Well Im in New Zealand. A strange feeling. I felt less like a backpacker by the end of my time in Oz and more like it as home cos I understood everything. All of a sudden I am back in the world of not knowing anyting. On the one hand, very exciting on the other a bit confusing!.

The last of my time in the Whitsundays was amazing. I know I didn’t write much on my blog, mostly because I was usually away at sea but I loved it. Everyday was a little adventure, learning to dive and about boats and the reef. A lot of fun. I will miss it.

My next stop was a tough one. I met up with Shell and we headed out to Fiji. We quickly learnt that Fiji is really really far away. It is actually in the middle of nowhere. Look it up on a map it is just a tiny bunch of islands in the middle of the huge pacific. It looked really cool. We stayed on the main island and it was green and rugged and filled with palm trees and long stretches of beach. We were on holiday so we had booked ourselves into fancy hotel right on the beach. I think you could sum up our 9 days like this: Breakfast buffet, Pool, happy hour cocktails and the occasional game of volleyball. We really didn’t stress ourselves. We ventured out into the local town a few times. The Fijian people were so so friendly, I know they say that about lots of people but really they were crazy friendly, everyone was having a chat with you, saying hello or “Bula Bula”. My favourite example was when we went kayaking on the river and a lady form one of the houses came running out all excited to ask us where we were off to. We said we didn’t know yet and she gave us some places to go laughed at us and when we came back past about 3hrs later she came running abck out to see where we had been, brilliant. Kayaking was an action packed morning for us. We loaded our kayaks with picnic, Fijian beer and Rod Stewart and paddled down the river, what more do you need. The weather was warm bt not always sunny as it was the end of wet season, probably the only reason we could afford to go! I took on the shark infested waters literally and did the famous shark dive. It was crazy. You dive down 25m and you are protected by a few guys with big sticks and then one crazy guy gets out his tuna heads and feeds the fish and at some point very quickly massive Bull sharks arrive whilst you try and stay out their way. There was about 7 at any one time and they were about 3m long which is bigger than me by a fair way. There was also loads of other huge fish and some fair sized reef sharks. The whole thing was fascinating. There is some controversy over the feeding of sharks for shark diving and Im not sure what I htink about it really but it was definitely an amzing and fascinating experience. Especially once I was back on the surface with all my limbs in tact.

After Fiji we headed back into Sydney and had a night out on the town with some friends we had met whilst cruising down the west coast and then that was it, time for me to get the hell out. I flew out on the last day of my visa and arrived in NZ. It is a whole lot colder here, I am a wimp these days and am wearing many layers. I landed in Auckland on the north island and I so far have headed north. It hasn’t stopped raining in the 3 days I have been here. Tomorrow I am going to just get over it and do some diving cos this is supposed to be an amazing dive site and then I will head up to the Bay of islands for some walking and wet weather sailing!