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Published: November 12th 2008
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So, three months back, just over four months of travelling, and STIL its taken a long time to finish this blog, but I couldn’t leave it unfinished.
So in mid-July, we left the cold of New Zealand and headed to the Pacific Island of Fiji for the start of our journey home.
Auckland was alright, but I think by the time we got there we were properly ready to hit the sun.
During out time away the travel was always intense, never settling anywhere for too long, always seeing what we wanted to see, or doing what we wanted to do. Not enough time in hindsight to just chill out and relax. Fiji was the answer to this, a collection of islands surrounded by clear blue water and absolute beauty.
We booked a little package, which basically meant we had 7 days and 6 nights with all travel between islands, basic accommodation and all food included. What this did mean was that for that time, we always stayed around the same people, which was really cool, we met some awesome people, especially in Jon and Neil, and every day was spent pretty much sunning ourselves on different
islands.
The Fijians greet you to their island with a welcome song, the same song every time someone comes ashore (it gets very repetitive), I still know the tune! But what strikes you most is the friendliness of the Fijian people, always chatting, always remembering names, ALWAYS smiling. It instantly makes you feel at home, and I was involved in plenty of touch rugby matches, however I was aware of the risk of this! Someone on the same package as us had managed to break his ankle playing this ‘non-physical’ form of the game with the powerfully built Fijians. The games were awesome though, and always played in the most amazing spirit.
Near the end of the island hopping I got the start of food poisoning, which was to get worse, more to come! Claire had started to develop some kind of weird rash which we were later lead to believe were caused b y sand fly bites ... that was a bit of a drama in itself, but it wasn’t very nice to be fair. On the last night Claire bumped into 2 people she went to school with at Ditcham ... that was weird, especially on
the smallest island possible called South Sea Island, a island purely of sand, which you can walk around in about 4 minutes.
After a trip back to Nadi for a couple of nights it was off to the USA! The plane trip was mental, 18 hours of travel including a stop over in Los Angeles, but we only arrived in New York 2 and a half hours from when we left Fiji technically, due to the crossing of the international date line ... very, very tiring!!
We arrived in New York with not so much money so on to credit card we went! We did all the sights, did some shopping, I had my birthday-a bad one-as it coincided with the worst day of my food poisoning. Lots of vomiting (had to throw that in to set the scene) later, we went to watch a broadway show. We did all the sights we were meant to do, part of the best bit was just being able to sleep in the heat of Central Park.
To be honest the slight shame was that it was a bit of an anti-climax in New York. With me being ill, and
the both of us jet-lagged, combined with us being a little bit down about the fact it was all over, New York probably didn’t live up to exactly how we imagined. With more money, more time, more sleep, it’s probably absolutely incredible. We also found people weren’t very nice to us being British! One guy in Times Square made sure we heard we weren’t welcome in ‘his country’.
It was still amazing to see the city though, and absolutely still a great place to end the trip.
And that was it! 124 days of travelling, lots of ups and downs, lots of memories we’ll never forget. Now we’ve moved on, but I know we’re both still planning on doing some travelling in the future, we’ve got the travelling bug. Though we won’t be travelling together again, it was still an amazing experience.
Watch this space...
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