My Travel Philosophy

I definitely learnt a lot from the last six months. And because I'm a little bit of a nerd, I wrote down a few major things I've picked up along the way. Most of these apply to life in general as well :)

12. Traveling is less about the places you see and more about the people you see those places with.

11. You discover the joys of new cultures and people. You giggle about differences in language but find you soon start using those terms as well.

10. You become a good judge of character and very independent. You learn how to ask for something or for help because it's always easier than doing it on your own. The worst that can happen is you're told no.

9. You learn that traveling as a backpacker, everyone is in the same situation and you have a quiet respect for others stuff and their personal space.

8. You learn just how special your friends back home are when they make a point to always keep in touch and will Skype you at 5am just because you needed to see a familiar face.

7. I've learned that you choose and blaze your own trail. You make your own opportunities or at the very least take advantage of them where and when you can. Don't be shy, be open to change. Change is usually where new adventures lie.

6. You learn that there really are amazing, incredible, honest, and kind strangers out there. And you learn to pay it forward whenever you can because someone did it for you.

5. Friendships can be formed in mere moments and you can know someone extremely well after only a few days of being with them. This is a blessing.

4. You learn how bittersweet it is to say goodbye. You're so thankful to have formed that relationship yet it is always so difficult to leave that new friend. With every person you meet you will have to say goodbye but you throw yourself into that relationship anyway because what you gain from it is always worth more than the pain of leaving each other.

3. You learn that traveling really is the ultimate freedom as you wake up every day with the wonderful decision of deciding what to do, where to to go, who to meet, and how you want to make that day worth every moment.

2. You learn how lucky and grateful you are for the little things :)

1. There is nothing more attractive than being yourself. Be honest, be kind, and always, always, be who you are.

The Final Stretch

Australia Round 3 - Days 150-178

So this is my final stretch of my travels and boy has it been a great month! You might think I’d be able to pick one thing that tops my entire trip, but I really can’t. Everything was absolutely amazing and all the experiences were so different. NZ was definitely my favourite country to travel in, and the one where I spent the most time, but Oz definitely gave it a run for its money this final month.

I was quite sad to leave NZ and was pretty bummed out when I flew into Surfers Paradise so I just took a day off to myself and flew up the next morning to Cairns where my adventures really started. I spent a day out on the Great Barrier Reef doing my first ever scuba dive and it was just unbelievable. We had terrible weather, and within minutes people were losing their lunch over the side of the boat but everything changed once you slid under the surface and checked out all the amazing marine life living on the reef. The weather while I was in Cairns wasn’t the greatest, but it was so hot and humid that even when it rained you almost didn’t mind it. I spent another day headed up to Cape Tribulation, one of the only places in the world where rain forest meets the ocean (very Jurassic Parkish). Two German girls and I rented a car and went on a grand adventure. We didn’t get to see any wild crocodiles or cassowaries but we saw a bunch of great signs telling us to beware of crocs and stingers while swimming. I assume everything in Australia is poisonous and will kill me.

I chilled out a few more days in Cairns and happened to win a Castaway Island trip using my superb (Ha!) air guitar skills. It was a pretty ridiculous thing but totally worth the pricey trip! After Cairns I headed down to Magnetic Island just outside Townsville (near where Cyclone Yasi hit in January). You could still see a lot of damage left by the cyclone, lots of buildings still in pieces and places being restored. Magnetic Island is part of a large World Heritage Site and is just off the mainland where World War II Forts were built. I spent two days on the island in a really cool hostel (felt a bit like Fiji) and spent both nights at the hostel bar playing some fun bar games and having a great time. I also managed to snag another 10 night Base hostel card for free! I checked out the old forts and came across a really cool set of small waterfalls I could climb up and swing into on a rope swing. Definitely a place I would recommend anyone to visit if they got the chance!

