More good times in Fiji.
We had a good morning walking along to the local village by invitation of Andrea the gardener. It was hot as h... (certainly 35o+(100f+)) and humid, so by the time we got there the sweat was running off us and a hose down would have been ideal. We accepted kumquat & lime juice instead and met some of Andrea's family who, although they too thought it hot, certainly weren't dripping like us red-hot Scots. We were then taken into the village and I had to wear a ????(kilt) to meet the chief as all men wear the traditional dress. No hats allowed either and sunnies are certainly frowned on when personally visiting the chief. The chief is disabled so we all sat on a floor mat and Andrea gave him our gift of kava root, which was subject to a small ceremony. We were then invited to go forward and introduce ourselves individually. This then allowed us to be in the village and to have a look about. This being done we had a laugh as I said we had been sent by the Scottish Rugby Union to complain about the beating that Fiji gave Scotland in the sevens last week. This has been a great ice-breaker while here with lots of people. Fijians are wild about rugby, no wonder when they are so good at it. They were around 60 of them crowding round the TV shop window last week watching the final. Lots of shops shut and bars full for the match. I digress, back to the village...... Having thus appeased the chief, we were then able to muscle in on an official tourist trip to the village ( 6 bus loads of Germans who had all come off a cruise ship anchored in the bay for the day )– yikes, we're not tourists!!! We also brought the average age down by about 30 years. However, we did enjoy the spectacle put on by the villagers: singing, spear dancing, ceilidh dancing, kava ceremony, coconut milk etc. We then escaped the crowds back to Andrea's house for more drinks before walking back along the beach. Our trip out to the reef was foiled by a swarm of angry wasps which stung Jack, Kate and myself as we tried to get back into the house – very nasty. So instead of a swim, we took the bus to town and salved ourselves internally with an ice cream sundae after a curry in a tiny local restaurant where we all had our fill for a total of £3.50.
Sailosi (the housekeeper) is cooking dinner for us tonight- fish in coconut milk. Limes and coconut from the garden and he showed us how to extract the coconut milk by grating the flesh and wringing this through grass which has been soaked in the sea for a couple of days and dried – it worked and tasted very fine! Also treated to an amazing display of thunder and lightning over the sea and hillside. Another difficult day in Paradise!
PS. The children took their wasp stings like troopers, but their father not to be outdone had to let his foot swell up so he looks like he has gout, quite likely too. Three days on and you should see the size of his swelling.

Pics. Gary and Sailosi ritually mixing kava. Jen in dance mode at the village. Male spear dance.

Bula from Fiji

Bula from Savusavu, Fiji.
A quick 3hrs gets you to Fiji's main island from NZ – no sign of a coup. We then flew out the following day to Vanau Levu, an hour's flight in a few oil drums joined up with a wing stapled on top. It did come into the small craft category with almost having to slide along the floor to get to your seat to avoid cracking your head on the top of the drum.
Landing was amusing when I saw the pilot's view, he was aiming at a hillside. After a while a strip running into the sea could be seen and down we went. The pilots nearly took out the arrivals lounge when parking up with their wingtip. The best arrival Jen and I have had in years with the airport measuring 30'x15', very quaint and naturally no exterior walls to talk of. We were whisked away by waiting taxi and settled down for a bit of a run. I had hardly done up my seatbelt when we were told it was time to get out, we had arrived. 3 mins had passed.
We are staying in a terrific property set in 5 acres with fruits, flowers, bananas and coconuts all available for the taking. We have been getting the best Fijian hospitality from Sailosi the caretaker and Andrea the gardener. J&K are schooled on how to drop coconuts, which to drop, how to get into them, which tree provides a natural hollowed stem for a straw and how to present them to the parents with a hibiscus on top.
Jen is having a good time cooking breadfruit, about the size of a melon and actually tastes like a potato but grows up a tree; cassava roots which also taste like spuds and anything else we get at the market. We have a huge bunch of bananas hanging at the front door that Andrea brought in. He turned them upside down yesterday and put salt on the stalk to help them ripen.
Have tried brewing kava, the local grog which should give a fuzzy feeling, but need more practice so Sailosi is to show us how it's done tomorrow. Also have a bunch of dried kava roots to take to the local chief as a gift so we can get into Andrea's village proper. Jen and the kids have already walked along the beach with Andrea to his house so that the local herbal lady could look at Kate's sore fingers (heat rash as in Aus.) and were given a bottle of oil. Now we've been invited for tea!
Everyone here waves, smiles and speaks, and if local to the house, they introduce themselves immediately. Generosity is natural to them and they aren't looking for anything in return. I think this is the friendliest place that I have been in all my traveling. Even today we stopped on a back road to be bloody nosey at what was going on at a shed(see pic) and were immediately welcomed by the village men. They were heating coconuts to be able to extract the oil but they were also tasty as they gave us some. Unfortunately no oil for sale then. They were eating oranges and insisted we took some away with us and wouldn't accept anything in return. We had some banter about Fiji beating Scotland in the rugby this week and moved off. These people are truly generous when they have massively less income then anyone in Europe, but spend more time smiling than most too.
Just back from an amazing snorkelling trip just round the bay from the Jean Michel Cousteau resort – the biggest variety of tropical fish and coral in a small area – fabulous colours and shapes – see Jack's photos!

