Goodbye Maqai Beach

It was sad to leave Maqai Beach as everyone there has been so welcoming and generous, but all good things come to an end. Maqai is the last stop of our travels before heading home. To say goodbye, they put on a leaving party for us which was a great way to say goodbye to all the friends we had made. The next morning we were given the traditional 'fair-well song'...

After the 19 hour ferry and two ten hour flights we eventually arrived back in Heathrow on the 11th. So six months later, six countries and tens of thousands of miles we are back home and back to reality. We will definitely be planning some more travels, so keep an eye to see where we go next!

Nanuku Island

While staying at Maqai we took an overnight trip to Nanuku Island. It's really small and takes about 3 hours to get there from Maqai by a small speedboat. On the way there, we stopped at one of the nearby villages to pick up Meli, the son of the chief of Maqai and Nanuku. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to walk much around the village as there was a big meeting with all the chiefs from surrounding villages and islands. Five guests went including us, Dan and Fiona from Jersey and Isabel from Switzerland with six staff, Meli, Simon, Do, Lucy, John and Pela.

The island is so small that it couldn't be seen until we were almost there, and as we approached we realised just how small it was. The tiny sand island takes ten minutes to walk around the outside and is surrounded by crystal clear waters with coral.

All around the island there were various turtle tracks heading from the sea up into the bush in the middle. So during the night, Do, Simon, Dan and I went for a walk to see if we could find some, we didn't see any so it turned into a hunt for coconut crabs. We climbed through the bush barefeet looking for piles of coconuts that the crabs had been eating. Both Simon and Do caught one each, but neither me or Dan fancied grabbing one barehand as they use their strong claws to open coconuts for food.

The next day while we spent a bit of time snorkelling on the one of the reefs. The visibility was incredible, I thought it was good when we had snorkelled Australia and Thailand but Fiji was far better. We were in the water for around 20 minutes when Do swam up to the surface shouting for Meli to bring the boat over, and Pela (who was on a kayak) was shouting at us to swim to the shallow water over the coral, although I wasn't sure why until Isabel from Switzerland screamed shark! I looked under the water but I couldn't see anything and quickly swam towards the shallow coral. We did see plenty of reef sharks though.

While out snorkelling, Lucy and John prepared the coconut crabs for lunch before a quick rest and heading back to Maqai in the afternoon.

Maqai Beach, Fiji

I don't have a huge amount to write about on this blog post, Izzy and I are in such a small little beach resort surrounded by jungle that I haven't been more than 100 metres in any direction from where I sat right now writing this (except out to sea!). It's really nice to not have much to do, no bags to lug around, just the sea and the beach with good food and good people. We have made some nice friends while here too, locals and other travellers.

I tried a bit of surfing the other day with Lindsay & Brian from the U.S. and Inaki from Spain. All three of them are amazing surfers and make it look so easy. There are no waves on the shore, they are about half a mile out to sea near a reef, so we have to take a boat to get there. I jumped off the boat, paddled to the waves and pushed through a few to try and catch the edge of a small one, but the current dragged me towards the shallow water near the reef where the waves were breaking. I was out of breath and energy by the time I had paddled back out of there against the current so called it a day! Little dissappointed I didn't catch any waves, but it's so different trying to catch waves out to sea where the current is so strong, nothing like when I have tried it near the shore and generally within my depth.

Lindsay & Brian had a Nikon zoom lens with them which I borrowed to get some shots of them and Inaki surfing from the boat, as I said they make it look easy!

Today and yesterday have been pretty quiet, as nearly all of the guests went for an overnight trip to Nanuku island, which we're going to do a little later on. We've just been sat around chilling in the sun topping up the tan we lost whilst in New Zealand. I think the people who work here at Maqai resort have enjoyed it being quiet too, as they don't feel they have to 'entertain' so much like they do normally. Most days there are optional activities we can do, such as volleyball, surfing, fishing and trips to the villages and jungles. The other night, Simon, one of the locals, put on a traditional Fijian fire show.

Qamea Island, Fiji

Getting to Fiji has probably topped the list for the worst journey yet, which consisted of a ten minute lift to Nadi town, a four hour cramped bus ride to Suva, a nineteen hour boat ride from Suva to Taveuni, a one hour min bus ride followed finally by a 30 minute boat ride. The nineteen hour boat ride was particularly bad, as it was a very old rusty boat with nowhere to lay down. It was infested with cockroaches, literally hundreds of them. At one point, I counted 17 on the wall next to my chair where our bags were. However, it was definitely worth the persistence as the island of Qamea and our resort Maqai Beach are beautiful.