After Maggie Island I continued my way down the coast to Airlie Beach, probably one of my favourite places on the East Coast and the gateway to the unbelievably beautiful Whitsunday Islands – a collection of 74 islands off the coast. I spent two days in Airlie Beach and lucked out after weeks of rain to have absolute pristine weather. The first night there I headed out to the bar and happened to catch up with five girls I had previously met along my travels and we had a great ladies night out together, capping it off with the backpackers favourite meal: Mickey D’s! I spent a mellow afternoon chilling out the next day and that night ended up chatting with two Ozzie’s planning to hit up the UK and the US in a few weeks. They wanted some advice on the US and we ended up sitting up chatting until 6 in the morning. So random how you meet people while traveling! The next day I grabbed my gear and hopped aboard the boat the Tongarra – my home away from home for two nights on the Whitsundays. I had an epic three days as we had a great crew of British, French, and Irish, and also another Canadian! We spent the time chilling on the boat deck, sunning ourselves, snorkeling, drinking ridiculous amounts of goon (cheap box wine) and watching the stars as we slept on the deck. We also made a stop at Whitehaven Beach which has sand like icing sugar, and turquoise water that matched how amazing Fiji was. If you haven’t yet, take a look at some of my photos – the water was just amazing! The night we got off the boat we all spent one last hurrah together in the bar as several of us were moving on the next day. We had a great night with free pizza and lots of dancing! I even somewhat learnt a French two step!

I headed out on the bus down to Agnes Water and the town of 1770. A place that’s not given a lot of attention down the coast but somewhere I wish I had a few days more to spend. It’s a laid back, chilled out surftown, with the very popular Scooteroo and where I also did my Castaway Island trip. The flight out to the island was almost better than the trip itself! How it works is that a four-seater prop plane flies 12 people out to an island and leaves them there till the next day. I was hoping it’d be really rough and tough but they do have a camp kitchen and tents already set up for us. They also have some walks you can do, a place to snorkel and some water toys to play with. The flight there and back was amazing – the pilot did everything short of a barrel roll! We did climbs and dives and really steep turns. We weren’t aware of it and the pilot surprised the two of us in the backseat when he started diving towards the Earth. Such a rush! I had a great time on the island, just relaxing and enjoying the nice weather. We even built a massive fire on the beach that night and had a great beef stew for supper. I hilariously (although some would disagree) had a little mishap with my camera. When I was using the outdoor toilet… my camera managed to slide out of my pocket… and down the outhouse toilet! I couldn’t believe it haha. I made one of the guys get me a massive stick (turned out to be a fishing rod) and I fished it out of the outhouse. I took it down to the ocean (thankfully it’s water proof) and spent the next ten minutes washing and scrubbing it in the sand and surf. Don’t worry guys, I also hand sanitized the crap (no pun intended) out of it! Hahaha How ridiculous things are sometimes!!

The next day we ventured down the island and picked ourselves some raw oysters… fun to do, but not very fun to eat raw! (especially for a prairie girl – but cool to try nonetheless). We did a little photo shoot on and around the plane and then headed back to Agnes Water. I had my Scooteroo that afternoon – a great time where you get to ride choppers around the two towns and then watch the sunset over the water. They hook you up with flaming helmets, tattoos and leather jackets. I must admit I felt pretty badass! I met two Canadians on the trip and we hit it off. I also think I embarrassed some guys by passing them on my bike, definitely not gonna let the guys lead the whole time ;). One guy especially took it personally that a girl passed him and things got fairly competitive but I thought it was all quite amusing! After Scooteroo, the two Canucks and I hit up the bottle shop, grabbed some beer and wine and spent the evening on the beach chatting and climbing massive trees pushed up onto shore by the surf. Was a pretty fun evening on the beach!

The next day I was off to my next destination: Rainbow Beach! This is the gateway to Fraser Island – the world’s largest sand island which surprisingly supports a lush vegetation of tropical rainforest and a large population of wild dingos! I spent my first night there hanging with the Canadian I met on the Whitsundays and celebrated his birthday with him. Interestingly enough he’s moving to SK in a couple weeks (no one out here knows where SK is unless they’ve been there or know someone who lives there) so it can be a pretty small world sometimes. I geared up for my trip to Fraser with a great crew of Brits & Swedes and an American. We got to drive 4x4 trucks down the beach and throughout the island. We started out with some really rainy weather but after a few hours the skies cleared for our entire three days on the island. We spent the afternoon at Lake Wobby and then set up camp a little bit down the road… err… the beach where we cooked our supper of delicious steak and got cranked on goon. I met a crew of hilarious Irish lads as well. The next morning I was feeling pretty rough and we headed out to a place aptly named Hangover Creek where I was able to rid myself of my hangover – thank goodness it worked or I wouldn’t have been a happy camper. We stopped for a quick look at a shipwreck on the beach and grabbed lunch and then headed to the champagne pools and Indian Head for the afternoon. We got some amazing views and enjoyed hanging out in the beautiful pools formed in the rocks which the surf crashes over at high tide. We headed back to camp (the sun sets just after 5 so we headed back fairly early) to make another amazing meal. I also managed to score some clams off the Irish crew that they had found on the beach somewhere, as well as my own supper. I have no idea what they cooked them in, but they were extremely good! (So much better than the oysters I had). We spent another night on the goon train, chilling out under the full moon on the sand dunes by the ocean. Pretty sweet evening spent on an island.

