Kia Ora from Auckland, New Zealand! After almost a solid year of planning and saving, we have finally arrived in New Zealand. Not to be cheesy, but the moment the plane landed I knew that we had made the right choice and that we were going to love New Zealand. Ok, that was cheesy... Before describing New Zealand, lets backtrack a bit to Fiji. Ah yes, Fiji...
Bula! Everyone in Fiji says Bula! (with enthusiasm, too). It basically means a warm hello, but they seem to say it all the time in all sorts of situations. When you arrive at a resort in Fiji, at least in the Yasawa Islands that we were visiting, the resort staff play guitar and sing you an arrival song, at the end of which they yell BULA! and you yell back BULA! They sing to you on the way out too, as well as during meals. There is a lot of singing in Fiji.
As Steph said in the last post, we stayed at Octopus Resort for 5 nights so I could get my Scuba certification. While doing that, I had 4 open water dives in the reefs just off the island. During these dives, I saw white-tip reef sharks sleeping on the sandy bottom, a giant sea turtle hiding out under a rock (like 4 feet wide), big lobsters, lionfish, clown fish (Nemo), and all sorts of fish of crazy shapes and colors. Not to mention the beautiful soft and hard corals that my dive instructor pointed out. She loved to point out these tiny little sea slugs that were beautiful bright colors called nudibranches. She also pointed out this reddish hard coral that when you touched it, the entire piece of coral turned snow white - they call it ghost coral. The good thing about Fiji, or at least these islands, is that most of this stuff you can see on the reefs right off the beach. The water was so clear and there were so many colorful fish that you literally felt like you were in an aquarium. In fact, there was this fish in an aquarium in Vegas that had a horn-looking thing coming out of his head. I remember thinking "I've never seen a fish like that before." Sure enough, we saw loads of them right along the beach in Fiji. Awesome.
As Steph said, despite our incredible run of weather in the states, we didn't have great weather in Fiji. It didn't rain that much (mainly at night), but it was cloudy a lot and really windy. It wasn't all that hot so unless the sun was out, it was pretty cold to get in the water. Lucky there were lots of other travelers to talk to. We made good friends with the German couple that Steph mentioned. We met a guy from Atlanta that works with my parents next door neighbor. We met people from England, Australia, Wales, but suprisingly no Kiwis. The resort was really nice and the food was great. There was one small problem - we got sick. Neither of us have been sick in years, yet of course get sick while we're in Fiji. Go figure. It started with me and a slight fever and cough. I didn't let this keep me from my scuba stuff, but I guess I passed it to Steph, who of course got the brunt of it. Fever, headache, cough, nausea, soreness...5 days later she's still feeling it. Anyways, that will just give us one more excuse to go back.
Despite being sick, we still had to travel to the northern part of the chain to Safe Landing resort for our last night in the Yasawas. Rough seas did not help Steph's sickness (who knew?), and she was even worse off during our stay there. She toughened up our last morning and we took a trip to some famous caves in the area. We started out by swimming out into this little clearing with huge rock walls on all sides. Apparently a scene from the movie Blue Lagoon was filmed here. Then, it got really interesting. You had to swim underwater under a little wall to get into this cave. I went first and came up in a pitch black tunnel with barely enough room for your head and only the guide's flashlight guiding the way. Steph came next, popped up, and was firmly griping onto the guide for comfort. She looked at me and you could just see the gears turning in her head. She screamed! Apparently she thought the guide that she was hanging onto was me! After calming her down, we had a nice swim through this dark, creepy cave. There were a couple spots where a little sunlight could make it in, reflecting cool patterns on the cave walls. Once the guide told us there were bats in the cave sometimes, it was time for Steph to go. All in all a really cool experience and really impressed how well Steph handled it - I don't think she knew what she was signing up for!
If you asked us a couple days before leaving Fiji, we would have said we're so ready to leave and get to New Zealand. Not that Fiji wasn't great, but we were dirty and a little cold and the skies were overcast. Then, the weather turned. When the sun comes out, the waters completely change colors and all the blues and turquises come out and it is truly stunning. The last two days the weather was brilliant and we were suddenly really sad to be leaving Fiji. Despite that, we are really excited to finally be in New Zealand. So far, Auckland reminds me a lot of Seattle and Portland. Everything is green, clean, and beautiful. We have a great view of the harbor and the Sky Tower from our hotel room on the 23rd floor. Today we opened our bank account here and hopefully we'll get cell phones tonight or tomorrow. Right now we are about to go grocery shopping so we can make dinner in our room (we have a full kitchen - nice!). We're at an internet cafe, so I'm not sure how to upload photos from Fiji, but we will soon. Hope everything is well. Talk to ya soon!