It is the wet season currently in Fiji, pretty much every evening without fail it rains, but it's sunny during the day so that's all that matters. As it is the last leg of our trip we opted for a double room instead of sharing a dorm room with several other people. The little bungalow we have is set right on a pure white beach with crystal clear waters. It's quite a small place, the island is only 5kms around and it is very remote. Electricity is only on between 6-11pm then it's lights out (at which point they plug a laptop into a satellite phone for some internet!).

Today I went out on the boat with a few of the other guests who were surfing. I would have liked to give it ago myself, but yesterday I was swinging into the sea on a huge rope swing hanging from a palm tree and managed to land straight on a rock and injure myself. Nothing too serious, just badly bruised my foot, hopefully it will be alright in a couple of days. The best waves break quite far out away from shore near one of the reefs, a short boat ride away. My lens didn't have quite enough zoom to get good enough photos, so tomorrow I'm borrowing a zoom lens and going back out there with them.

Arrived in Fiji

Last night was our last in New Zealand. We stayed at the same holiday park we had been staying at so we could get all of our clothes washed and everything sorted on the camper before having to return it this morning. Our bags have grown in size even more since we first hired the camper van. I can't remember buying anything particularly big in New Zealand, but both mine and Izzy's are packed to bursting point now!

Our flight was not too long, only taking three hours to get to Nadi International Airport in Fiji. First impressions on the country is... WOW! We found a nice hostel online that picked us up from our flight this afternoon. Every member of staff here has been super friendly, so much so it's quite unnerving. If a stranger was this nice to you in England, you'd be a bit concerned. Here's a shot of the beach across the road that I took a couple of hours ago...

The hostel has been super helpful with sorting out the rest of our trip too. They have a sister hostel on another island. I think this place is kind of a stepping stone to go from the airport to their other resort. So we have booked 6 nights there, from the day after tomorrow. Unfortunately it takes a three hour bus journey, 16 hour ferry trip, 30 minute taxi ride followed by another 30 minute boat ride. Everyone we have spoken to in the hostel has said it is paradise. I'm pretty excited about the activities we can do on the island, such as snorkel with sharks and manta rays, play in the natural waterfall/waterslides on the smooth rock, and spear fish with locals.

The owner of the two resorts has a 'secret' island which takes 10 mintues to walk around the outside of it. It has two buildings and rarely has more then a few people on it so I think we will be taking a little trip there for a day or so too.

My next blog post will probably be in a couple of weeks when I return to the main island before returning home because there is not much electricity, let alone wifi.

Auckland & Spookers

Auckland has been treating us well so far! Neither of us realised, but in New Zealand it is a legal requirement to keep your shop closed on Good Friday (as well as Easter Sunday). So we went into the city for some shopping on Friday, and it was a bit like a ghost town. The only shops that can legally open were souvenir shops, but they were all pretty tacky so we didn't buy anything. Instead, we headed back to the holiday park to cook an awesome lunch of couscous, chicken and spinach in pitta breads. It was nice to be able to use a proper kitchen at the resort, instead of the single stove we have in the back of the camper. As it was raining, our food was followed up by a trip to the cinema to see the new Fast and Furious film (more for my benefit than Izzy's, but she seemed to enjoy it).

Last night we went to a haunted horror/theme park known as 'Spookers', which was about an hour's drive south of the city. From what I had read online it was going to be pretty scary, and they were right. I've never come across anything like it in England.

Spookers is set in a closed and run down phsyciatric hospital, and is only open at night. While in the queue for tickets, 'scare' actors in full movie style, gory prosthetics walk around you. Our first encounter of the night was a guy with his face gashed up, bleeding all over himself who grabbed Izzy by the shoulder and held a pretend (but very real looking) knife to her neck. Once inside, we walked around the building in near darkness and through different themed rooms. The actors hide in shadows and behind curtains and doors all over the place and jump out at you when you least expect it; they grab your legs and neck. Some of the themes included a man covered in blood holding a machette in a room filled with body parts, another was a psychiatric patient sat in a corner shaking. We had to creep past him to get to the exit from the room, just as we thought we had passed him he started jumping and screaming right behind us. At one point we were walking down a narrow corridor in pitch black darkness, with one hand on the wall to guide us, while someone from above tried to grab us. It's hard to explain it without making it sound completely not scary, but it genuinely was! I couldn't take any photos, but here are a couple from their website...