We headed back to Rainbow Beach the next day but not before we spent a few hours chilling out at beautiful Lake MacKenzie which also has icing sugar sand and turquoise water. I also worked on my skills at hurling (a super aggressive Irish game that’s similar to a mix-up between lacrosse and field hockey). After cleaning out our vehicles, a few of us purchased another box of goon and chilled on the beach watching the sunset. I managed to score some sweet Chinese food before the shop closed then caught up with the Irish lads where we headed over to another hostel to chill out for the night. The next morning I was up early and on my way to Brisbane. Cities aren’t really my thing so I hung out on the banks of the river and just spent time chilling out. The Irish lads were making their way out to Brisbane as well so I had some company. I spent the next day using some internet then met up with the boys and hit up a few pubs and bars in town. Not a crazy night but a good one nonetheless. Before I caught my bus out of town the next day I was able to catch up with an old Aussie high school friend. We grabbed a short but sweet coffee in her neck of the woods and it really was good to see her again after almost 7 years!

That afternoon I headed down to Byron Bay where I was crashing at a Canadians place I had met on Fraser Island. There was a big Blues Festival just outside of town (names like Bob Dylan and Ben Harper – so everything was booked out) so we chilled out grabbing some drinks with him and his two Canadian friends. The next day we dropped them off at the airport and chilled out on the beach and hiked up to the lighthouse which had spectacular views of the ocean and the beach. That night I caught up for supper with a girl I had met down the coast and drank with the Irish lads I met on the Whitsundays. One of the greatest things about going down the East Coast is that you keep running into people you know everywhere! We hopped on the goon train again and partied at Cheeky Monkeys. I had met an Australian through a mutual friend who had a surfboard he was willing to lend me the next morning and so we headed out to hit some waves before lunch. After some time in the water we went to the Beachside hotel and drank the afternoon away – the perfect way to spend a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. That night a few of us bar hopped and ended up at the Cheeky Monkey’s again where I ran into another girl I had met down the East Coast. Another good night!

Sadly this is where my trip comes to an end. The next day I hopped on a 12 hour bus ride down to Sydney. I’ve already done and seen the city so I got in, unpacked and repacked my entire bag to get ready to fly out the next day. It was a lovely evening with 30 minutes of free beer and wine, and then a quick trip to the pizza shop and, of course, McD’s! The next morning I caught my shuttle to the airport and said goodbye to Australia and the laid back, chilled out six month adventure I’ve been on. I caught my plane no worries and lucked out with getting an exit row seat – next best place to be on a 14 hour ride aside from first class. After that I spent two hours in passport control and another half hour waiting to be screened at security – my patience was running fairly thin, especially after a lack of proper sleep. Luckily I had a long layover and was one of the few people who didn’t miss my plane. I made it to Denver no worries and actually ended up giving up my spot on the plane as they had overbooked it. They were looking for a volunteer and I figured why not! I’m traveling alone with no specific deadline to be at home, so I grabbed some free accommodation at a grand hotel in Denver, a free meal and $400 in travel vouchers. What a great way to end my six month long adventure down under by a spontaneous stay in the US. So tomorrow I finally head home where I get to finally see my friends and family… and go back to work… Boo ;)

Haha as a fairly funny side note - I diligently kept a budget of every single penny I spent… and at the end of it all (hahah mom you might not be so proud of this…) I looked at how much I spent on alcohol… and it came out to $750.00… so that works out (at roughly 12.50AUD for a box of 4.4L of goon) to about 60 boxes of goon – or 264 liters of wine. Roughly 1.5L a day lol! However, it wasn’t all spent on cheap goon, but on bottles of wine and beer as well so I doubt I actually drank that much over the last six months. And if I did, well… my liver’s got to be in rough shape and it’s a good thing I am coming home!

