TravelStream™ news feed for member bradandsandi on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/bradandsandi en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:59:08 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1246243989/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1246243989/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1246243989/tpod.html Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:59:08 -0400 South Pacific

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Taveuni Island, Fiji

We stayed at the Nakia Resort & Dive for 7 nights! We dove 10 dives over 5 days, and it was the best diving we have ever done. This was an extremely relaxing and fun end to our world trip!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1243306860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1243306860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1243306860/tpod.html Wed, 27 May 2009 01:27:16 -0400 South Pacific

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Pacific Harbour, Viti Levu, Fiji

One of the staff from Manta Ray Resort (Seru) helped us get to transportation from Nadi to Pacific Harbor. The taxi drivers at the ferry said the buses were not running because it was Sunday (lie). We took a minibus that played christian music (usually country) the whole 3 hour ride. The people in the minibus sang along with most of the songs. The Uprising Beach Resort was booked up that night, so we had to get a taxi to another place for the night, but moved to Uprising the next day. Uprising is awesome. Our Bure is the size of our house. It has a shower that is enclosed with no roof and lots of plants and landscaping inside. It is the coolest shower I've ever seen. They have horse riding on the beach, a pool, beach bar, huge open air restaraunt (US$75/night).

We spent the first day lounging on the beach and by the pool.

We went diving in the Beqa Lagoon the second day. We also went to the outer reef (Cutter's Passage). The visibility was about 30 meters and we saw turtles, eels, reef sharks, lots of colorful coral, lionfish, etc. It was better than the diving in the Red Sea. Jorge, a Columbian traveler and diver, took underwater photos and was nice enough to share them with us for the small cost of Bounty Rum and pineapple cocktails. We posted some of Jorge's pictures from this first day of diving.

The last day we did the Shark Dive. We saw big Bull Sharks (2 to 3 meters), Reef Sharks, Nurse Sharks, Lemon Sharks, and a ton of fish. They feed the sharks right in front of you, which is questionable we know. The dive master brought Brad from the edge of the feed right in the middle where the sharks and fish were swimming around. He encouraged Brad to touch one of the large bull sharks that was feeding. Crazy. Jorge's photos of the shark feed can be seen on Facebook... jnontour@yahoo.com. Overall though, we enjoyed the reef dives more than the shark feed. Although the sharks are beautiful to see, the dive was packed with people and felt very staged.

We are catching a flight to Taveuni in the morning. Taveuni is said to have the best soft coral diving in the world. If it is better than what we've already seen, then we will have to come back here again. We will be back in the US in a week (June 4)... this trip has gone so fast!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242546840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242546840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242546840/tpod.html Mon, 25 May 2009 04:24:41 -0400 South Pacific

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Nadi, Viti Levu, Fiji

We flew from Brisbane to Nadi, Fiji on May 17th. We stayed with a woman named Dee and her son James in their house. They were very friendly. Monday morning, May 18th, we took a ferry to the Yasawa Islands to get some beach time.

We've heard mixed information on the status of the government here. The military is still in power. There were rumors going around that the capital (Suva) has a 6 pm curfew, and that they are going to shorten school from 5 to 3 days a week because of shortage of funds. It doesn't seem to have affected tourism as much as we can tell. The places we stayed had plenty of people in them.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242632940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242632940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242632940/tpod.html Mon, 25 May 2009 04:23:01 -0400 South Pacific

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Yasawa Islands, Fiji

We took the Yasawa Flyer Ferry to Nacula Island in the Yasawa Island chain for some beach time. We stayed in Oarsman's Bay on Nacula for 4 nights and then took the ferry back south to Manta Ray Island for 2 nights. The beaches were great, especially at Oarsman's Bay. We snorkled, took the kayaks out, and read a bunch of books on the beach. The bures (bungalows) were right on the water, and we could see and hear the ocean from inside.

The resorts had some activities in the evening, some better than others. One night they made us do the Hokie Pokey, but they called it the "Hooky Porky" instead, which we thought was hilarious. We drank kava several nights with the resort staff. Kava is a homebrew made from the roots of the plant. It looks like muddy water and tastes like dirt. Despite Brad winning the reputation of "Kava King" and drinking many "high tide" portions, we did not start hallucinating. We felt a slight tingling on our tongues and seemed to get more relaxed the more we drank.
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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

We spent 3 night in Brisbane as our last stop in Australia. The trip has gone too fast! Fiji here we come.

The first night we partied in the hostel with a bunch of 20 year olds. They played guitar and sang until 3 am. Then, it turned to wrestling (we just listened to wrestling from our room).

We toured the XXXX brewery. The brewery had automated robots telling the story of the brewery. They were really excited about their beer. The tour ended in the bar with 4 free drinks. Then the "XXXX Angels" showed up and started handing out more free beer. We had beer from wooden kegs. It was a lot of fun. We then went to South Bank to a night market and dinner. They have fake beaches and pools along the river that are free to the public (really nice in the middle of the city).