Bula! Everyone in Fiji says Bula! (with enthusiasm, too). It basically means a warm hello, but they seem to say it all the time in all sorts of situations. When you arrive at a resort in Fiji, at least in the Yasawa Islands that we were visiting, the resort staff play guitar and sing you an arrival song, at the end of which they yell BULA! and you yell back BULA! They sing to you on the way out too, as well as during meals. There is a lot of singing in Fiji.
As Steph said in the last post, we stayed at Octopus Resort for 5 nights so I could get my Scuba certification. While doing that, I had 4 open water dives in the reefs just off the island. During these dives, I saw white-tip reef sharks sleeping on the sandy bottom, a giant sea turtle hiding out under a rock (like 4 feet wide), big lobsters, lionfish, clown fish (Nemo), and all sorts of fish of crazy shapes and colors. Not to mention the beautiful soft and hard corals that my dive instructor pointed out. She loved to point out these tiny little sea slugs that were beautiful bright colors called nudibranches. She also pointed out this reddish hard coral that when you touched it, the entire piece of coral turned snow white - they call it ghost coral. The good thing about Fiji, or at least these islands, is that most of this stuff you can see on the reefs right off the beach. The water was so clear and there were so many colorful fish that you literally felt like you were in an aquarium. In fact, there was this fish in an aquarium in Vegas that had a horn-looking thing coming out of his head. I remember thinking "I've never seen a fish like that before." Sure enough, we saw loads of them right along the beach in Fiji. Awesome.
As Steph said, despite our incredible run of weather in the states, we didn't have great weather in Fiji. It didn't rain that much (mainly at night), but it was cloudy a lot and really windy. It wasn't all that hot so unless the sun was out, it was pretty cold to get in the water. Lucky there were lots of other travelers to talk to. We made good friends with the German couple that Steph mentioned. We met a guy from Atlanta that works with my parents next door neighbor. We met people from England, Australia, Wales, but suprisingly no Kiwis. The resort was really nice and the food was great. There was one small problem - we got sick. Neither of us have been sick in years, yet of course get sick while we're in Fiji. Go figure. It started with me and a slight fever and cough. I didn't let this keep me from my scuba stuff, but I guess I passed it to Steph, who of course got the brunt of it. Fever, headache, cough, nausea, soreness...5 days later she's still feeling it. Anyways, that will just give us one more excuse to go back.
Despite being sick, we still had to travel to the northern part of the chain to Safe Landing resort for our last night in the Yasawas. Rough seas did not help Steph's sickness (who knew?), and she was even worse off during our stay there. She toughened up our last morning and we took a trip to some famous caves in the area. We started out by swimming out into this little clearing with huge rock walls on all sides. Apparently a scene from the movie Blue Lagoon was filmed here. Then, it got really interesting. You had to swim underwater under a little wall to get into this cave. I went first and came up in a pitch black tunnel with barely enough room for your head and only the guide's flashlight guiding the way. Steph came next, popped up, and was firmly griping onto the guide for comfort. She looked at me and you could just see the gears turning in her head. She screamed! Apparently she thought the guide that she was hanging onto was me! After calming her down, we had a nice swim through this dark, creepy cave. There were a couple spots where a little sunlight could make it in, reflecting cool patterns on the cave walls. Once the guide told us there were bats in the cave sometimes, it was time for Steph to go. All in all a really cool experience and really impressed how well Steph handled it - I don't think she knew what she was signing up for!
If you asked us a couple days before leaving Fiji, we would have said we're so ready to leave and get to New Zealand. Not that Fiji wasn't great, but we were dirty and a little cold and the skies were overcast. Then, the weather turned. When the sun comes out, the waters completely change colors and all the blues and turquises come out and it is truly stunning. The last two days the weather was brilliant and we were suddenly really sad to be leaving Fiji. Despite that, we are really excited to finally be in New Zealand. So far, Auckland reminds me a lot of Seattle and Portland. Everything is green, clean, and beautiful. We have a great view of the harbor and the Sky Tower from our hotel room on the 23rd floor. Today we opened our bank account here and hopefully we'll get cell phones tonight or tomorrow. Right now we are about to go grocery shopping so we can make dinner in our room (we have a full kitchen - nice!). We're at an internet cafe, so I'm not sure how to upload photos from Fiji, but we will soon. Hope everything is well. Talk to ya soon!
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