New Zealand & Fiji

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starbug
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New Zealand & Fiji

Post by starbug » Feb 10th 2005, 12:00 pm

Yes folks, I will be absent from the forum for around 3 weeks, as of tomorrow (don't all jump with joy at once :wink: )... because I'm off to New Zealand! This has come round really fast - I think my life must be slipping away from me. We're stopping in Singapore on the way but our estimated travelling time in aircraft is 52 hours in the next 3 weeks... and 32,000 miles. Which is, literally, around the world.

I will also be stopping in Fiji on the way back, which I am really looking forward to. Full report and photos on my return, of course. I'm itching to try out the new digital camera... be warned! Seriously, I'm anticipating seeing the most beautiful country, and visiting some of those LOTR locations too.

We've booked ourselves on a heli-hike up the Franz Josef glacier, and generally plan on having a riotuous time. Mr. S is bungee jumping - we'll have to see if I can stomach it when we get there. I'm a bit too terrified of it to be honest.

:D :D :D 8) 8) 8) :D :D :D

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schris
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Post by schris » Feb 10th 2005, 1:49 pm

That sounds awesome Starbug!! I hope you have a great time. Look forward to seeing the pictures :D

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wicked
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Post by wicked » Feb 10th 2005, 2:12 pm

OH where in new zealand???? I lived in windy wellington for 6 months!

Kiora! have fun it's an extremely friendly place!
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Post by SanDeE* » Feb 10th 2005, 3:45 pm

That trip sounds fantastic! Have a fun time! Please do post pictures when you are back.
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Post by Natasha (candygirl) » Feb 10th 2005, 6:20 pm

That is so awesome! I have always wanted to visit both New Zealand and Fiji so I will be living vicariously through your pictures - can't wait to see them!

Bon voyage!
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Post by emmie » Feb 10th 2005, 8:25 pm

starbug, you go to the coolest places!! I am definitely envious, but in a good way!! have a great time

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Post by starbug » Feb 11th 2005, 6:05 am

Thanks all - just one more day to get through at work. I'm flying tonight. :D
wicked wrote:OH where in new zealand???? I lived in windy wellington for 6 months!
We're starting off in Auckland, driving to the Bay of Islands, and that's it for the North Island... then we're flying to Christchurch for a wedding, then kind of all around the South Island: Franz Josef glacier, Queenstown, Lake Wanaka, Milford Sound. It's a bit of a roadtrip... I can't wait! I'm doing the holiday dance at my desk. :sunshine:

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Post by Nothingman » Feb 11th 2005, 11:35 am

I'd love to visit New Zealand, I hope you and Mr. S. have a wonderful and safe trip.
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Post by Nostradamus » Feb 13th 2005, 9:51 pm

More swimsuit pics, please.

:P
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Post by lance » Feb 16th 2005, 8:58 pm

starbug wrote:Thanks all - just one more day to get through at work. I'm flying tonight. :D
wicked wrote:OH where in new zealand???? I lived in windy wellington for 6 months!
We're starting off in Auckland, driving to the Bay of Islands, and that's it for the North Island... then we're flying to Christchurch for a wedding, then kind of all around the South Island: Franz Josef glacier, Queenstown, Lake Wanaka, Milford Sound. It's a bit of a roadtrip... I can't wait! I'm doing the holiday dance at my desk. :sunshine:
Have a tremendous time.

-LanceMan

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Post by starbug » Mar 7th 2005, 5:23 pm

Man, I was sure I posted on this thread earlier. It must have got lost... or I just imagined it through the haze of jetlag.

Aaaaaaanyway, I was saying, I'm back! I had a fabulous time. We took around 200 photos which I have just looked at and I need to put together some kind of website thing because it's too much for my other site. I will also be writing a report once I have regained the power of literacy. At the moment I am still a little bit spaced so it's probably not the best.
:morning:

Work this morning was fun, obviously. It took us nearly 30 hours to get home and we arrived back at 3pm yesterday. this morning I thought I was dying. Seriously. Still, made it through the day.

