Every time I pack my backpack it seems to get smaller.

Today Australian customs went through everything I had but I wasn't in a rush and they were nice about it despite their probing questioning.

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!