Back in NZ

Back in NZ - Days 109-150

So…. What have I been up to lately?? ….. good question! Apparently “Fiji Time” really affected me as when I flew back into Auckland (just can’t stay away from NZ!). I ended up chilling out for a whole month and a half with Stu – doing absolutely nothing! We got into Auckland and I faced up to the truth and bought myself a new camera. Auckland is just another city so we wanted to head out as soon as we could but we did managed to catch a Chinese new year festival in the park and enjoyed a couple picnics before we caught the ferry across to the Coromandel. Our first stop was Coromandel Town where we spent a couple days just hanging out and watching movies and several episodes of The Office. Then we set off towards Whitianga on our first ever adventure hitchhiking. We got a lift out of town with the woman who ran the hostel and within ten minutes we had our first lift in the back of a work truck with a super nice Maori guy who even took us sightseeing along the way and offered to stop for pictures. He also took us to his place for some coffee then decided he had nothing better to do and drove us all the way to our destination. Pretty good luck for our first hitch!

We spent the next five days hanging out in Whitianga body boarding in the ocean, going for walks and watching as many movies as we could. People would shake their heads at us while we sat inside on a sunny afternoon just watching movies. The one day we hitched down to Hot Water Beach – probably the only place in the world where you can hitchhike holding a shovel and no one bats an eyelash. Hot Water Beach has thermal pockets where you can dig a hole in the sand at low tide and make yourself a little hot tub. You have to be careful though as the water is so hot you can burn yourself. There were a lot of people on the beach and not enough space to make our own little hot tub so we just stood in the hot water and enjoyed the sunny day then hitched back to Whitianga later that afternoon.

Our next stop was Taupo – almost 400km away. We had to wait an hour to get picked up (our longest wait while hitchhiking) but we lucked out and got a guy who was headed all the way down to Tauraunga, a major portion of the distance we had to cover. We also got treated to lunch on his business card which was really cool. My first time trying a kebab in New Zealand! He also stopped at a gold mine and a couple scenic views along the way so we could grab some pictures –Kiwi’s have the most generous hearts! We caught a ride with two girls to Rotorua, with another woman through the city and then one more girl dropped us about 20km out of town. We then got picked up by a mom with two teenage girls and they were one of my favourites to hitchhike with. The girls were so excited to pick up two strangers as I guess their mom never stops to get hitchhikers. One last car (an air conditioning van) dropped us at Stu’s friends place in Taupo where we stayed 2 nights.

We ended up staying in Taupo for an entire week, moving to a hostel just outside of town and we hung out watching movies again. In all fairness, the weather was pretty shoddy outside so there wasn’t much more we could do. We hit up the botanical gardens and enjoyed a sunny afternoon one day. This is also where we started a several week long junk food binge. Nothing better than gross candy [thanks Anna ;)], chocolate, chips, honey roasted peanuts, and apple juice.

After Taupo we headed back down to Raglan where I had spent an entire week right before Christmas. We wanted to do some surfing together and had two perfect days to do it (minus the fact that the waves really weren’t that great). We got a lift to Hamilton with a really nice couple headed down to Christchurch to help with the earthquake relief and lucked out again and had them shout us lunch at a very nice and expensive café. We got dropped off at our hostel by another driver and spent the evening going for a walk and chilling in the hostels hot tub. The next day we grabbed some boards and spent the entire afternoon surfing in the beautiful weather. I also managed to catch up with my Portuguese friend Diogo who had moved to Raglan. The next day the waves were terrible but we decided to go out anyway and just goofed around in the water, doing press ups on the surfboards, and laughing the afternoon away. Not a good day for surfing but we made the best of it.

Our next day was spent hitching all the way back up to Auckland as we were catching a flight down to the South Island for the remainder of my stay in NZ. We had a great flight down to Queenstown and walked out of the airport to hitch down to Wanaka for the next four days. We spent four nights in Wanaka and lucked out and got our room upgraded for free. We had a TV in it with a movie channel and may have spent more than a day or two chilling out watching every movie that came on and eating more junk food. Such an active, healthy lifestyle! Even though it was the equivalent to September in NZ we still had some nice weather and I managed to snag a sunburn on the lake front. We headed back to Queenstown after Wanaka but only spent a day or two there running errands and chilling out. We did get really motivated and actually baked some brownies in the hostel kitchen though – I’m sure we made everyone jealous!