Full report will follow soon, once I have cleared my desk of things to do and sorted out the photo thing.

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Post by starbug » Mar 11th 2005, 12:44 pm

OK, so I finally pulled my finger out. Here goes...

We left on a 10pm flight on the Friday, which was our first foolish error. Both of us had been at work all day by this point. It was 12ish hours to Singapore, a 1.5 hour stopover, and then pick up the Air New Zealand flight to Auckland, which is 10ish hours. We arrived in Auckland on Sunday due to them being so far ahead. Picked up the hire car and drove up to the Bay of Islands, which took around 4 hours. The car had a few problems since someone had clearly smashed into it - the steering column was off, so if you positioned the wheel so you'd be going straight, actually what you were doing was veering off to the right ie into oncoming traffic. that's no fun on bendy little roads. Aaaanyway. By the time we arrived at our first stop I am not kidding when I say I think both of us were a little delirious. We managed to go out and try to find some dinner, but when the waitress asked us what we wanted to eat, it was the freakiest thing - neither of us could form a complete sentence at all. I burbled 'coke' and 'salad' and practically fell asleep at the table. Not good.

So the next morning we got up, and the world looks different when you've shaken off the jetlag, that's for sure. Because you're SO screwed up and exhausted, one decent 13 hours of sleep will pretty much see you right, so it's important to stay up as long as you can and just hit the sack, get up in the morning and it's all cool. We were staying in Paihia, which the Lonely Planet describes as a 'frenzy' of activity. Well, sort of. In reality it's a pretty small town (this will become a theme...) which survives off the tourism coming to the Bay of Islands. The Bay itself is completely beautiful. Unfortunately photographs can't really do it justice: it's just that feeling of being in big, open space surrounded by water. It's also around 2 miles to the historical site of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi; an agreement the British and Maori made, for the governance of New Zealand. It's the most important document in NZ, although apparently the Maori got shafted. So, we went to see the grounds, which were very peaceful, watched an informative video, and then went on a 10km walk up to the Haruru Falls. The walk itself was far more impressive than the Falls. It was a great little forrest track, through some mangroves on a boardwalk, and with stunning views. That's pretty much all we could manage the first day.

The next day we went on a boat cruise, which was all day, and took us round the whole bay, with a stop for lunch in a secluded beach, for swimming. They also did something called 'boom-netting' which was effectively hanging a big net off 2 booms and dragging people round in the water, inside the net, at high speed. One guy lost his shorts and it was the most hilarious thing I have seen in a while. The boat stopped, which makes a massive reverse force very suddenly, and he called out 'Er, I need a second', at which point his shorts made a break for freedom from his ankles, and started heading out to the pacific... his bare behind was on full display, poor guy! Eventually his shorts were recovered for him and he had to try and put them on while maintaining dignity in front of 60 people. The crew had apparently been trying to get that to happen all week, and they consoled him with a free beer. Big rounds of applause. We also saw dolphins, but we couldn't go swimming with them (which was sort of the point of the trip for us) because they had juveniles with them (very cute they were too) and the NZ Dept of Conservation forbids it if that's the case. When we got back, we met up with some friends who were in the same area. He is a New Zealander who lives in the UK now but he and his wife were in NZ seeing his family. Then some other friends we were going on the roadtrip with anyway showed up. I can't tell you how weird it is to fly for an entire day, and meet up with people you literally saw last week. We had dinner and then went our separate ways.

We also went to Russell, which is across the bay, and has the oldest church in New Zealand. We found a black lab (or rather he found us) and made friends. He followed us back into town and then wandered off. But he was very obedient - he even sat for the photo when instructed!

We went up to Kerikeri, which is like the arts and crafts centre of NZ - it was pretty cool but there wasn't much to do other than shopping, so we found a vinyard nearby for lunch instead. Also on the way back we stopped at a beautiful bay. I wish I could remember the name because a fisherman just landed a 4ft6 fish that looked to me like a tuna, but thinner.

