Posts By Laura
We-just-dived-with-a-school-of-hammerheads-and-it-was-AMAZING-selfie
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year from a very windy Fiji!
There’s a cyclone somewhere in the vicinity of Fiji and so the weather has been all over the place the past few days- today it’s been so windy that the boats have had to be pulled onto shore and the big water taxi that ferries everyone around the islands couldn’t park on this side of the island as the water is so choppy. All diving, snorkelling and kayaking has been cancelled and together with the fact that last night was NYE, everyone’s looking a bit miserable today. Not us though! We’re really happy there’s no sun so that we feel absolutely no guilt in lying in bed all day, post booze hangover in full force.
For NYE, we’re at Octopus Resort on Waya Island. We were here 4 years ago, to engaged and met some great people so we thought we’d come back whilst we’re in the area. Not that much seems to have changed- it’s a teeny bit bigger but not so much that the feel of the place has changed. They do have an awesome new spa and yoga deck, which I’ve loved, so much so I’ve been doing 2 classes a day. Not today though- things got a little out of control last night and at some point I fell over and am pretty sure I’ve sprained some part of my arm. There’s no doctor on this island though so I guess I’ll have to wait until the mainland on Sunday and if it’s still as painful, go find some help!
NYE in Fiji was lots of fun. A band was brought over from the main island and they played terrible covers and then a few of us decided a pool party was in order so in we all went. There were free shots, lots of rum, awesome food, great people and general good times.
Before we arrived at Octopus, we stayed at Barefoot Manta, in a very glamorous tent disguised as a bure:
We hadn’t actually realised this is what we’d booked and initially we were a bit concerned as there were no doors, locks etc, just a zip up net at the front and then at the back, (which led to a gorgeous open bathroom.) However the view on a morning was amazing and it was so private. We did manage to lose a precious bottle of sun cream from the deck but whilst Sam reckons someone stole it, I think a cheeky little animal took it away.
The reason that we’d booked Barefoot Manta was because it’s a prime manta ray location and we wanted to snorkel/dive with them. However, I didn’t quite realise (until I’d booked and paid) that it’s the wrong season for them, so it kind of defeated the object of going there. It was a beautiful place, with a great dive school but there were quite a few things that let it down- food was average even though the restaurant was stunning (top photo is of our table there- amazing sunsets every night.) Some of the staff were lovely and went out of their way to help, but some were plain rude and it has really put us off recommending it to others.
We did manage to do a couple of great dives though- one in particular was fab and went through loads of underwater caves. On one dive we saw a ginormous reef shark- I’d told the dive master about my (irrational) fear of sharks but down at 22m there’s not much you can do. He tried to get me to go and touch it, but I’m a child of the Jaws generation and that plastic shark has taught me to fear them so I refused to swim down with him. It’s strange though because we snorkelled with loads of reef sharks in the Maldives and I was fine, but there’s just something about being so far down and coming face to face with one that scares me.
Tomorrow we’ll (reluctantly) leave the Yasawa Islands and travel back to Nadi on the mainland. We’ll stay there 1 night and then catch a bus early sunday morning to…..who knows? We were going to go to Suva, the capital of Fiji, but looking through our guidebook we read about a great place called Pacific Harbour, which is on the road to Suva. From there, there’s supposed to some great kayaking along the river (well, that’s what our book has told us- we’re back to a Lonely Planet one though so who knows, it could be rubbish.)
Fiji time
Bula from Fiji!
View from our bure
Bye bye NZ, it’s been a blast!
So here we are, the final couple of days in NZ (sad face.) We have had the most amazing time here and the past week has been absolutely brilliant. After leaving the Coromandel coast, we drove over to Miranda, to hike in the Kauerangi Valley. It was really pretty here, and we’d anticipated that it would take around 5-6 hours to walk. It ended up taking only 3 hours- DOC guidelines are extremely conservative, but we keep forgetting this! So although not much in the way of exercise, it was really lovely to be out in the sun.
We then drove to the spectacular Karanghake Gorge, where we discovered part of the rail trail- guess who perked up again! This was a good 6 hour walk through abandoned mines and tunnels, and even I found it interesting! Sam was, predictably, engrossed in every info sign we came across- had to drag him away.
We stayed next to the beautiful Papamoa Beach and had the most amazing view from the back of Vanatar, One of the big pluses of living in him was the view every morning when we woke up- incredible! We then drove onto Mt Manganui, where we did our final challenging walk of the NZ leg. It only took about 30 mins to get to the top but it was bloody difficult!
