Fiji Pictures

I bought a new camera today at the duty free in Auckland, almost identical to my previous beauty. I formerly had a Canon A710IS I now can use as a paperweight and a Canon A720IS. It's almost exactly the same, hopefully it takes pictures just as well. I'm staying a hostel downtown tonight and then depart for Brisbane, Australia tomorrow morning. I tried to get on a flight today to Brisbane but it was full and no stand by so here I am, in the comfort of a broadband connection and a computer with usb capabilities. Here are some pictures from Fiji that I've been meaning to show you.

This was an awesome mountain out of my window on the way from Vancouver to LAX. Below is another one.

Two hours after touching down I found myself at this port getting ready to board the big yellow boat for a tropical paradise.

This was the scene around the big yellow boat when it stopped at each of like 15 stops over the course of 4 hours as it traveled up the set of islands. This one was the busiest though and where I got off, right at the top of the islands.

This was our resort, we all lived in these little huts called "Bures"

Sunset on the beach

The locals use the beach as a road to walk around the island as that one was really hilly. On saturday there were lots of kids doing chores and stuff. Here is one collecting wood.

The pile of beer bottles in the bushes. This would net you a heafty sum at the beer store.

Ahhh...



This is Ollie from England, I hung out with him and his gf alot. This was on one of the first days, he's showing the fruits of our labour. I climbed the tree and got the coconut then we husked it and drank some of the milk and ate it. Totally not worth the effort. It was gross, but fun.

Hibiscus everywhere.

This is a hermit crab race at one of the places. You had to buy one and then you could win a prize if it was the first one out of the outter circle. I made it to semi finals.



Ollie and Emma through a rock.

I stayed here on my final night in the Yasawas. Beachcomber Island, it was SO NICE!!!

This and That

The Fiji experience concludes tomorrow morning when I fly to Auckland but here are a few random stories.

1. Everyone else was complaining about the mosquitoes the whole time and there were bug nets in all the dorms on the islands clearly they had never experienced the Canadian wilderness. I actually can tell you that I saw MAYBE 5 mosquitoes the whole time I was there. In the summer in Canadia sometimes they are so bad that you can hear the hum outisde of your tent from the millions that want to eat you. I never used the bugnets and just slept ontop of the sheets.

2. Establishments in Fiji are WAY overstaffed. I went into the Nadi Town yesterday and into this store, like a department store, and was literally asking the staff to move so I could look at something, there were so many people it was ridiculous. Same with the resorts, there locals just hanging around that would kind of do work sometimes but most of the time just hang around and outnumber the guests.

3. After the completion of our cross country trek Aaron, Ben and I stopped and had breakfast at the Zen Cafe in Vancouver. I thought it would be funny to send them postcards from all the places I'm going. They have no idea who I am but will be getting these cards from some guy named "Rob" for a while. Maybe I'll stop in on my way home and say hi.

Fiji Continues

Well it doesn't look like I'll be able to upload any pictures here unfortunately. I don't really have as many as I should as I got filled my camera with salt water the other day. It's finished.

I just got back to the mainland after spending 7 days and 6 nights out on the Yasawa Islands just north west of the main island. To sum it up it was beaches and blue water as far as the eye could see. Incredible! Athough after a while sitting in a hammock and reading gets a little old surprisingly. To get out there you take this monster Catamaran (below). I took it 4 hours right to the top of the islands a couple hours after getting off the plane and was on the beach by dinner. The places to stay in the islands are all small and pretty basic but the people are usually really nice and there are tons of other backpackers from all over but the majority from England. I hopped to 4 different resorts over the 7 days and booked some solid hammock time. At the places there are optional activities you can do like a village visit, go to church on sunday, snorkelling, fishing, etc. The highlight of these was a couple days ago driving in a boat 20 minutes out to sea to a reef then snorkelling along the edge with up to 5 reef sharks! so amazing. The locals that were with shot some fish with a harpoon gun and then fed them . wow. 20 Fijian dollars well spent. I've met alot of people and keep seeing different people at different places. I've been sort of travelling with some English people as we have basically the same schedule so we just book at the same place. It's been really good. As beautiful as Fiji is though I am anxious to get to Oz. So a couple more days here to sit around the pool at the hostels then the promised land. I'll put up some pictures as soon as i can.

Fijian Sunrise

whoa, it actually worked. althought it took a while. Here is a sunrise pic from the first place that I stayed at on Nacula Island. The weather today is kind of crappy but lets be honest, it's still pretty awesome here.

In Fiji

Well, I made it and now have like 2 minutes left to write this as I'm on some tiny island (Naviti Island) in the South pacific. The water is amazingly blue and warm and it's super humid. The beaches are white and the hammocks are great! I'll do an actual post when I can find a decent connection. Peace

Vancity.... finally!

Well, after 7 days of driving we were welcomed to Vancouver last night with drizzle and our first traffic jam of the trip. Today however the skies cleared up and a nice breeze from the pacific made this city look like a million bucks.

On our way down along the Fraser Valley. The road was pretty crazy at times as it was hundreds of feet above the valley floor. The river looked really rough at spots too. The scenery went from really lush to super dry in some spots then back to super lush on the way to the coast. Trains were everywhere.

This is the Fraser River in Hope, BC. The low lying clouds made it look really different from the rockies we had seen the day before.

Vancity itself

Aaron took us on a tour of UBC this morning. A really beautiful campus.

UBC view

After running a bunch of errands we were driving by GM place and looked into going to a Canucks game so we bought some tickets. Solid!