After all that it was back down to Auckland in the car. On the way we stopped at the coolest public toilets in the world: the Hundterwasser toilets. Check out the photos because words can't really explain it. Flew from Auckland to Christchurch, and were met at the airport by the reason for us being in NZ: Martin, the guy who was getting married. Also met up with 2 other friends coming in at the same time; it's the start of the roadtrip! Martin is Mr. S's friend who he went to Uni with and moved out to NZ after that, so he's been out there around 7 years. He's getting married to Toni. Collectively they're known as Martoni :wink: . We went to their rehersal dinner, and then got on with our own things in Christchurch. The accommodation was certainly interesting: lots of pine pannelling, in a sort of 70s way... it was cheap, that's all I'll say. For most of the time from now on, we're sharing accommodation in groups of 4, in sort of 'suite' arrangements. We went into Christchurch, but the boys spent the afternoon playing golf. the girls were supposed to go shopping, but myself and one other ditched that idea and looked at the cathedral, the botanical gardens, and the Arts Centre. Christchurch is interesting, but you really don't need more than a day to take it all in. I guess I was expecting it to be bigger and more cosmopolitan but the centre is pretty much of a nothing, apart from those three things. It's a culture thing: when people say 'city' I think 'London' and assume it's a mad chaotic melting pot of frenzy. So Christchurch was kind of like a pretty, small, town.

The wedding was beautiful: very emotional - neither bride nor groom could get through the vows they had written without tears... which set everyone else off. It was in a vinyard, under a big shady tree, and then inside for the meal and dancing. Needless to say, we drank to the point of silliness, and found out that there's a musical cultural gap too - Kiwi pop is certainly quite interesting! And stuff that's the mainstay of any British disco, they'd never heard of.

After the wedding, it's tradition in NZ to have a sort of 'open house' at the bride and groom's all day. If someone had suggested this to me the day after my wedding, I seriously would have punched them out, but Martoni decided to spend their honeymoon on a road trip with Martin's friends, so I guess I must be the intolerant one :shock:. We decided to give them some space and went to the local outdoor pool for the afternoon, and showed up later for a couple of hours. By that time they'd fed around 70 people (again) and were pretty tired, so we didn't stay long.

On Monday 7 of us (not Martoni) set off for the other side of the South Island via the Tranz Alpine Scenic Railway. It was very scenic, and I'm sure it's even more spectacular in the winter, with huge views across the mountains, and the highest mountain pass in NZ (Arthur's Pass). It took around 5 hours because somehow, even though we set off on time, we arrived late. The train has huge windows and a viewing car, but because of the motion and the wind (and the cold) it's hard to get decent photos.

So now we're in Greymouth, where we had the worst lunch you could imagine, after picking up another convoy of hire cars. Most of the gang ordered toasted sandwiches in a small cafe, and when they arrived, it was clearly two bits of toast, with some sort of liquid squeez cheez inside, and whatever other filling. There was butter all over the outside of the sandwich. My lunch was the worst though - I ordered Asparagus Roll, which I foolishly thought would be a bread roll filled with asparagus. What I got was a limp slice of bread smothered in margarine and wrapped around 2 soggy microwaved asparagus spears. I should have taken a photo of it but I was too embarrassed. It was bad enough that I couldn't look at my plate without crying with laughter... :D I'm delighted to say that was the one and only bad meal we had the whole time. We exited Greymouth quickly because it's a pretty awful town, and moved on to Franz Josef Glacier, which is about 2 hours south, down the coast.