Today we have been in the city checking out the shops, I didn't really spend any money as we don't have long left travelling and it would be nice to get home with a small amount of money for the summer, but Izzy picked up a few small things here and there. It was nice to be outside as it was probably the hottest day since we have been in New Zealand at around 25degrees celsius.

Craters of the Moon & Auckland

We stayed in Taupo for a couple of days in the hope of meeting up with Luke and Nicola, but unfortunately they were busy on the day they arrived and we are running out of time so couldn't hang around any longer.

On our way out of town Izzy and I visited the 'Craters of the Moon' just north of the lake before heading onwards to Rotorua. A large part of the North Island has natural thermal springs in the ground, and the 'Craters of the Moon' is a small area of condensed geothermal fumaroles. The walk that has been laid out by the Deptartment of Conservation weaves around most of the small craters in the floor. Some of which were a good 15-20 metres across with steam pouring out of them. The water reaches 140degrees and so sulphurous smelling steam bursts out of the ground and the acidic muddy water turns the edges of the steam holes bright red.

After spending an hour so walking around the steam holes, we got back in the car to drive an hour north to Rotorua, another town famous for its thermal springs, rightly so as you can smell the eggy sulphurous air of the town before you get there. Rotorua has plenty of shops for buying souvenirs, although it's hard finding things to buy as everything is either jade or bone carved into various maori symbols, and I'm not massively keen on either of those. We spent one night just outside of the town centre away from the smell, and moved onto Auckland the next day.

We arrived in Auckland early evening, and had a bit of a drive around the city to get our bearings. Izzy and I both agreed that we are going to enjoy this city. New Zealand has been very small communities spread out between vast distances and as nice as towns like Wellington have been, they are still small and lack a good variation of shops cafes and what not. However, the downside to Auckland is that because the city is so big, we struggled to find a rest area to sleep in. Even the internet says that there aren't any and that the police are hot on people sleeping in cars in this area.

After driving for a good hour or so we eventually found a DOC Marine Reserve car park to sleep in, although I doubt we were allowed to! Our alarm was set for 5:45am to get out of there before the DOC staff arrive to open the gates at 6am. We have now checked into a holiday park, which is costing us a fair bit, but at least we have saved plenty from the free DOC campsites we have been staying in.

This morning we went to Onehunga, just south of the city centre to visit an outlet shopping centre that Izzy had seen advertised. It wasn't as good as were hoping and the area was a bit of a dive!

This afternoon/evening we visited Auckland's SkyTower, which is the tallest building in New Zealand and the Southern Hemisphere. For $25 each we got to go to the main observation level on floor 52 and the upper deck on floor 60. We timed it just right to catch the sunset and the building and car lights beginning to illuminate the city streets.

We fly from Auckland on the 25th, so I think the plan is to spend the next few days in the city until then as there will be plenty to do (like visit a horror theme park at night! - check back after Friday for news about that)...

Back to the North Island, Lake Taupo

We got to Picton and booked our ferry back to the North Island for that night. It was supposed to leave at 10:30pm but didn't end up leaving until 2am for one reason or another. The sea was particularly rough, so I didn't manage to sleep at all. We arrived in Wellington at 6am, and drove to the nearest layby to catch up on some more sleep, before heading into town again. Both Izzy and I really enjoyed Wellington last time we were here and we knew there was still plenty for us to see.

Our flight leaves Auckland on the 25th, so we decided to head north to spend the next week in Lake Taupo, Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, Bay of Islands and Auckland. After a long evening of driving around 200 miles we reached Lake Taupo. Our first night in New Zealand was spent here, although we didn't stop to see anything as we bee-lined straight for the South Island.

Yesterday we visited Huka Falls. It's a waterfall on the Waikato River that runs off of the lake. Normally the river is 100 metres wide, but at the point of the Huka Falls, the water squeezes through a 15 metre gap. At the end of the gorge where the water falls, it is gushing through at 220,000 litres per second.

Nelson to Picton

We spent the night near the Abel Tasman National Park, but the weather has turned bad and we've had nothing but torrential rain for a few days now. I was hoping to do some kayaking, which is the best way to see the area but there are no lakes so you have to explore from the sea. Neither of us were really in the mood for kayaking in the choppy seas for a few hours in the rain so we moved on to the town of Nelson.

It has been raining in Nelson too, but at least here there are shops and other things to explore. New Zealand among other things, is famous for i's pies so we have been sampling plenty of those (I had a chicken and camerbert which was delicious!) along with lots of coffee in all the cafes in town with free wifi - keeps us out of Mcdonalds for their free wifi.

