equivalent to natives in Canada.

Dude doing his thing during the show. I learned that they stick their tongues out to intimidate people not just to make them laugh.

We decided to make it a day trip. In hindsight we probably should have made it an overnight trip because it was like a 3 hour drive each way…seemed like we were driving the entire day. Was really cool though…a lot of really cool scenery between Auckland and Rotorua. We made a stop at Agrodome (a petting zoo type place outside of Rotorua) where we saw some sheep and took some pretty funny pictures.

Sheila made me wear this hat and take a picture at Agrodome.

Te Puia was cool…the geyser stank so bad of sulfur and it was blowing all over the place so it was kind of like taking a bath in rotten egg water. It looked pretty cool when it went off though…especially the boiling mud. Sheila liked the Maori dance/show thing but it wasn’t really my type of thing. They made everyone take their shoes off and  get into a small building (like 50 people)..it smelled so bad of stinky feet…hahaha

The geyser at Te Puia

Part of our plan for the day was to see the hobbit village from Lord of the Rings but it didn’t work out because we ran out of time. Another day I guess…

Few observations after a week in New Zealand….

1. Driving on the wrong side of the road may never feel normal
2. The money is made from a synthetic paper that is really hard (maybe impossible) to rip
3. They are really big on the metric system. Even distances on golf courses are measured in meters. The red marker is at the 90 meter mark and the white is at the 135 meter mark.
4. They have $2 coins and $1 coins like Canada but they also have a 50 cent coin..which is kind of cool
5. They call sausages hot dogs and real hot dogs are called “American hot dogs”. I also saw a sea dog on a chinese food menu yesterday. Sheila dared me to try it and it was pretty gross…like its cousin the hot dog it is a tube of random ground up meat. But in the case of the sea dog it is all sea food and is encased in a layer of batter and is deep fried. Pretty gross.

A Sea Dog...despite the labels claim that it is delicious it is in fact anything but.

Going to the Green Day concert for Sheila’s birthday tonight. Should be fun…

Sheila had been to Omaha but had not been any further north so we decided to go for a drive. We didn’t really have any plans and just sort of stop at a few places along the way that looked cool. Sounds like a pretty bad strategy but it was a really nice day and anywhere on the coast is going to be pretty.

Our first stop was Goat Island. It is supposed to be some of the better snorkling in New Zealand I think and there was a lot of people there snorkling and kayaking. Just from the rocks I saw a few pretty big fish cruising around. We decided it wasn’t warm enough to snorkel yet and that we would wait a few weeks and come back. We are going to Fiji next weekend and I am sure the snorkeling will be a lot better there anyway. Instead of snorkling we walked around a bit on the rocks and took a few pictures.

Our second stop was a warf a little bit further south from Goat Island. It wasn’t really a “tourist stop”…we just kind of drove around and ended up there. Was pretty cool…I imagine there are thousands of little coves like that all over the country. Highlight of the stop was a dead fish in a tide pool. Which one of us picked up…not going to say who. Seemed a little bit like Nova Scotia because there were a bunch of small fishing boats.

Next we stopped at a protected wildlife area called Tawharanua. It had a bunch of pastures with sheep, a bird sanctuary and really cool beach. The road to it was crazy…so narrow and windy and the locals were driving like retards. It was supposed to be 30km/h but most were driving like 50ish. At times it was down to one lane for both directions even around crazy corners. The beach was really nice and had a few different parts…there was like one section that had a lot of people on it then there was like a small cave that you could walk through and there was a whole different beach that I thought was nicer and had a lot less people. The water was really turquoise at Tawharanua.

Pictures from Goat Island, Tawharanua and the warf:

The second beach in Tawharanua

Woke up and wasn’t feeling jet lagged at all….yeah!

We had decided the day before that we were going to go on a day trip to Piha. Sheila had gone before by herself but was rushed so she wanted to go again. The drive was insane…really twisty/turny road that two cars can barely fit through and there is no shoulder what so ever.

About half way there a truck coming the other way was flicking its lights at us…we noticed but didn’t really know what dude was trying to tell us. A few minutes later we drove into a road stop…there was a cop breathalyzing the drivers. A drunk driving checkpoint at 11:00am…awesome. The cop could tell we seemed a little bit surprised by it and made the observation that “you guys are not from New Zealand are you?”….apparently it is normal here or something. Getting a DUI would be embarrassing anyway but could you imagine the embarrassment of getting a DUI before noon on a Friday? New low…

Sheila passed the breathalyzer and we kept driving….

Later while watching tv they showed an advert of a guy getting breathalyzed and getting thrown in jail for being on drugs so I guess they are testing for more than just alcohol. I also saw an advert/public service announcement warning people that it is never “ok” to shake a baby. The more you know…

We arrived at Piha a little before noon and it was overcast which kind of sucked because it was actually really nice when we left Auckland. Piha is a really cool cove with a huge rock in the middle called Lion Rock. The sand in Piha is kind of black and has really cool specks of shinyness in it. Even though it was overcast the sand was still so hot that it still hurt to run across. We walked around on the beach in the rocks and caves and took a bunch of pictures then went up to the top of Lion Rock.

Sheila had seen signs saying there were penguins at Piha the last time She went there but she didn’t see any last time. This time we ran into a park ranger/worker and he told us that they only come out really early in the morning or around 11pmish at night. So we didn’t see any penguins which was slightly disappointing but we still saw some pretty cool stuff.

Photos from Piha:

The Lion Rock in Piha

I left Toronto at noon on Tuesday and arrived in Auckland on Thursday at 6:30am. A bit of an odd feeling to be in the air for 17 hours and losing an additional 18 hours due to timezones but I felt pretty good when I landed and wasn’t really jet lagged for some reason. I guess the Halcion did its job because I slept most of the second flight.

Air New Zealand was pretty good..I had never flown internationally and not been in business class so I was a little concerned about that but the seats were actually pretty big and I was comfortable. I was able to switch from a middle seat last minute to a window seat which was a huge win…:-)

Since I had applied for a visa and was electronically approved I was expecting to have to provide some proof/documentation to support all the stuff I had filled out but for whatever reason the lady just stamped my passport and told me to keep moving… Funny how I get stressed about stupid things like that and it turns out to be nothing. I had visions of them rejecting my visa application on some technicality and putting me on a flight back to Canada and not even getting to see Sheila..:-(

Stepping out of the airport it was like mid-20′s and really sunny which was a nice change from the Toronto/Minneapolis weather.

We ended up spending most of the day just hanging out at the apartment and catching up on lost time. Around dinner though we decided to go to Takapuna since it was such a beautiful day.

Photos from Takapuna:

Flip flops + shorts in December...nice!

After a walk on the beach we went to a “hole in the wall” Chinese dumpling place and had dinner. Those of you that know me and my eating habits (steak and potatoes or lasagna) can probably guess that the dumpling place was not my pick but it was really good. Sheila is a little more adventurous about food than I am but I always end up liking the things she picks…:-)

-Clayton