Second full day on safari Another early rise today - only slightly more streamlined than the day before - and off we set into the bush once more. At last the cold weather had gone and though we started bundled up in blankets we ended the safari without them and indeed later on when we arrived back we even removed one of the layers of clothing we were wearing! We got underway having told Victor that we wanted to find a leopard. After a fair bit of driving with only a few impala to keep us company we came across some [View Full Entry]

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First full day on Safari Annabel was awake from 3.30am when Ellie had woken her up to tell her she was snoring! So at 5.15am she was the only one raring to go off on safari. However it didn’t take too much to raise the kids so we there we were gathered just after 5.45am waiting for our rangers to tell us which vehicle we should get in. It was blooming cold so we had wisely swiped the four, soft, thick blankets off our beds and thus huddled as snug as bugs in rugs off we set. The first thing we [View Full Entry]

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Off on Safari We once again braved the hotel breakfast (no sushi on a Sunday though) and then packed up ready to be collected by our courier and taken to the airport. A very chatty lady acted as our chauffeur and she gave us a running commentary on Johannesburg for the whole of the 45 minute drive and managed to keep her eyes on the road for at least half of that. After a short wait we were soon on board our plane to Nelspruit (not being plane spotters we have no idea what kind of plane it was but it [View Full Entry]

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Couple of nights in Johannesburg Long haul flights, all I (Annabel) want on a long haul flight is my own TV screen and a footrest so we boarded the South African Airways plane ready for the 12 hour flight from Perth to Jo’burg to find that we were being provided with neither a foot rest nor a personal TV screen. Great! Needless to say a 12 hour flight during the day when they switch all the lights off and close all the shutters with only two films to watch and a seven-year old with a temperature and queasiness made for a [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Fiji and heading for Australia Another couple of restful days passed during which we sank further into a coma of relaxation - the kids got more brown, we read more and said ‘Bula’ a few thousand more times. The only things to note were both dive related - firstly, we finally persuaded Jack that it would be an excellent idea for Mark to take him snorkelling on the reef just off the beach. He really enjoyed it. They swam quite far from the shore and around the back of the reef, spotting colourful parrotfish, unicornfish, trumpetfish, needlefish, shoals of damselfi [View Full Entry]

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18 years... What did we do today - unsurprising start, with breakfast and a slow morning at the pool. We had planned a celebratory brekkie of pancakes (today is our 18th wedding anniversary), but we were told they’d run out. Ho hum! Ellie seems to have grown webbed feet and Jack has spent most of his time running around tormenting crabs, lizards and coconuts with the rest of the herd of small boys on the resort. Mid afternoon came and we all assembled for a trek off to the nearby village, to meet the locals who comprise most of the staff [View Full Entry]

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Living it up in Fiji...ish Well we've been here for over a week now and we are now finally relaxed. What have we been up to? Jack and Mark have both had ear infections (Mark's started in San Diego) but luckily we learnt from our last two holidays and got both of them prescription ear drops before we left home, Mark's is mended and Jack's is on its way to being fixed. Whilst we are on the medical notes for the trip we must mention Mark's broken toe! He fell off a sunbed! He took a chunk of flesh off the [View Full Entry]

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Thoughts on our first few days in Fiji... Well, let’s first describe the place a little. Waya is a fairly large island, very steep and mountainous in the middle and green apart from the surrounding dusting of coral sand beaches. There are narrow crusts of reef surrounding it, one of which lies just off the beach outside the octopus resort. At low tide the surface of the reef - all the antlers, brains, branches and other exotically organic shapes are above water apart from where a narrow ship channel allows access to the resort. At high tide you can float above [View Full Entry]

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Octopus Resort We arrived at Nadi on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji and according to our instructions given to us by the Octopus Resort we grabbed the shuttle bus to the Raffles Gateway Hotel where we had some breakfast whilst we waited for our pick up from “Dan the Man”. When our pick-up did arrive he was late because he had been waiting for us at the airport! Anyway we squeezed into the last four available seats in the minibus and headed off to the port where we were going to get the boat to Waya Island and the [View Full Entry]

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Back to LA What is it about the day you leave a place no matter what time you are leaving it always feels like you can’t do much that day and make any definitive plans. Anyway we deliberated what to do today as we needed to be back in Los Angeles at the aiport for check-in at 8.30pm but had to check out of the hotel by noon. In the end we decided to make use of the 3-day Disneyland pass that we had only used once and head back for another attempt at queuing for the Indiana Jones ride. Having [View Full Entry]

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