Romp Round Rarotonga

Seems like most beautiful destinations don't use jet bridges at the airport. As soon as you step on the tarmac, the beauty of Rarotonga, Cook Islands surrounds you. Welcome to paradise! After clearing customs, we had a unique welcome. A 72YEAR OLD ukelele player sung for us while we waited to collect our bags. Later we found out that he has been singing to visitors for over 20 years and meets EVERY flight arrival and departure.

Our trip started off on the wrong foot (date) to say the least. Upon check in at the hotel,  they could not find our reservation. Well it turns out we arrived in Rarotonga the day before we left Melbourne, Ahhh that was NOT what the Air New Zealand itinerary states! Luckily they had a room, at the rack rate - but of course. But we were so tired, we took it. 

The next morning we walked to the police station to get my Cook Islands drivers license. Have your home country drivers license and $20, and you could have one too. There was a line out the door of tourists that had the same idea. As the line was so long, Melissa kept our spot and I went next door to get the car reserved before they were sold out. All they had was a sub compact, but that was the least of my problems. The steering wheel was on the right "wrong" side. They drive on the opposite side if things were not exciting enough, but we were up for the challenge. 

There is only one main road that circles the island and you can drive around the entire island in less than 30 minutes so there is no real way to get lost. We would drive until we saw a nice spot, then we would pull over and walk around. After driving around the island a few times we had a few favorite spots.  

The island is ringed by an outer coral reef that breaks the waves offshore allowing calm and extremely clear blue waters. 

We found a nice spot to do some "light" rock climbing down to a secluded beach. This became one of our favorite spots and we would go get a pizza and eat it on the beach.

You can only go around the island so many times, so then we started exploring the dirt roads inland. The inland was covered with small family farms and had numerous waterfalls to explore.

I collect tikkis and have some from Hawaii, so I had to get one of these too! Melissa thought that they were a little to anatomically accurate for her liking. But it is SO Cook Islands - they even have this guy on their money with all of his "features."  Speaking of the money, they have a coin that is a triangle - very cool!

A Great Day on the Ocean Road

We had to get up early to catch the van for our early morning departure for the Great Ocean Road tour. There was nothing to see for the first hour or so as we drove out of Melbourne, so we caught up on some much needed sleep before arriving at our first stop Bells Beach. Bells Beach is a great surfing beach and has been used for making movies such as Point Break  (sorry, I never saw it)..

When we got back to the van the driver was making tea and spreading a black goo over the biscuits. We have never tried Vegemite but when he mentioned it was a spread made from yeast, we didn't care if it was as Australian as kangaroos.  No, thank you!

 From Bells Beach we headed down the coast stopping at a few other view points to admire the scenery and the Great Ocean road sign for a photo of course.

Next we headed inland and stopped at a place that is known for having koalas sleeping in the eucalyptus trees and birds. Melissa is not a fan of the critters, so she became worried when the driver found some birdseed to lure out the birds. That is fine, more for me.

The birds were lining up to get some!

After feeding the birds, it was time for us to eat, so the tour stopped at a nearby town and let us loose. We sniffed out a fish and chips shop, we couldn't get enough of that on this trip!

After lunch, we went for a walk through an ancient fern tree forest with trees that were a few hundred years old, I felt like we were in Jurassic Park.

The headline on the tour was the 12 Apostles rock formation. We knew when we arrived as it was an absolute zoo. There were people taking helicopter flights for a closer look of the formations. We decided just to walk along the beach for our look. With each wave the limestone formations get smaller and smaller, one day they will be gone!

You can get a better view of the 12 Apostles from the viewing platform

The last stop was London Bridge, which was disconnected from the mainland in 1990 when the arch collapsed.

Down Under...Again!

In September, we stopped over in Melbourne for a few days before heading to Rarotonga, Cook Islands for some sun and sand. 

After checking into our hotel we walked around a bit and stumbled across one of our FAVORITE(!) restaurants, Nando's!!

We have eaten at Nando's, literally all over the world from England to South Africa to Malaysia.. it is awesome! Who doesn't like grilled chicken with your choice of spicy sauce?!  I would definitely recommend looking for their sauces in your local grocery store. I use it in HK on our grilled chicken.

I like it HOT!

Now we needed to walk off that chicken and the weather could not have been better for a long walk headed nowhere! There are churches practically on every block and there are several huge parks in the city center. We found a park bench in the sun and just sat back and enjoyed the scenery.

After getting some sun, we checked out some of the local churches - beautiful!

The churches were stunning both inside and out.

At night we did some walking around and were drawn to a beautifully lit building, the Princess theatre which originally opened in 1854. The architecture was "second empire architecture,"but with closer inspection of the inside it was equally as impressive with its mosaic tile and ushers wearing retro uniforms. Just past the Princess was China Town. This used to be a must stop when visiting most cities, but in light of our current living situation, it was a bit shall we say underwhelming?

So Cute!

The day after we got back from the Great Ocean Road day trip,  the weather took a turn for the worst and it became cold and windy..Okay, so it WAS wintertime there. We took the free circular tram route around the city. The most interesting stop was the Queen Victoria Market which has fresh vegetables from all over new Australia, and even an Australian deli offering kangaroo meat. No, I didn't try any! If you have ever seen a roo up close with those long eyelashes and watching them jump, you can't help but smile. Here is a photo from our trip 2008 to a petting zoo in Cairns where we saw the roos up close. I settled on some fresh peri peri and souvlaki spices. Next up, we did some window shopping in the historic looking shopping arcades. I am sure the locals pass these by without giving even a second look, but for us, it was quite the experience - really takes you back to a different time!