Pics. The coconut boys, the airport with bull and one pic which Jack took this morning from our snorking trip.

Farewell to NZ

Farewell to NZ again.
Jen having spent hours on the phone to Air New Zealand from the south island managed to get us “free” flights up to Tauranga using our existing round the world tickets. These tickets allow you, lets say, 40,000 kms and you must go in an easterly direction. This allows you to muck around with the dates at no cost, but if you change the routing then a service charge applies.
Back into Tauranga to say cheerio to Doug, Ange and weans for 5 nights. One of the musts for adults and weans alike was to get down to Rotorua to go the Luge. As you can see in the pics it's a concrete dodgems track down through the trees, then jump on a chairlift to get back for another hurl.
With a choice of three tracks, you can quickly convince yourself that full speed down the advanced is too easy, so lets try single handed quickly followed by a pirates eye -patch. This obviously builds until you try backwards in the cart, over the edge. A splendid morning's racing was had with bumping and cutting the competition off at the bends - perfectly gentlemanly conduct. I would have to admit that having a 120% weight advantage over the weans did have a small benefit. Who would like to see one in Scotland, I have a site in mind, a wee project for the return?
We managed to borrow a house out at Waihi Beach and took the 6 weans out for 2/3 days. The beach is 10kms long and gets a real pounding by the surf, but still safe enough to get thrown about in the waves. A grand fort was constructed with two defence walls to keep the high tide out, and bedecked in shells as a warning to the sea as to the quality of its construction. Some of us went down at 22.00 to inspect the high tide and got soaked through in the rain. All sound. Back at 08.30 and not so sound. Outer wall breached, well not there actually, but the inner wall intact, 1 All.
Jack the human fly actually manged to extricate himself from the 1 ton pile before the tide came in.
A good couple of days with the cousins before they went back to school. Jack and Kate were very disappointed not to be going back too?? It's too bad there is 12,000miles between Scotland and NZ
as the cousins do get on very well, even with the large time lapses between visits that are inevitable.
New territory beckons, Fiji in the wet season................

In Nelson, top of New Zealand's South Island visiting friends the Worsleys and my school friend Heather. Another easy spot to settle in with a good lifestyle, property prices inexpensive by UK standards, fruit and vegetables everywhere at bottom prices, ice cream, coffee and scones, beaches and oh yes, the sun. So will we leave? Read on........
Determined to do something energetic in the Abel Tasman National Park Jenni eventually found someone willing to take the weans out on kayaks for two days. Abel Tasman is only accessible by foot or sea, not a road in it. You can tramp right up it and book into their bunk huts overnight, believe me you don't want to be shy to stay in the huts. Once you are at the top you can call up a water taxi and get whisked away back to the start. How civilised does that sound when your blisters are fairly festering. What a brilliant job roasting about in a high powered water taxi up a beautiful section of coastline.
We set off with our double kayaks fully loaded with all camping stuff and supplies for two days for seven of us, Kyle our guide plus Dave and James from the UK.
Day 1 we saw lots, and listened to Kyle's story telling- true or bluff? on the way up the coastline to Anchorage Bay - our camp spot for the night. Kyle produced top end food for us including carrot cake, mud cake, pavlova, quite astounding what appeared from the bowels of the kayaks. He had us playing good games after dinner and he was excellent with J&K as were James and Dave.
Day 2 was wet when we started so it was on with the polyprop sexy leggings(see pic) and semit.
Kayaking in the rain was quite pleasant and seeing the coast in different lights was interesting. Morning tea/coffee and cake seemed all the better in the rain. We paddled out to islands where we got up close to fur seals and pups, watched a seal throwing a squid around for a few minutes until it was soft enough to swallow. There were bottlenose dolphins on the go too.
We finished the day in Barks Bay and were whisked away by taxi after loading on all our kayaks and gear. We didn't think that we had gone very far but you got a better idea of distance on the taxi. What was interesting upon return to the starting beach was that the tide was a long way out. In the water were about eight tractor and trailers. We selected ours and drove straight on. The taxi driver then became tractor driver and drove about .5km over the beach and back to the road to unload with us still in the taxi boat on the trailer. Back to base for an ice cream and an adult dinner out that evening. Steak seemed the choice having been out in the field for weeks now, or was it one night?
We stayed with the Worsleys for about 1 week in all and went camping with them too for a couple of nights. Although it's summer, we could see our breath one night when camping, memories of Scottish camping? The weather here too wasn't what they would normally expect. This is the one thing that we have consistently heard most places that we have been.
The Worsleys have kids of similar ages to ours - and a pool so the kids all used the pool lots. We were sorry to leave, but the North Island and Fiji beckoned!

