Globetrotters Independent Traders

Kia Orana! We left Fiji on Saturday morning and arrived in Rarotonga on Friday night. Rarotonga is a volcanic island and is the largest of the group of 15 islands that make up the Cooks. We spent a week in Raro, staying at Vara's Backpackers on Muri beach lagoon, in a double room instead of a dorm! Luxury! The beach is the nicest on the island and the lagoon is really blue and overlooks two other tiny islands. Our first day was overcast but for the rest of the week we had lovely weather so we spent a quite a bit of time on the beach. We also went into the capital, Avarua several times looking round the Saturday market and checking out the shops. Things are pretty expensive here (including food) because most things ... read more

We got a bus to the capital, Suva, and then another bus to a little harbour where we travelled to Caqalai (pronounced 'Thung-gulie') which is a teeny tiny coral island in the Lomaviti group. It took 10 mins to walk round the entire island! A couple that we made friends with at the Beach House were there too, and about 6 other guests. It was a real tropical paradise island. We stayed in a nice little hut with no electricity. On our first morning the locals took us accross on the boat to a bigger island (with 20 inhabitants!) and went to church. It was really nice, the people were fantastic singers and loved having us there! We spent the rest of the days lazing around and snorkelling. There was excellent snorkelling around Caqalai but ... read more

When we got back to Auckland we were too lazy to cook so we drove to Mount Eden, had a chinese and got a great night view of the city from the top of the mountain. Over the next few days we saw most of Auckland and ate so much good food! Loads of sushi, chinese, and malaysian. We went to a brilliant comedy night while we were here. We were seated so didn't get a choice in where we sat - we were put RIGHT at the front. We had to go up on stage and were used in a lot of jokes. One of the comedians made a brilliant observation, that Olly looks a lot like Bjorn from Abba. LOL!! It was all very funny though. I also did a bungy jump from ... read more

Back to the North Island! We stayed in Wellie for a night before heading up to National Park...where the weather went from hot and sunny to cold and rainy! National Park is a small place and is much busier during ski season. It's surrounded by misty mountains, active volcanoes, and a lot of cloud. As there's not even a proper shop there we were pretty glad we were only staying for a couple of days! Our reason for being in National Park was so that we could go to the nearby Tongariro Crossing, said to be the best one-day walk in NZ. It's the only place where you can walk between two active volcanoes. Unfortunately, it was so windy that it was too dangerous to go. Instead we went on the Whakapapa walk which was ... read more

Not much to report since our Franz Josef adventures. We travelled up to Nelson to look for work but there wasn't much going in Nelson City itself, so we got the bus an hour up the road to Motueka. Its a nice little town right on the coast and its the heart of the apple, pear and kiwi fruit growing region. Orchards rely on backpackers to harvest the fruit so finding a job was easy (no reference required!). We started out picking pears. Working in the fresh air, hearing the birds and catching some sun while earning some cash - brilliant, or so we thought. It was, to quote one of our Thai friends, 'f@$%ing HIDEOUS'! Eight hours picking pears according to their size in the searing hot sun, earing a pittence was the unfortunate ... read more