Next stop for us was Dunedin – finally somewhere I hadn’t been before. We hitched all the way to Cromwell before we realized it was Saturday night with a rugby match in town in Dunedin and we couldn’t find an available hostel anywhere. So we decided to stay in Cromwell (nice town, not nice accommodation) where we napped the afternoon away and played trivial pursuit in the evening. The next day we got out of town as soon as we could and caught a ride all the way to Dunedin with a really cool guy who works for World Vision in areas where natural disasters or crises have occurred. He had some really cool stories to tell and also bought us lunch (for the third time!!) at a great outdoor café. Dunedin is a cool little college town and we had managed to snag some cheap coupons online for the Cadbury chocolate factory (an actual factory tour) and a big kids playground place. We spent one afternoon at Speight’s brewery drinking as much free beer as we could in 30 minutes and then spent the rest of the afternoon eating junk food, hot tubbing, and playing scrabble. The next day we switched hostels and did the chocolate factory tour which was really cool. We watched them dump 1 tonne of melted chocolate down a silo and we got tonnes of free chocolate! We shopped the rest of the afternoon and watched more movies in the evening (I wasn’t kidding when I said we didn’t do much). The next day we headed down to a place called Bigups where Stu and I got to wrestle each other in sumo suits, battle gladiator style, box with giant boxing gloves, and climb an inflatable rock wall. Definitely a big kids playground! We spent the evening playing scrabble and went for a long walk the next day to the world’s steepest street. I don’t know what this means but they say the gradient at the steepest point is 1 in 2.86.

The next day we hitched back to Queenstown and checked in at Base for the next (and my last) seven nights in NZ. We spent the rest of our time hanging out at the water front, going out a couple nights (I completed my first centurion: drinking 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes), playing Frisbee golf, going for walks, having picnics, watching movies, and hiking up to the top of the hill overlooking Queenstown. It was a great last week and we celebrated my last night and our time together with a bottle of wine and a couple of movies. New Zealand is such an amazing country and it made me extremely sad to leave to head back to Australia for the final leg of this amazing journey and adventure I am on.

Fiji

Fiji - Days 96-109
Bula!

So somehow Stu and I had decided to head to Fiji as it was a place both of us wanted to go to but hadn’t made plans for during our travels. We headed to STA travel when we were in Queenstown and booked a two week “holiday in a holiday” in Fiji! I headed back to Australia with mom and dad for two and a half weeks after that then flew out the day they flew up to Brisbane. So I headed out from Australia super excited for my two weeks in Paradise. I had no problems on the way there and managed to even grab several glasses of free wine and the air stewards phone number lol. I landed and was greeted in the airport by Fijians playing their traditional welcome song (something I would get used to over the next two weeks). I caught a shuttle to my hostel and was greeted by Stu in our 35 bed dorm room: the dormitories here are just massive. We met two other English people and ended up having some duty free vodka drinks on the hammock outside during the evening. The mosquitoes are really bad and everyone ended up with massive bites except for me.

Embarrassingly I woke the entire dorm up that night at 4am when the alarm on my phone went off. It was locked in a locker and Stu couldn’t find the key so he spent twenty minutes on the beach looking for it while several pretty angry people came to see why the alarm wasn’t being shut off. It turns out the key was on the top bunk the whole time… whoop!. Not exactly a great start to our first morning in Fiji. We got up for an early breakfast and grabbed the free shuttle to the wharf where we were to catch the ferry to our first island. However, I managed to realize that I had forgotten both my iPod and cellphone back at the hostel so we had to cab back to get it and miss our ferry. We went back to bed and chilled out eating some fresh coconut from a tree and waiting for the next ferry out that day. Finally we were aboard the ferry and on our way to our very first Fijian island, South Sea. We pulled up on the ferry and Stu and I looked at each other super excited as this island was tiny! You can circumnavigate the whole island in four minutes and stand in the middle and see the beach all around it. We disembarked and were pretty much giddy with excitement. We were met by a group of Fijians playing the welcome song and enjoyed a delicious meal watching their performance. After that we spent the entire afternoon in the extremely warm, turquoise waters snorkeling and swimming. We were lucky enough to even see a reef shark! Later we chilled in some hammocks and enjoyed some wine and beer watching the sunset.

The next day we enjoyed the Sea Spray Sailing Adventure included in our holiday package. We caught the ferry to another island then hopped aboard our boat where we would enjoy a bit of champagne at 1030 in the morning and free booze all day. We spent a bit of time sailing until we came to Rangitiki island – the island where they filmed the movie Castaway. We hopped off with our snorkel gear and spent the rest of the morning snorkeling until we swam back aboard the boat and enjoyed an extremely good barbeque. Unfortunately this is where my camera broke so pictures after my second day in Fiji are fairly limited. I think water got into it. Stu’s camera also broke the same day but luckily sort of came back to life a few days later so we could at least get scenery pictures. We stopped at another nearby island and enjoyed our very first Kava ceremony. Kava is a pepper herb of which the crushed roots are mixed with water to form a drink with a mild sedative effect (and it also makes your tongue go numb). Kava is used in Fiji in ceremonial and social custom generally performed by the chief of the village. The Kava is mixed together in a large hardwood bowl and when it’s ready, the chief claps with cupped hands and guests are offered a drink from a small bowl made from half a coconut. The drink isn’t to be sipped but consumed all at once which represents the guest’s acceptance into the village. After we toured the village we had a chance to shop and purchase some cool jewelry made by the women in the village. After that we spent a couple more hours on the sailing boat and then headed back to South Sea for an evening of drinking games with Jamie and Amy.