The thing about the South Island is that nobody lives there. I mean nobody. There's around 1million on the whole island, and 700,000 live in Christchurch. The rest are spread out among the rest of the island, and most of them live in Queenstown. The only thing we could compare it with was our roadtrip around the states of Montana/Idaho. It's totally uninhabited by our standards! So, we get to Franz Josef and bearing in mind that this is like the hub of glacier-based activity in NZ, it took 'small' into a whole new dimension. The 'town' is basically one road no more than say 800m long, with various backpacker hostels and hotels, and then all the tourguide stuff you can do. We stayed in the Rainforest Lodge which was backpacker standard - we got our own room ensuite, for around £30. It was clean, and comfortable, but small. No mod cons. And some backpacker now has a nice supply of my chamomile tea that we left there :( . The next morning was the heli-hike, which was my present to Mr. S for his 30th birthday. It was super-expensive but worth every penny. You just have to look at the photos because I can't really explain how excellent it was. Basically it's a 10 minute helicopter ride up to the glacier - they do a really good scenic tour right up to the top, banking the helicopter, and getting really close to the mountains on either side. Then (it seems impossible but they manage it) you land on the glacier itself, and go on a 2 hour guided hike. Obviously you need crampons but they kit you out with all that, and an ice-pick. 'Moderate Fitness' is required, and they aren't joking: ice-walking is pretty hard going (and we do alot of hiking), and there was clearly one woman who struggled. They really shouldn't have let her on because she obviously wasn't at all fit, but as usual, quite how they broach the subject is the difficulty: 'sorry, you're clearly not up to this. Here's your money back. You can wait here for your husband.' :oops: Clearly they don't want to do that, so they let her on and she held everyone up because she had to go at the front. We saw some amazing stuff, and then the helicopter picks you back up and it's 10 mins down again. the photos are like a geography teacher's dream - you can make out the glacier's path for miles. Franz Josef is a 'wet' glacier which means it melts loads. It also moves twice as fast as other glaciers due to volume of ice and climate conditions combined. It's 11km long.

Once we'd done that it was off to Queenstown to meet up with the others again. It's around 4 hours further south, through beautiful scenery. We had one slight blip when we thought we'd take a 'shortcut' on what the map said was a tarmac road. we turned into the road, it's tarmac. It's tarmac for another 10 miles. And then suddenly it's dirt. And there's a whole little dirt-road community we discovered that's not on the map. Ever the adventurous, we decided we'd trust our sense of direction, and emerged onto a mainroad after several debates at junctions, and another 10 miles or so. The drive down into Queenstown (if you ever get to go, from Wanaka take the CROWN mountain range road, not the main highway - it's spectacular and shorter. It's just bendy.) is amazing. So we arrived and met up with everyone (now there's 9 of us again...) in the absolutely fabulous Glebe Hotel, 5* here we come! Martoni get corporate rates so once again it was practically free, and 5* was just what we all need after all that backpacker. While in Queenstown, we managed to fit in White Water Rafting (Grade IV - Shotover River for those rafters among you) which was excellent but the sandflies were biting! Far more scary was the road to get to the rafting drop-off though. It's called Skippers Canyon road and they don't let you take cars on there. It's a one-track dirt road with a sheer drop of a couple hundred feet on one side. It's bendy, and terrifying. So much so that they have to distract the passengers. We're in a bus, with 4 rafts on a trailer at the back, so we must have been around 60ft long, and I will never know how they got that thing up that road without killing us all. At one point, the only way to make it round a corner is to put the right front tyre of the bus into thin air, and use the left front tyre to edge round. I'm not kidding. But after you've survived that, you're like 'hey, yeah, rafting a mad crazy river will be fine!'. I also went horseriding at a stables who provided extras for LOTR... it was a great ride, very scenic, and they just let you get on with it: me and another girl were quite good so the guide was just like 'well, you canter off up there, stop when you get to a giant tree, and I'll see you there in 5 mins' which was really refreshing because it meant we weren't stuck with the beginners the whole time, walking. They're so trusting, it's amazing. Mind you, you've signed a watertight liability form before you even get to go on the ride... Everyone else was winetasting at this point; all I know is that it was good, involved plenty of wine, and cheese (which I can't eat anyway I've recently discovered). Mr. S also did his bungy jump here. I don't mind admitting it looked terrifying: I was trying to hold the camera but the photos are blurry because I was shaking with fear. It's really hard to watch someone you love hurl themselves off a 43m high platform :shock: and even though it's obviously safe, it's still pretty awful. He loved it though. Mr. C, one of the friends, did it too and they can calibrate the cord so it dunks you into the water - he went in up to his waist which was apparently very cold indeed because the water's all glacier-melt :D . We also went to Deer Park Heights, where parts of LOTR TTT is filmed. There were lots of animals there which I don't think were quite indigenous to NZ but it was fun nonetheless. The next morning was the canyon swing.