Sydney Stop Over

Our flight from Fiji arrived into Sydney at night so we walked across   Cockle Bay wharf for some dinner and to enjoy the neon lit skyline views of the central business district. As it was our first time to Sydney we planned out our day over dinner, listing the sights we wanted to see, but since Sydney has a Hop on Hop off bus we started with that.

We took the route around Sydney first seeing all the major sights such as the bridge and the Opera House and making our list of places to return to. At central station, we switched to the Bondi line and headed outside of the city to Sydney's exclusive beach town - Bondi Beach. It was cold and windy, but that didn't stop those Aussies from going to the beach! But, it was cold enough to stop Melissa from getting ice cream! 

The next morning we headed straight over to the Sydney Opera House for a close up view. From far away you can't tell, but the roof is tiled with lots of individual large tiles. We sat around watching the all of the water taxis and ferries leaving from the central business district to other parts of Sydney.







At the footsteps of the bridge and opera house is the Sydney Saturday market. With numerous stalls with food and handicrafts you could spend all day there wondering about. I was more intrigued by a store with at least a dozen different types of Australian honeys to sample, from wild to lavender. I picked up two jars of my favorite. Melissa found a christmas ornament to add to her collection, so neither one of us left empty handed... that is what I call a good morning! After a bit of shopping we took the short walk over to the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

The best views of Sydney are from ON TOP OF the Sydney Harbor Bridge of course! So when Melissa saw the flier for a tour offering just that, we had to do it. After paying  for the tour, we had to fill out countless forms to sign our lives away as well as several more medical disclosure forms. The first 45 minutes of the tour was getting suited up in the provided windproof suits and to leave ALL of our belongings in a locker.. and they were serious. No camera, no necklaces, no change. They even provided a hat that was clipped to the suit so it would not blow off and made us use a bungie cord for our sunglasses. We thought it was OCD at first, but then they explained they didn't want anything falling on the cars below us. 

After being suited up, we went through an indoor training course on how to tether to the scaffolding and how to maneuver through the stairs and open breezeways. Before we were off they put us through a metal detector to make sure no one was sneaking any contraband. 

We were up by the flags later in the day

It was not easy climbing stairs in those wind suits, but once we reached to top we were glad we had them. It was a very clear day so we could see the Blue Mountains just over the horizon and had a birds eye view of the Sydney Opera house. The guide took a photo from the top, which they were more than willing to sell you once we got down. So when we got done we took the best photo...a free one. 

The bus tour mentioned the Sydney Fish Market had some excellent fresh seafood, so we made it their our last morning. We walked around a bit admiring all the fresh seafood, some we could identify and others we had never seen before. I even found a Brazilian soft drink we absolutely love, so we did have to get one of those. Yes, seafood for breakfast, we were jet lagged so 8am was just a number and the only question was which restaurant to choose. We decided on a platter which had a bit of EVERYTHING.. grilled squid, BBQ baby octopus, grilled scallops, pacific oyster, shrimp, grilled gem fish, mornay fish, and Kilpatrick fish and it was awesome! Then we were ready for our flight back to Hong Kong, but not before saying thanks for such a good meal.

We flew Virgin Atlantic direct to Hong Kong and enjoyed lunch together at 35,000 feet, a first for us!

Bula from Fiji!!

In May we headed to Fiji!  On our way back home, we stopped in Sydney for a few days.

As soon as we stepped off the plane the ground staff welcomed us with a loud Bula! Bula is a greeting in Fiji. Like Aloha in Hawaii.  We thought it would have been super easy to just pick up a taxi, but that would have been too easy. After walking around the arrivals area for awhile and asking around we finally found a shuttle going to our hotel. After getting settled into the shuttle van, we started talking with the other couple and as it turns out they were from Hong Kong too! Since it was late when we arrived at the hotel, we went straight to bed, but the next morning we went out on our balcony for our first real view of Fiji and the view definitely did not disappoint!

After a long morning walk down the beach, we staked out our beach chairs for a late morning siesta under the palm trees. For lunch we walked over to a fish and chips restaurant at the hotel. We went with the fresh  calimari rings which were HUGE. In the evening we made the 10 minute walk down to Port Danaru which is where all the island tours depart from. Port Denarau has numerous eating and shopping options - and even a Hard Rock Cafe.

The next day we went on an all day tour to two of the outlying islands, South Sea and Bounty Island. Upon checking in for the tour they gave us a sticker noting which tour and islands we would be seeing, everyone had different stickers. After about 30 minutes we arrived at the first island, and luckily that was our stop. After a brief introduction to the island by the staff we were left to do whatever we wanted.

You could walk around South Sea in less than 5 minutes, so there wasn't much to see except crystal clear water, sand though the baby black tip reef SHARKS 10 feet from the beach made for some excitement. Melissa found a hammock and took a siesta while I got in a kayak to paddle around the island and take a closer look at the sharks.

After a BBQ lunch we took the a boat to Bounty Island. Bounty was much larger than South Sea, but we had already had so much sun at South Sea so we found a nice place in the shade to rest until it was pick up time.

Leaving Bounty Island in the sunset

When the mothership arrived to pick us up from Bounty Island we grabbed some seats on the top deck to watch the sunset and get a few final views of Bounty Island. 

When we arrived back at the hotel we heard some drums  which lured me to the beach where a polynesian fire show was about to start. After the long day in the sun we were ready to get some sleep, but we had to make a quick detour to catch the hotel's polynesian fire show. 

Our last day Melissa had to do some work, but at least she had a nice view. She had some big deal closing so she had to spend a few hours on conference calls and constantly checking her palm, they don't call it a crack-berry for nothing.




We went down to the port and had an authentic Fijian dinner... Indian food. The British colonials brought Indians over to work in the sugar plantations, and now 40% of the population is of Indian descent. Before dinner we walked along the beach enjoying one last Fijian sunset and it definitely didn't disappoint.