Today Kirsten started her 4 day journey back to Angola and Chester had one last day in Fiji. As you can imagine the weather has gotten no better. following is a recap of her day. 8 am alarm goes off 9 am breakfast. We had to fight off the regby team just to toast some bread. They would load up all 6 slots and take them all. 10 a m Kirsten is off to the airport. Chester is sad and alone. 10:15 Chester packs for the next day 11 am raining, totally bored 11:15 did nails 11:20 totally bored again 11:30 read book on porch, still raining with no chance of sun 1:00 played cards 2:00 went for a walk on the beach. Rains on way back 2:45 The Fiji version of the movie Top Gun ... read more

Today started as almost every day of our vacation. We will sum up our entire day minute by minute for you and this will take just a few paragraph. We slept in and when we got up and went to breakfast. It was overcast as everyday had been. Our praying for sun did not work. We stretched out breakfast to last about 30 minutes. Again, we ate cereal in warm milk and toast. After our meal it was back to our room as it was so cloudy, overcast and lightly raining so the pool and beach are not really doable. So after some reading and napping and reading and napping we ventured out of our room onto the porch. It was sprinkling and still grey and cloudy. Chester went for a walk on the beach and ... read more

So we spent our first night at the Uprising Beach Resort. It was fine, we had to have all the windows and curtains open so we could get the slightest, lightest breeze into our hut. We both slept pretty well though (Chester sleeps because of Ambien, thank goodness) and woke up at 7. The outdoor shower was actually pretty cool and reminded us of an awesome camp site in Namibia that had very cool outdoor showers. After a breakfast of cornflakes in warm milk and some toast we headed to the lobby to get picked up for our 8:15 shark dive. The driver arrived and quickly told us we were on a different dive trip so we waited for another 30 minutes. Then Sammy, the driver, came back for us and said we were on this ... read more

Today started with a 5AM wake-up call to catch our flight from Brisbane to Fiji. We were graciously thanked for our stay by the Australia telecoms company by charging us $50 for 6 local phone calls, each call was less than 2 minutes. We had called around the find a fishing charter from the hotel phones after we had called reception to inquiry if there was a charge for this. Well there was not a charge for local calls, but a ridiculous charge for calls to mobile phones which are different than local calls. Not something the hotel would want to tell you when you specifically call to ask. We had a quick buffet breakfast and drove the hour plus to Brisbane. We arrived to a mother of all lines at the airport. After the Disneyland ... read more

Today we again got to sleep in which is always great when you are on vacation. We had planned to go surfing or kayaking today as this is Surfers Paradise, the Sunshine Coast, warm weather and sun and sand. But as we have hit Australia during the coldest and wettest winter in decades, we decided to change our plans. We planned to go on a half day deep sea fishing charter. We started the day with the always loved all you can eat breakfast buffet at the hotel. The marina was pretty close to the hotel so didn’t take long to get there. The plan was for a 5 hour tour. Good news, when we got to the boat, Gilligan was the first mate, a tall skinny young kid with a Gilligan hat. The boat was ... read more

Today started with sleeping in, which was a very welcome change. We caught a flight around noon from Cairns to Gold Coast. We have come to loath the Australian airlines and they have luggage requirements that are crazy as well as ridiculously expensive. So upon arrival to the counter, Kirsten instructed Chester to hide our backpacks as these along with our small roller carry-ons would put us over the weight limit and at $15/KG that can add up. All was looking good until Kirsten’s roller back was 3 KG over weight. So we had to get all of our bags and reorganize them to add more to the checked luggage and pay the difference. At this point we are not happy campers. We get everything switched around and had to throw out some stuff, like a ... read more

Today started with a 6:30 AM dive just as the sun was coming up. Can’t say getting into cold wet wetsuits was what we wanted to do that time of day but we were determined that it would be worth it during the dive. We did this dive on our own and the visibility was a bit better than the previous afternoon. But still a bit disappointing for the Great Barrier Reef. Chester was getting better with each dive and Kirsten realized if she let Chester suck off her tank for 5-10 min we could dive longer. After this dive we had a big breakfast and headed back to our room for a nap. The next dive was at 8:30 but as there is 6 dives in a day and you can only do 5, we ... read more