The Shotover Canyon Swing is terrifying. Seriously. We rafted under it the previous day and some of us thought it looked like fun... they make a guy jump while the rafts are going underneath, as an advert, and it looked great. So we thought we'd fit that in. Basically you jump from a platform that's 109m above the canyon floor. At the bottom is the Shotover river. So you're in a full harness, and the rope (note, not elastic bungy cord) is at your waist at the front (as opposed to bungy which is obviously on your feet) and effectively you're sitting down. You jump, freefall straight down for 60m and then get caught by this giant rope swing, effectively, which swings you in a 200m arc across the canyon and back a few times. At the lowest point, you're 10m above the water. to illustrate: this is like jumping from the torch of the Statue of Liberty, plus another 10m. You're harnessed to 2 ropes, which are in turn attached to another rope which is fixed across the canyon, so you swing from a fixed point in the middle of the canyon. There are various different jump styles you can do. Check it out: http://www.canyonswing.co.nz/ - anyway. Mr. S went first because he has no fear, and executed the perfect 'pin-drop'. that's 5 pairs of pants on the scare-o-meter. I was up next, and I was white and shaking with fear. The guys at the edge are really good but it still took them around 4 mins to persuade me to actually do it. It's the strangest thing - I was around 1.5ft from the edge, all harnessed up, and they were telling me to move closer to the edge, and I physically couldn't move my foot. My brain was just petrified with fear and I was near tears. They have a massive store of little psychological tricks they use to get people to overcome their fear, and it's great. They start off with 'you CAN do it. Deep breath, and take one step forward', then it's 'there's a part of you that came out here to do this. You WANT to do it. That's why you're here. Tap into that part etc etc.' None of that worked, so then it's 'well, if you just step off, and you don't like it, we'll winch you back up, no problem, there's a little platform just down there you can't see.' Obviously you don't need to be Einstein to figure that's a pile of steaming rubbish - and I quickly told them so. Meanwhile they are edging you forward slowly, and once you step forward, there's 2 guys RIGHT behind you, so you can't back up again. Strangely, the thing that worked was a simple countdown. He said, 'Right, I'm going to count you down from 5, and on zero, or before, you can go. OK? Sometimes that works for people.' So he started, loudly yelling, so everyone's looking. By the time he gets to 2 I'm still thinking 'what the hell am I doing?', and I am quaking, but somewhere in a dim haze of consciousness realise that it's now or never... and I have to do this for my own sanity. So deep breath, and then, I'm falling. Falling, falling, falling, and it's really deeply terrifying, but it only lasts around 2 seconds and then the rope catches you (but you can't feel it) and swings you into a big arc and I burst into tears with relief right then. It is a truly amazing feeling, because you've overcome serious terror, all your bodily survival functions and adrenaline have kicked in, and it's a huge headrush. You feel like cheering, laughing, screaming, whooping and crying all at once. I'd do it again in a second, now I've recovered. I doubt there's a drug on earth with that effect.

