Australia and Fiji

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Hey everybody!

Once again we have skipped continents and we are now in Thailand!!!

After leaving Byron Bay in OZ after a very short time we travelled further up the coast to Brisbane. Luckily we met a couple of aussies on our travels and we spent our first night with Jo and Aaron just outside Brisse. Due to our poor planning we realised we had just 4 nights to go to the gold coast, surfers paradise, fraser island and the whitsundays, so we got some awesome travel advice from Jo and other ppl and decided we most wanted to go to Fraser Island, the largest island in the world made up of only sand (obviously with trees and other stuff on top).

Most ppl rent out 4w4s and spend 3 days driving all over the island and camping along the 75km beach, but as we didnt have enough time for that we had to catch a Greyhound up the coast to Hervey bay and then transfer across to the island for just one night. Our stay was fantastic though, we travelled over beaches and sand roads on a 4w4 coach, saw dingos, walked along freshwater streams and swam in the beautiful natural lakes including deep blue lake mckenzie. It was immense.

On our arrival back to Brissie we spent the day exploring this lovely city (although I must say the heat for the best city bris/syd was on!) At night we took a train back to Jo and Aaron's pad, a gorgeous ranch style place right out in the bush. They cooked us up a lovely aussie steak on the barbie, taught us some more aussie colloquialisms, and introduced us to Bondaberg rum: pretty strong stuff!

NEXT: FEEJEE (as Corrine's Ben referred to it!)

We took a short flight form Brisbane to Fiji, and arrived to the sound of people shouting"Bula!" (hello in Fiji). We sorted out 10 days out that night and got it a lot cheaper than the brochure prices although Fiji is not cheap-prices are similar to Aus.

We headed right to the North of the most famous Fijian Islands called the yasawas and spent 5 days in Nabua Lodge (nacula island) in our own palm tree woven "buree" bungalow. We were right on the most amazing beach and could see every shade of blue imaginable in the sea. James' 22nd Birthday was spent here, it was a really tuff day (see pics of James asleep in Hammock!) we went fishing with two awesome dutch boys and an austrian alth me and James didnt catch a thing! Altogether our group caught 5 medium sized fish which our island pals grilled for us that night. They also made a cake for James which they were really proud of.

Two other things you experience in FIJI: Kava and the Bula dance. Kava is basically an age old herbal drink Fijians drink which tastes disgusting! It's renowned for making u sleep like a log and for being a very important ceremonial and sociable part of Fijian life. I asked a Fijian why do you drink it it doesn't taste...er great! He said, no it tastes disgusting! But Kava is like us sitting in the pub after a hard days work with our mates for a few.

Th nest thing is the Bula dance: you do this on every island you go to and somehow the Fijians look so cool when thy do it, alth to b honest we looked quite stupid! demos when we arrive back home.

Next stop was White Sandy on Naviti Island, and that was well interesting... There was torrential rain and high speed rain. We were put in staff acc as it was overbooked and there was a massive gap between our roof and walls which = lots of insects in our room! I spent the whole night watching a medium sized lizard eating flies by our light! Beach wasn't great and the food was dire! So then we headed to the perfect paradise Mantaray. And what a difference!

We spent one night there and met up with some brill swiss and german guys and had a blast - we danced with the locals and had an awesome fire on the beach. Nest day we were woke up by the drumming of the staff shouting "mantarays!" We jumped out of bed, dahed to the boat and were taking to a part with a relatively strong current: apparently the rays like swimming against it. Imagine how dog likes sticking his head out the window!) We were swimming around then all of a sudden James was swimming next to one 2-3meters wide! Then later I turned to my right and there were two right in front of me swimming on top of each other. One turned round and starting heading right for me! He then most gracefully dived right under me he was about 3.5-4meters wide! By far one of my most memorable experiences.

Next was four days at Waya lai lai. A jaw dropping landscape and one of the best beaches. Staff/food/people awesome. We again met some great people and spent most of our time with an Israeli couple Gil and Galia who we drank with and who introduced us to a great card game called "Yaneeve." (I forgot to mention that I whipped James' butt at poker!) We really wanted to meet up with our uni friends Sam and Nikki here but we couldnt get the internet of James' phone to work so we ended up missing them!!

NEXT: FLIGHT TO BRISBANE THEN TO BANGKOK we'll post soon!

Lots of love

Jen and James

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