We visited Jans Hensen Jewellers, who were comissioned by Peter Jackson to make the ring for the Lord of the Ring's movies, and a few other shops around.

We're back in Picton now for the ferry crossing back to the North Island which we will be taking tonight at 22:30. We've seen so much already I can't belive there is a whole other island to explore.

P.S. It's a bit late coming, but you can now get notifications of my new posts by entering your email on the right hand side.

Driving north along the west coast

camper van that they couldn't stay here and if they didn't move the fine is $400. As he drove off I could see his van had stickers advertising a local camp site, so I swear he was moving people on so they would pay to stay at his place. We did move on anyway, about 5kms north was another rest area in a slightly more remote place where we didn't get any distruptions!

Today we have covered a lot of mileage driving north towards the Abel Tasman National Park, which apparently has some even more impressive scenery that can be explored by kayak on its rivers. We have stopped often but only for quick breaks and sight seeing.

One small village we passed, of no more then about 10 houses, we saw a sign saying 'Somebody's Treasures'. Izzy, being a fiend for charity shops and car boot sales obviously wanted to have a look inside. I think the building was an old church, that was full to the brim with second hand tat.

A couple of hours on, we stopped at a 'swingbridge' over the gorge that the road had been following. Normally my vertigo would kick in whilst walking over a thin single width bridge that you could see through down to the water below, but the skydive in Queenstown must have done me some good as I was fine crossing it. I even stopped to take some photos!

Our final stop for the day was at cafe/animal park for a quick drink. While you drink your coffee, you get to feed farm animals.

Franz Josef Glacier

Today me and Izzy took a half-day trip to Franz Josef Glacier. SImilar to Fox Glacier, you can walk free of charge up to the bottom of the ice, however to get onto the ice you need to be on a guided tour. It was $123, but also included entrance to the Glacier Hot Pools which are some mineral hot pools just down the road from the glacier.

We arrived at the tour guide centre at about 8.15am to be kitted out with our boots, waterproofs and crampons, and by half eight were crammed onto a bus to head to the glacier. For the half-day trip we got to spend about an hour and a half on the ice - a lot of time is taken up by walking to the ice from the car park. Even though the glacier looks only a ten minute walk away, it is actually a good 2kms over rocks and takes around 45 minutes, but the 2000ft mountains behind it make it look like it's a lot closer than it actually is.

As we got close to the ice we stopped to fit the crampons to our boots. Every morning tour guides go onto the ice to cut out steps for the day's tours, and these routes change daily as the ice is constantly moving.

Our guide for the day, Caleb, had to stop every so often to chip away at the ice and help keep the steps formed. The route cut through massive gorges of ice and tunnels made from warm air and water. A lot of the formations of ice were only made in the last week, and will change again within the next week. Standing on the rocks away from the ice, these gorges looked quite small, but on the glacier we soon realised how huge they were, as we walked through them they towered above us.

We arrived back in town around 12:30pm, and as we were collecting our vouchers for the hot pools I noticed Peter's (who we met in Australia) name written on a post it note. Turns out he's in town too, so we met up with him, and we'll probably hang around for another day or so before moving on north to the rest of the west coast.

West Coast & Fox Glacier

We headed north out of Queenstown along the west coast, and have now covered a total of over 3250kms (almost 2000miles). We stopped a few times along the way, mostly when we have been crossing the single lane bridges over massive gorges and rapids. We stopped early evening in the nice little town of Wanaka for some food and a sleep. I hope you're not getting bored with all the photos of lakes and rivers yet!

Yesterday we travelled further north towards Fox Glacier, stopping at Thunder Creek Falls and a beach. I'm not sure of the name of the beach but there were signs on the road leading up to it warning of debris in the road during storms. The sand was littered with masses of broken trees and smashed rocks. Our last stop for the day was Fox Glacier. There are day trips to walk on Fox Glacier, but we're going to hold off until Franz Josef Glacier which is another 30kms on.

Last night we slept in another free DOC camp site on Gillespies Beach, near Lake Matheson. The lake was perfectly still and perfectly reflected the mountains behind it. It's a shame it's been overcast because it would have looked even more impressive to see the snowcapped mountain tops that were hidden in the cloud. Today we have driven to Franz Josef Glacier, and fingers crossed it will brighten up a bit, so that hopefully we can take a walk on the glacier and see some blue ice.