Return to Australia Jan 07

Time again for the not so weekly janitor's report. This week I can say that all cockroach, ant, snake and wombat infestations have been dealt with in the appropriate manner.(allowing J&K to get in about them with sticks) Oz animal welfare groups are still hunting us down as we “speak”.
Since returning to Aus on Jan 7th we managed to achieve selling our Nissan for a decent price and immediately too, I almost had to walk home to achieve the sale. We had to get a hire car to cover the gap, however Jen managed to get a one-way from Brisbane to Sydney(1000kms) for £6 a day as our flights back to NZ were from Sydney.
We eventually found a shipping co. to use after a vast amount of dead end tracks and then packed up all our stuff. Kayaks, bikes and camping gear into anything we could stuff full. This period was naturally completely stress-free and not a bad word passed between the warring factions. G “I'm not paying for that trash to be shipped into Europe when it could be dumped”. G “Don't the French sell bed linen anymore?”. J “These items have more emotional attachment to me than you'll ever have”, and on it went. Not an occasion passed when one word would have done but it translated into a tirade. This stuff arrives in France in about 6-8 weeks when we should have finished counselling!
We managed a few tourist things before leaving Sarah & Darryl's after getting rid of all our baggage, emotional or otherwise. We made it up Mount Warning after delaying our departure by 24hrs to shin up it. We were virtually in the car to leave when Jen determined some severe exercise was required. Sarah and Darryl couldn't believe their luck that we were staying another night, again! It was 1200m high starting from 300m and quite severe at the top finishing the last 200-300m pulling yourself up on a chain at 45o. We watched an eagle cruise by when at the top and you could walk 360o to get the full view. We had another farewell dinner at S&D's before heading on to Sydney taking the slow route. We had 3 days before flying so we meandered down through Tamworth to visit the Country Music Festival for lunch. I managed, at Jen's insistence, a Chinese massage which involved the executioner walking on my back and legs followed by a kicking session into my back. Then when I thought I had suffered enough, he stuck a massive herbal plaster on my hairy back. This plaster 18cm x 9 stuck like a limpet for 5 days and gave no ground even after being soaked in the swimming pool for 1 hour. I took it like a man and wept for an hour after it ripped out every hair on the way off. The Chinese fairly like a joke.
After driving through the Great Dividing Range and the Blue Mountains we reached Sydney at 5pm and really had no problem in traffic considering it was rush hour in a city of 3.5m. Our apartment was superb with 2 balconies, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and kitchen on the 15th floor for £85 a night. J&K loved the height and the lifts which were“cool”.
The following morning, my 46th birthday, I was rudely awoken at 6.30am and forced out of bed. We found a taxi and headed off for the harbour bridge which, unknown to me, we were booked to climb up and over. We were lucky and were taken up on our own. After crawling through the underbelly of the bridge we popped up on the main structure and started up. Once at the top you got a fine view over the Opera House and Darling Harbour. While at the top we discovered through the guide that Sweeney Todd was on at the opera and tickets were available. After breakfast overlooking the OH we got the opera tickets.
Out the front of the opera house was a temporary tennis court which invited anyone to have a shot against the ball machine, the pro, have your serve measured and analysed. We had a bit of fun there. Afternoon at the museum and The Rocks and watching buskers, then we finished the day in the opera house which was very good and a good introductory for J&K. An excellent full-on day for our last in Australia.
We certainly have unfinished business in Australia and another 6 months is required in future to complete the circuit.