After I'd jumped, the other girls we were with 'upgraded' their spectator tickets to jump tickets... :D

Anyway, then it was back in the car and along to Milford Sound, which isn't physically far away from Queenstown at all, but it's a 4.5hr drive on some silly road that goes in a big loop. At Milford we went on an overnight boat cruise. All in all it was the low-point of the holiday. Here's an indication: the Lonely Planet describes it as 'backpacker' and 'institutional'. It's not good. Anyway, Martin had billed it to us all as 'luxury' and we didn't catch on to the irony, so like fools we agreed. The boat sleeps 60, in 4-person 'cabins'. I say 'cabin' because the walls don't meet the ceiling by about 8 inches clearance, and there's no door, only a curtain. There was nowhere to keep your stuff secure. the floorspace is about 2.5ft by 6.5ft, and if you want the toilet in the night you have to go upstairs, onto deck, to the back of the boat, into a cubicle. Nice. it was filthy, overcrowded, and generally a big steaming pile of dreadfulness. And I'm not a particularly high maintenance girl. The scenery was cool, but I just wanted off that boat, so it was kind of hard to focus. In the morning we saw dolphins which sort of made up for the lack of sleep (you can hear a fly fart in those conditions, so people singing drunkenly upstairs is a guaranteed sleepless night. Earplugs and sleeping pills notwithstanding). They came right up to the boat and even started leaping out of the water and playing about. They also had babies with them, which was lovely. It was way better than the Bay of Islands dolphins, which were pretty far away in comparison. We docked again at around 9.30am and got straight back in the car for the 5 hours back to Queenstown. Back in Queenstown we went to see a kiwi bird but they're nocturnal so it's really dark and you can't use flash photography. It was very cute though. Then we went to Lake Wanaka, which was nice. However, by this time my thighs had something weird going on due to overexertion while horseriding (at least I think that's what it was; it was either that or DVT, and I'm still alive...) and had swelled up to literally twice their size. It was basically muscle inflammation and nothing would take it down again. I could seriously hardly walk, and none of my clothes fit. I had to wear a sarong everywhere for 2 days. It kind of took the edge off Wanaka, I have to say. I think it had to do with me riding one-handed due to having to hold on to the stupid bag I had brought, that bounced around every time we trotted or cantered (which we did alot), and overcompensating by gripping with my knees more than you really should, or I was used to...or whatever. Anyway, it was a week before they were fully back to normal and I felt like a giant hippo in the meantime. After Wanaka we drove back to Christchurch via Twizel, which was cool because we saw the Pelennor Fields, and lake Pukaki, which is that colour because of the super-fine glacial silt which never settles, and colours all the water turquoise. We also drove to the plot of land in Lake Tekapu which Martoni have just bought, to build their holiday home. We went to Arrowtown where more of LOTR was filmed. It's a nice town but wasn't anything special. Eventually we made it back to Christchurch to stay the last night in the Martoni house before catching the plane to Auckland and then Fiji.

Observations on New Zealand:
Nobody lives there, especially in the south island. We were continually dumbfounded by the fact that what looks like a major town on the map is in reality around 500 people.
Kiwis will tell you something like it is. they're very polite most of the time but they don't mince their words. If you've asked what is (to them) a dumb question, they'll look at you like you're from outer space. Much of the time this is their fault for being 20 years behind the rest of the world, but they don't know that so you get stared at. they don't take too well to the suggestion that there's another way of doing something.
the Maori culture is fascinating. Plus, the people are huge. the average maori is a good 4 inches taller, and definitely a whole lot wider. It's not fat, it's just big-ness, if that makes any sense.
I defy anyone to leave queenstown without doing something that looks really dangerous and stupid. It's fantastic!
The sun really is stronger, not just hotter, there. We both suffered sunburn, and we were really careful. You can burn in 5 mins, and the Kiwis take it seriously for a reason. Same goes for Fiji.