Next, it was onto Hamilton to see my lovely friend Hilary. We used to work together in London and haven’t seen each other for about 4 and a half years- was so lovely to see her, can’t believe it’s taken so long. We had a great catch up- far too short though. Having laid off the booze for a week now, it was then time to head on upto Waiheke Island (or wine island as it’s also known,) about 40 mins by ferry away from Auckland. We met my awesome schoolfriend Nicola and her friend Penny for an absolutely fab weekend of vineyards, cycling and eating. Bliss! Waiheke is probably one of our favourite parts of NZ- could easily envisage us living there. It’s a small island with only about 8000 permanent residents, with a lot of batches, which the Auckland set and tourists jet off to on a weekend. Some people commute over to Auckland and it is super tempting to do it, as the island is just perfect.
We fly out of NZ on Thursday, and we are ready to hit diving and the beaches. Vanatar has gone back, which was very sad but it is nice to sleep in a proper bed again. We’re staying at Nicola’s where there’s excellent water pressure, comfy sofas and free wifi. Fantastic stuff. Bring on the sunshine!
We may/may not have good wifi in Fiji, so hopefully we can continue to regularly update the blog with all our news. This has definitely been the best decision we have ever made- incredibly excited for the next 7 months.
Coromandel Coast (aka Sam’s limited walking week)
Over to the Coromandel
So here we are on the North Island again and on the whole, the weather from Marlborough seems to have come with us (touch wood.)
Since arriving in Wellington last week, we’ve travelled up to Martinborough for some excellent wine and a not so excellent hangover, then over to the Whanganui National Park, where we took a jet boat up the river and then canoed back down it. We debated doing the full 3-5 day river trip but decided for our own sanity to just do 1 day- we learnt long ago we don’t do well in a kayak or canoe together. It was stunningly beatufiul on the river and the weather was perfect. From here, we hiked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, described to us as one of the best day hikes in the world. Now, there was no denying it was amazing in terms of different terrains and a mixture of challenging ascents and descents, but I think we’ve been spoilt with some of the other walks we’ve done- both of us agreed it wasn’t our favourite hike but we’re glad to have done it.
The next day, we drove upto Raglan on the west coast- a really cool surfing town full of arty craft shops and many many surfers. The weather was fairly terrible so we couldn’t really do too much however I did manage to buy new clothes (result for me, but not for Sam’s carefully crafted budget!) My three tops had basically given up and I was in desperate need of new ones. After trying (and failing) to find the surf beaches, we gave up and drove towards a teeny tiny town called Te Aroha, over towards the Coromandel Peninsula. We stumbled upon a tramways walk and Sam suddenly perked up, despite telling me a couple of days earlier that he was “done with walking. If you want to walk, that’s fine, I’ll see you at the bottom.” He was in his element here- everytime we saw an info sign, he was all over it. For me, it was like being in a museum only much worse because there were buzzy things buzzing all around me. Not my kind of walk at all. Sam said he wished he could have swapped me with Dad for this. Would have suited me just fine.
After a week or so in some ok-but-not-too-great campsites, we really wanted somewhere with good facilities and so we found a new Top 10, fancy pants holiday park right next to Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel. This place is so amazing it even has a fish and chip shop on site, with nice big grassy bays to park in, great showers and decent OVENS (something of a rarity in campsites.)Yes, it’s fairly pricey compared to others we’ve stayed in but it’s so worth it. Hot Water Beach is really unusual because there is geothermal activity that heats the water under the sand and so you can create your own hot pools. You can only access this part of the beach around low tide- when we went down last night it was like Blackpool beach on the first day of summer. No thanks. So this morning we woke up at 5.45am to go down to the beach (excellent idea, only 10 other people there) and dig- with some success. In some parts the water was boiling which made it hard stand on, but in others you had to dig really far down (well Sam did) to find it. We banded together with another 4/5 people to create a massive hot pool- was good until a massive wave came in and ruined everything.
Since we were already up, we then decided to head out early to Cathedral Cove and see why everyone we know from NZ had recommended it. These photos might give you an indication:
Absolutely stunning.
The beaches were pristine and the water was so clear. Unfortunately we left all of our swim stuff and towels drying on our washing line, otherwise we could’ve spent the whole day there. We wanted to Kayak to the cove but the swell was too big and all the trips have been called off so we might come back and do it next week.
We’re planning to spend most of the next week in this area- there’s quite a lot to do and if the weather holds out we fancy some decent beach time to work on the Fiji base tan. 2 weeks left- where’d the time go?!