Bula Bula Fiji!

Bula: hello, is about the only work I have learnt (and with my linguistic abilities,  that will most likely be it!) everyone is so friendly! Apparently it is the ‘island way’ and it really reminds me of Belize, which makes me optimistic because I loved Belize!

I left Oz very early in the morning to fly to New Zealand where I would get my connecting fligh, landing in Nadi Fiji in the evening. New Zealand look beautiful form the air, lots of green hills and water ways. It was very strange when I realised that the sunset that I saw when flying was the sun setting in the north….

The next morning I met up with Owen, another student from England who in volunteering for Coral for Conservation and we made our way to meet Austin: the guy who runs the organisation/research, and since then two Brazilians have arrive who are really nice.

I have been at the farm in Sigatoka since thursday until Sunday morning when we are going to Moutoriki Island to start research on Monday. Really really excited for that! Me and Austin have been chatting through the logistics, and its getting me very excited to start collecting data. The farm is amazing, 20km up the river valley from Sigatoka it is green mountains and pastures. The farms grown cassava, starfruit, paw paw, lemons, limes, guava, coconut, grapefruit, pineapples, corn, beans and a few other local root vegetables! All of the food, including jam is homemade and the meals, cooked by an lovely Indian woman is stuff I have never tried before! Me and Owen went for a trek up the stream to some waterfalls yesterday and have been helping out on the farm today, grinding coconut is great fun (and yummy).

Saturday we are having a “Lovo”, which is a traditional celebration using a ground oven. it smells amazing at the moment! I have to say I am not a fan of the traditional “Cava” drink, made out of a root, it looks like puddle water and tastes like soil eugh, I am soooo not a fan! Unfortunately you have to drink (down) at least one bowl for each welcome or traditional ceremony.  

I seem to have already have a reputation of clumsy, don’t know how THAT happened…

Australia

Sydney

My flight arrived in Sydney at some stupid hour in the morning but by 9am I found myself in a café eating breakfast on the docks at darling harbour. It was then that it hit me that I was in Australia, and that I had finally made it to the other side of the world! I couldn’t help but grin (and giggle to myself a little bit). There is no doubt in my mind that the couple on the table next to me questioned my sanity. I spent the morning pottering (one of my favourite words, thank mum) around darling harbour. It’s a really nice area, lots of waterfront shops and cafes, a park and a number of tourist places such as the aquarium.  I then spent the afternoon on a tourist bus! How exciting is THAT lol the open top ones that you get in york and London: they are actually quite good as you can hop on and off as you want! It was this way that I got to the rocks, where at the weekends they have a really nice market quite like Covent garden and to the bridge and opera house, which for who knows what reason made me think of an armadillo trying to curl into a ball! Struggling to stay awake I managed to see the fireworks being held before I collapsed back at my youth hostel. (when I first arrives at the hostel in the morning, I looked at the notice board and every other post said “contact bruce” at the bottom, I found this very amusing at 6am after only 2 hours of sleep).

The next day I met up with a friend from school charlotte, and after a fail running embrace (we decided that a busy city road was not the safest of places) we decided to get one of the ferries and visit some of Sydney’s beautiful beaches. I have to say that commuting to work via ferry sounds a lot more tempting that the train! (and their underground trains haw 2 stories). We had a lovely trip around the harbour on the way to Wentworth bay, were there was a yummy fish restaurant which you can take away and sit on the beach, I have to give tit to the Aussies that they have modified British fish and chips damn well! We spend the day catching up on the beach and walking up to “the gap” which is a big cliff with some great views.

The Blue Mountains

The blue mountains national park is only a hour or so out of Sydney, with the protected area being about the size of wales! A VERY early start meant they we got to see some grey kangaroos (and a joeies :D) hopping around and foraging in the bush. Then spent the day on a trek around to see many waterfalls in the park including Wentworth waterfalls and the 3 sisters rock formation. The aboriginal stories for the creation of the 2 sisters are really interesting, but all involve them being turned to rock by their father either to protect them, or because he is angry with them.

The end of the trek involved going down the 1000 steps carved into a rock face that miners uses to travel up and down daily. I have decided that the British health and safety standards regarding steps is a necessity for me! Luckily, instead of climbing them back up we took “the world steepest train” (aka the old mining cart) back up the mountain. It was definatly an experience going up, backwards at 52 degrees, kind of the opposite of the pepsi max big one (and obviously not quite as fast!

On the drive back to Sydney and radio was on and to my surprise Alice Cooper is a local radio DJ (I still find it strange that a man is called alice)! He seemed a quite a fan of the rolling stones and had a good little chat about mic taylor (I guess this demonstrates that I am my father’s daughter).

So I am off now to try and find a boomerang for jobo with my remaining dollar (he has to be awkward and ask for the odd shaped large present) and tomorrow is the flight to Fiji! And I am getting impatient to start now. My first few days will be spent in one of the town arranging the logistics and plan for data collection before I get out to the “field” which is actually the Pacific ocean at the weekend! Eeeeeeeee :D

Bangkok

Well, the wine on the flight was a little too tasty… it meant i had a very good sleep though, for the sake of people sitting around me, i hope I didn’t snore or talk in my sleep! Of course, my bag decided that is hadn’t wanted to travel with me and I was informed that it was left in England… (silver lining: excuse to shop straight away) but luckily it arrive in one piece the next day!

The temples and grad palace are beautiful, the palace is especially extravagant. I have also managed a few boat trips :D the rive stinks in some places! But it is also full of catfish which the monks feed.

The tour guide I had yesterday was trying to marry me off to her son! (I think under the assumption that because I am English I am going to become either a doctor or a lawyer) but apart from that she was great. Ven: remember those steps that we climbed to get to the top of a temple at tikel? Well the temple of dawn (its beautiful, 33 levles to represent the 33 heavens all covered in ceramic) was also like that! Lol. At Wat Pho the reclining buddha is the biggest in the world, its 46m long and 15m high, I never expected to see a gold Buddha bigger than my york house!

Decided to have a Thai fully body massage as well, which was a combination of lovely, relaxing, ticklish (I must of seamed crazy giggling in the little head hole) and painful at time, I was quite shocked when the small masseuse actually got onto the massage table with me, and I swear she stood on my back at one point!   

Todays traveling tip, brought to you from personal experience is it is impossible to do anything whilst riding a tuk tuk (especially, French plat your hair, eat a cereal bar or drink water).