Kirstie

Our last week absolutely flew by, especially as we only had 3 days of volunteering to do! We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday doing the usual but we didn’t have to tank clean as the sea was too rough to pump the water from. Saying goodby to our classes was sad as it has been fun to teach them even if they have been a bit mischievious at times. We started the weekend early as Thursday was a poya day which meant we had the day off. On Thursday we headed to Mirissa beach for 2 nights which was idyllic and beautiful however the weather was not on our side as it rained most of the time we were there. On the way there we stopped at Hikkaduwa to do some souvenir shopping however everything was ... read more

Monday to Thursday involved all the regular duties of working with the turtles and teaching English. On Wednesday I managed to convince a group of tourists that we were doctors of marine biology and Lucy convinced them that Amy had been knighted by the queen. On Thursday we started teaching at a new temple which was quite challenging as all the students spoke only a small amount of English so we were starting from scratch. We left on Friday after breakfast for Kandy. We took the train from Colombo which was a very sceneic as it wound all through the highlands however there were some scary moments where there were sharp drops next to the railway track. We got to Kandy and then spent a couple of hours looking round the town, in the evening we ... read more

We started Sri Lanka with 2 flights and a short 2 hour stopover in Abu Dhabi! We finally arrived at Colombo airport at 4am where we met Dudley for the first time. We then had a couple of hours drive to Kosgoda where we were able to grab 45 minutes of sleep before starting the first day! We met the 4 other volunteers at breakfast which was fried eggs and bread with different jams and spreads. However during breakfast we experienced the first of the monsoon rains which was torrential, luckily it didn’t last for too long. We spent the first morning cleaning the turtle tanks at the project and cleaning the actual turtles. For the tanks we had to drain the water and scrub the sides with sand and coconut shells. For the turtles we ... read more

I flew to Fiji aboard an Air Pacific flight where I had a great feed of lamb goulash, fruit salad and profiteroles with custard, which was delicious and the best plane food I have ever tasted. On arrival to Nadi airport there was a couple of men playing guitars and singing, I was met by a Fiji experience representative and given a shell necklace. We were then transported to smugglers cove resort. As part of my tour I had a free nights accommodation there. I checked in and handed over my voucher, but Fiji experience had forgotten to book me in so smugglers cove gave me a free upgrade which was pretty good as I wasn't paying for the night anyway, I got to stay in the hotel section of the resort in my own private ... read more

Wellington is a very windy city! So i tried to spend as much time as possible inside. Morv and I went to Te Papa, the national museum which was really interesting. It is the only museum in the world to have a collossol squid. It also had loads of maori relics including a life size meeting house and a room that simulates earth quakes which was a lot of fun. We had to be up for 7am the next morning and we were taken to the interislander ferry. It took 3 hours to cross the Cook Strait to the South Island and we docked in a small town called Picton. The Kiwi bus had overbooked so some of us had to go on a 'shuttle' bus to Nelson which is about 2 hours away. It turned ... read more