"We're all Canucks"

Oh ya, Ben went and picked up Grace in Langley and she came too. Then after the game she convinced us to go to the Crepe Cathedral or something. She loved it, just look at the picture below, not only did she eat her own but finished off mine, both of which contained half a jar of nutella... Don't get me wrong, I like hazelnut spread as much as the next guys but Grace REALLY likes it. wow.

"No!"

Today we also went to MEC and I tried to pick up those last minute things I still needed. Tomorrow we're going to Ikea to buy Aaron furniture. He's gotta furnish his part of the house, sleeping on the floor isn't going to cut it.

I looked into some Fijian accomidations today. It looks like its going to be awesome!

The Breaking Point

Aaron here.... As you can all see, the trip across the country has been amazing, I continued to be surprised by the beauty of this country.

I thought while I was a part of this crew I would take my chance to give a bit of an outsiders perspective on this whole "ben and rob" thing as I feel that I am getting a nice little preview of what the next 7 months of their life together will look like.....

The days seem to go on a cycle and with the exception of maybe one or two the following remains true; the day starts quiet, everyone a little sleepy still, but very kind and even a little excited to see what the day has in store. The next major point of interest in the day is usually around 1 or 2 when ben politely will ask the car if anyone is hungry, and when one of us replies something along the lines of "yeah... i could eat" like clockwork his reply is "good.... because I am STARVING" after a lunch that could range anywhere from a subway sandwhich to "the best burger I have ever had"- ben in Calgary, we head out on the afternoon. The afternoon is generally uneventful, unless rob hits sensory overload like he did yesterday from seeing too many beautiful mountains and then instantly gets really tired.

By far the most interesting point of the day is what I like to call "The Breaking Point". While we have managed to avoid this point once or twice, more often than not, at around the 10 or 11 o'clock mark a combination of cabin fever, overcaffination and lack of female presence and reason brings us to a place where one of the three of us has had enough. This would not be that big of a deal, except for the fact that this is also often the time that we are making decisions that require agreement from all parties such as food or lodging for the night. A perfect example was last night, when after a great day of driving we made it to revelstoke and started looking for somewhere to eat, just before we pulled up to Denny's for a little all night breakfast, we hit the BP. This spilled over and manifested itself in a verbal abuse/punching match in the oversized booth in Denny's between rob and ben. Luckily the friendly service and delicious breakfast meats at that fine establishment where able to calm the nerves and we all left as friends with full stomachs.

As long as these guys can make all major decisions between the hours of 9am and 6pm, I think that they will make excellent travel partners......

Almost There

We are currently in Revelstoke, British Columbia. We didn't make it too far in the car today but we did manage to take a lot of pics and see some cool scenery. But first lets go back a few days. On Thursday night we stayed with Rob's cousin in Medicine Hat or for those who live there "The Hat." We stayed on a farm just outside the city which was complete with cows, tractors and a four wheeler.



This is what the all of our driving looked like for Wednesday and Thursday.



Some cows in the field behind the homestead.



Sandy after running around in the dugout. In case you are wondering what a dugout is, it is a area in the ground that is literally dug out then fills with water which is used instead of a well or a waterline.



A dead cow. Nuff said.



Jer, this one is for you. Rob and I were walking around the hostel in Banff when we came across this camp site complete with the smallest clothesline ever. Just large enough to dry one sweater at a time. Great.

A shot just outside the main drag in Banff. More pics to come soon. For now we are stuck with a bad internet connection in the hostel in Revelstoke.

Free internet in a corn field

This is where I'm blogging from, a rest stop in the middle of a corn field in North Dakota.
Aaron wouldn't have pegged North Dakota as the state to offer such high tech conveniences.

Aaron has driven way too far today, I think it's time someone else took over. haha

Ian, this one is for you

North Dakota has a really big sky

We're heading up to Canada, this country is gigantic. The distances being marked in miles doesn't help. Winnepeg tonight? we'll see. Back to the road

On the road

Well, we left on Monday morning for our journey westward. Ben, Aaron and I are driving to Vancouver as Aaron goes to UBC and my flight is out of the Vancity airport. Ben will then fly back home to Toronto so he can figure stuff out and actually book his ticket so he can meet me in Australia.

Day 1 was pretty tame, not much to speak of as we passed through a really boring part of Ontario and then Michigan on our way to the suburbs of Chicago to stay with some family friends of Aaron.

Day 2 was a bit more exciting as it began with a visit to Nordstrum Rack. For those of you who were like me and don't know what that is, Nordstrum is some sweet department store and the "Rack" stores have their left over stuff on for dirt cheap. Like Hugo Boss dress shirts for 35 bucks, or Nike shox for $50. It was heaven for Ben and Aaron although 2/3 of us agree we overstayed our welcome. No Best Buy trip or outdoors stores allowed apparently (although there is speak of going to one this morning after hitting another "Rack") So that was Illinois. My camera was buried so no pictures, sorry. We didn't go to downtown Chicago anyway.

This is our little Garmin GPS that Ben brought along. So long map books, I gotta get me one of these!

Welcome to Wisconsin (I don't know how to rotate the pic on this mac, so tilt your head)
I took my camera out to take pictures of stuff in Wisconsin but other than some indoor waterparks there was nothing to photograph.... my first and last time in this state? maybe.

Aaron holding down the backseat. This really is the best seat in the car. (more on this later)

Benjamin driving and ipodding? Pure talent

Minneapolis through the windshield! "The city where the bridge broke" (I don't know what it's actually known for)

The states is alright if you like that sort of thing but I'm anxious to get back to Canada! (so is Ben)

The Promised Land