So...on to Fiji. May I preface this by saying that resort holidays are not my thing, but we knew we'd need to relax before coming home, so we stopped over for 5 days. Fiji itself was lovely from what we saw, which wasn't very much - and the people really are as welcoming as you've heard. We stayed the first night in a hotel near the airport since we got in at about midnight, and made our way to the resort the next morning, about 1.5 hrs drive along the coral coast in a taxi. The resort was supposed to be 4* so we were a bit surprised when there was no TV or radio in the room. That was OK though, because it means you don't languish in a heap. We did have a morning of activity, sea-kayaking and snorkelling off the coast. The reef is amazing; it's like a real Finding Nemo world down there - I saw all sorts of fish, and they aren't scared at all - some will even come up to you and have a look at you before swimming off. At one point I saw a mother fish and all her little babies, which was excellent. At another point I nearly died of fear because I thought I saw a sea snake: banded sea kraits are common in fiji, and 3x more venomous than an indian cobra. But I needn't have worried; I was being silly and it was a sea slug. Hey, they're long and they look like a snake!
The resort holiday isn't really my thing though: I don't enjoy enforced poolside 'entertainment' and I'm not willing to go through that again. I also hate all the sun-lounger nonsense and the fact that people are rude about it and possessive. There were lots of Australians on hen parties and stuff like that, and after 5 days, in truth I was ready to come home. The firewalking display was also a giant disappointment. In my head I had imagined a 10m long fire-pit full of red-hot coals. In reality it was a few warm stones which to be honest with you I'm pretty sure I could have walked over myself. It was deeply touristy and generally naff. the Kava Ceremony was slightly better and I would have tried some Kava but I had the misfortune of seeing how it was made: basically it's a piece of root soaked in water and wrung through what looks like an old dishcloth. It's made in a filthy-looking bowl and is the colour of really milky tea. We didn't try some because we were flying out soon and didn't fancy getting poisoned and throwing up on the way home. We did however, buy some root so we can make it at home and I will do so.

We flew out in the evening again (don't do it - it's a killer) so took off at 11.35pm from Fiji. Immediately, you cross the dateline into yesterday, which totally screws with your head because you arrive in LA several (around 9) hours before you set off from Fiji. Essentially, we lived through 2 full 5th March's one in Fiji and one in LA - it's like groundhog day, because you land in LA halfway through 5th March No. 2, and still have to live through a whole new day that you've already done. You get on a flight again and all that. It's bizarre. We pleaded for an upgrade on the second leg because it's 10.5 hours Fiji to LA and we were nearly dying. Cruddy Virgin Atlantic refused to let us use our frequent flier miles to do it, which meant it was back in economy for another 10hr flight back to London. I don't think I've ever been so glad to get home in my life.

All in all it was a wonderful trip. And if you've read this far, you deserve a medal! :D that turned into quite a report... but at least it illustrates why it felt like we were away for a year. I think we will go back to NZ because we really didn't see all there is to see - it's partly symptomatic of being in a large group, and partly because NZ is such a supreme country.

Check out the photos here: http://community.webshots.com/user/ripcurlgal
if you can't see them let me know... I've never used that site before and it might be a little quirky.

Now, fingers crossed as I hit 'submit' that this doesn't crash...

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http://www.urban-hills.blogspot.com
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Natasha (candygirl)
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Post by Natasha (candygirl) » Mar 11th 2005, 3:51 pm

Wow, that was an epic post! Thanks for sharing the story of your trip with us - I love living vicariously through other people's vacations! I'm off to look at all the photos now.

ETA: New Zealand is so beautiful - the water is such a gorgeous color. Hee, you weren'd kidding about those toilets! Are those real glass bottles in the walls?

Awww, the wedding pictures are so sweet. I am a mushy girl, so I love when people cry at weddings.

Seeing the sheep pictures made me think of The Thorn Birds. I read that book when I was 11 or 12 and it made me want to visit to New Zealand and Australia. Surprisingly, my parents didn't want to take a family of five on vacation there. :wink:
Last edited by Natasha (candygirl) on Mar 11th 2005, 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Natasha aka candygirl :: MSCL.com

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SanDeE*
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Post by SanDeE* » Mar 11th 2005, 4:07 pm

starbug: Wow! What an amazing, amazing trip! I am so jealous. You've certainly convinced me to put NZ & Fiji on my places-to-visit list.
Um, in my room, one seam is a little off and I stare at it constantly. It's, like, destroying me.

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schris
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Post by schris » Mar 11th 2005, 6:51 pm

The pictures are gorgeous!! Thank you for sharing them with us!

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