The next day we moved onto our next island, Waya lailai. This island was much bigger than South Sea and you couldn’t walk around it. The two days we spent on the island aren’t very exciting as we chilled out with lots of swimming, sleeping, relaxing in hammocks, and enjoying the sun. The second day in Waya lailai we had a snorkel trip that we went out on. We caught the boat out into the middle of the ocean and hopped out to snorkel around an amazing reef. Two Fijian’s came with us and they can free dive down as deep as 20 meters for up to two minutes at a time (this is one reason they are so successful at spear fishing) but the two with us just chilled out on the bottom, feeding fish and petting reef sharks. It was pretty awesome and I wish I had been able to take some pictures of it. Later that afternoon I taught Stu and Jamie how to shotgun a beer as they had never done it before. We also met Kat & B, two girls from Australia (and Germany). We spent the late afternoon and evening drinking and enjoying some Fijian entertainment.

The next morning we woke up about 430am to do a summit walk on the island. It was still pitch black out and we had to carry a torch with us. The hike took about an hour and a half up to the top of the rocky summit but we had lots of stops as it was incredibly humid through the rainforest. When we got to the top we got to watch the sunrise. It wasn’t very amazing as it was cloudy but it was still really cool to watch it come up as it’s one of the very first places in the world (along with Samoa) to see the sunrise

We were catching the ferry that late morning to our next island, Korovu, and it wasn’t until I had boarded the ferry that I realized that they hadn’t packed my backpack for me (thankfully just my little one) so I got a woman on board to call the island and they would send my backpack along to me the next day on Korovu… Haha sometimes I feel like I’m so unlucky. But otherwise we got to Korovu with no problems. Korovu is a really nice resort on the island with an actual fresh water swimming pool to chill out in. The weather was fairly nice as often there are short bursts of thundershowers or rain throughout the day which is a great way to cool down from the heat. It’s really cool as most of the day you can see storm clouds brewing on the horizon yet it’s beautifully sunny where you are and you may or may not get some rain (often accompanied by rainbows). Stu and I spent most of our time swimming in the pool, chilling in the hammock outside our room and napping. It was a pretty tough life on the island.

After two days of complete relaxation and no activities to keep us busy we headed to our next island, Nabua Lodge which was the furthest North we were going. We actually lucked out and had our room upgraded for us for free as there was no room available in the dorms. We didn’t do much on this island either. The first morning we had a cave trip which was really neat. We hopped on a water taxi and headed to another island where we got to swim in some really neat caves. At one point you had to swim underwater to get into the next cave system. Again, another place which would have been nice to have a working camera…Stu got sick after this so I spent the entire time swimming, sleeping and reading a book in a hammock. One afternoon we hopped in the water in beautiful sunshine to have it pour rain down on us two minutes later. It was really neat though as the water was completely calm and still except for the raindrops hitting it. Odd to see such calm water in the ocean. I also made a friend with one of the cats who liked to sneak into our room and sleep on the bed. She actually woke us up one morning when we heard her munching on some food left on a plate.

After Nabua Lodge we spent one night on Manta Ray Island which was owned by Australians. Definitely a different vibe than the other islands. We had some amazing food there and relaxed on the beach sipping Pina Coladas. We left the next afternoon for our final destination: Beachcomber (Party) Island. We stayed in a huge, 110 bed dorm and spent the afternoon going on a snorkel trip and hanging out. We had some drinks that night and watched the entertainment and spent the next afternoon relaxing and partied it up for our last night with the English & Australian crew. Needless to say it was an epic way to end our holiday out on the islands. The next day we caught the ferry back to Denaru and made it to our last destination in Fiji. We cabbed to one of only two McDonalds on the island so I could eat my traditional Big-Mac-in-another-country and spent the night watching movies. The next day we headed to the airport and actually almost missed our flight because we were goofing around in the airport and didn’t realize our plane was boarding until we looked around and saw absolutely no one left in the airport. Stu and I are always the last ones to get anywhere. Next stop for me: back to NZ for another month and a half!