We went to a Queensland Reds Rugby Union game Saturday night. We met some season ticket holders in the bar before the game and they let us sit with them right down in front. The Reds got beat, but we had a great time. Sorry, no pictures of the rugby, because our camera is a pain to carry around (especially to bars). We were woken up by a fire alarm at 5 am. The whole hostel had to go outside for 30 minutes while the fire department put it out. Lots of fun.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242190500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242190500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242190500/tpod.html Sat, 16 May 2009 01:12:55 -0400 South Pacific

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Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia

We spent a beach day and did some diving from the Sunshine Coast, Mooloolaba in Queensland. On Wednesday (May 13), we finally had a good weather beach day, and Sandi was very happy. On Thursday we dove the HMAS Brisbane wreck and the local aquarium (Underwater World) Shark Tank. Yes, really, we scuba dove in an aquarium.

The HMAS Brisbane was a 440-ft long missle destroyer, built in the US in 1967. She served in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. The ship was decommissioned in 2001 and sunk for wreck dives off the coast. The first dive we circled the ship and the second dive we swam through the boiler room, engine room, gallies, etc. It was impressive. In 4 years, the ship has quickly started turning into a reef, and we saw barracuda, octopus, angel fish, lion fish.

After that we dove in the 3.5-meter deep shark tank at the local aquarium. We thought it would be cheesy, but it was actually impressive! We dropped into the tank right next to some huge rays (~3 meters across). We were both afraid we would fall on them and go out Steve Irwin-style. There were also huge nurse sharks (maybe 4 m long), tiger sharks, etc. We have some photos of the shark tank but can't open them right now off of the CD. We'll post them soon.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242022620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242022620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1242022620/tpod.html Wed, 13 May 2009 02:30:17 -0400 South Pacific

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Agnes Water, Queensland, Australia

We drove up to the Town of 1770 to do some SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef. There was only one real dive boat operating and it was going to a shipwreck dive. We went on that and it turned out to be awesome. There were sharks, huge bull rays (15 feet wide), sea snakes, turtles, lots of tropical fish, huge grouper, lobster, etc. We even swam through the wheelhouse of the ship. The sea was rough and Sandi got seasick on the boat. Other than that is was a great dive. We looked into Lady Elliot Island, but it is $1,200 dollars for 2 days and they couldn't even tell us how the diving conditions were. Therefore we bailed on that.

We met some really fun British people in the campground. They were working in Australia for 2 years. They went on extensively about working in the Yellowtail winery. It is funny that Australias migrant workers are young British people. We need to look into this for the US a little.

We tried to go diving near Bundaberg, but this also failed due to rough seas. We decided to head back closer to Brisbane. We went to the Australian Zoo, which is the zoo that Steve Irwin used to run. It is a really cool zoo. you can feed and pet kangaroos and wallabies. You can pet koalas. They do really cool shows with crocodiles, birds, snakes, etc. Our favorite was the tasmanian devils. They just run around their habitats constantly. We went to a talk about them that was really cool. The zookeeper held one of them in her arms and it makes the funny growling noise that sounds like it is really angry. The one she was showing us kept trying to hide its head under her arm and would try to climb up her when she was on the ground. The tragic part is that they are dying off due to a contagious facial cancer. They transmit it by biting each other's faces. They get really bad facial tumors and it's 100% fatal.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1241753340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1241753340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bradandsandi/5/1241753340/tpod.html Fri, 08 May 2009 23:41:24 -0400 South Pacific

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Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia

We rented a Dahatsu from Brumby's 4x4 and took the ferry out to Fraser Island on May 7th. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, at 120-km long. The island has over 100 dune lakes and is heavily forested. The lakes are perched above the water table on a peat vegetation layer. It is beatiful!

The Dahatsu was a little tank on the 4WD tracks and beach. It was able to get up hills and sand tracks that much bigger Range Rovers had to turn around on. Going out to the island, we were expecting a Daytona Beach atmosphere, but it was pretty quiet. We found a camp site on the northeast side of the island, right on the dunes with no one else in sight.

Brad had a great time driving on the beach and the inland tracks. The first day, Sandi slept in the sun while Brad went on a drive. Sandi woke to a Dingo raiding camp. While running away, it looked back and seemed awfully proud of the bag of Dorritos hanging out of its mouth. Brad was crushed to have lost his Dorritos. He kept quoting the Australian movie line "Dingo got my baby"!!
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Dorrigo, New South Wales, Australia

We drove up the "Waterfall Way", another World Heritage Site in New South Wales. Brad caught a cold and was sick, so he slept in the van while Sandi did a 2.5-hour hike through rainforest to some waterfalls. When we left the national park, we forgot that the surfboard and Brad's wetsuit were on top of the van. It took us 200 km to notice they were gone. We are sure it was a surprise for the NP staff to find a crap surfboard in the middle of a rainforest. Oh well. Brad had realized by this point he wasn't going to make it as a professional surfer.
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Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia

We went to Lismore to see horse racing. Racing and betting are shown in many bars throughout the country. Lismore i-site told us that the races were in Ballina. We eended up driving the 30-km road between Lismore and Ballina 3 times before finding out that the racing was originally scheduled for Ballina but was moved to Lismore due to rain. But it was fun! Sandi lost every bet she made, but Brad rallied and won back all his loses in the last race.

We went to Byron Bay to celebrate Cinco De Mayo, but it turns out no one had a clue it was Mexican Independance Day. I guess we are pretty far from Mexico here (which you wouldn't know from the swine flu coverage!). Brad and I celebrated ourselves with a Corona and tequilla shot.
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