Fiji - A Sailing Safari

BULA!!! - These are some pictures from a fantastic 3 day safari on a tall ship. We were with a fantastic group of people and had the best time. Somehow I (Keith) was made chief - so I had some special duties when we met the villages. I also did my first ever scuba dive with one of the group called Frank - Frank also gave us these pictures (our camera is still out of action). We sailed all over and spent our nights on an unihabitated island. More later...

Aitutaki and the Adventures of Hodgie-Crusoe

Some pictures from Aitutaki - The Cook Islands. The first two pictures are from a boat trip we took with Matthias, the owner of the tree house. That's his sailing canoe that Elvis is sitting on - we went on a snorkeling trip to the outer reef where we saw eagle rays, giant turtles, giant clams and all other kinds of stuff. The island on the left (Manui Island) is deserted, we stopped there for lunch, Matthias cooked yellow fin tuna over a fire - very nice. Matthias is the type of guy who throws nothing out - he made the tree house, all the furniture, the bathrooms, shower block, he even built his boat. A right CS!

This is our tree house - look carefully and you can see Elvis on the balcony. It was right on the beach, and we could hear the ocean from our room.



The church is the oldest in the Cook Islands - we went on Sunday to hear the singing, which was really beautiful and powerful. The Priest said something to the visitors that you wouldn't hear anywhere else in the world. He said: "It's nice to see so many visitors to our Church - so many white faces in the congregation, you have chosen a good time to visit our island, these days we greet you when once we used to eat you!!" It's true, they did used to practice cannibalism on the Cooks.

The last picture shows the bike we 'borrowed' from Matthias - he didn't know we used it to go around the island though - so don't tell him. You have to have a Cook Islands Driving licence to drive a vehicle on the Cooks, you'll all be pleased to know I passed first time with flying colours, however, you might not be surprised when you hear what the test is. First you hire/borrow/buy a motor vehicle, then you drive the vehicle to the police station, the theory is, if you can drive it to the police station then you can handle a vehicle and the officer promptly issues the licence for a charge of $5 - presumably, if you never make it to the station because you've crashed/drove off a cliff/reversed into a cow - then you you've failed. Why can't it be that easy in England?

Ps all the pictures are from a disposable - the digital wasn't working!

The Cook Islands - South Pacific

This place is just too beautiful for words!

That's us on the deck of our little studio - RIGHT on the beach. If anyone has seen the film Blue Lagoon (I'm sure some of you will have it on DVD!) that was filmed in the Cook Islands - also the TV series Shipwrecked, Survivor and all those other crappy 'reality TV' desert island programmes are made here too.


The islands are surrounded by a 'lagoon' which is no deeper than four foot and full of tropical fish, coral reefs and little islands (motu) - if you look carefully at the second picture you can see the Pacific Ocean breaking waves about 100 metres in the distance - that's where the edge of the lagoon is.

I know what you're all thinking about this picture - 'doesn't he have a lovely bunch of coconuts'!

Now we may be on a little tropical island with few amenities - but Elvis was easily able to sniff out the best Coffee and Cake shop - home roasted coffee and homemade cake - a great selection so we are in every day, we tried the bloody lot!

The picture with Keith in the water has our kayak in the background, we rowed over to this island and spent the day relaxing - note - NO ONE ELSE is on the island - a whole coral island to yourself!

The snorkeling is amazing - we've never seen such colourful, weird and wonderful fish anywhere. We went out on a boat trip from Aitutaki and snorkeled in a deeper part of the reef - we saw eagle rays swimming underneath us, giant turtles sitting on the bottom , then coming up for air and giant clams - and I mean giant, 3 foot long, you don't get many of them on your Spaghetti Frutti De La Mare!!!

This is Elvis ready to leave the little coral island (we named it Wedding Island because this is where they do wedding services).

This is sunrise - right out of our studio deck - that's 'wedding island' in the background - left.

Next stop is Fiji - we cross the international date line so we leave on Friday night, 7pm and arrive Saturday night, 9pm - Gee we've been robbed of a days holiday already, go-figure!!

Ps - It's been nice to receive some comments from 'new readers'! So 'Kia Orano' (as we South Pacific'ites say) to Joseph and Lynn, Coleen (AKA Mam's friend), John and Diane Smith from the 'W' place and Big G (he of both feet fame!) from footy.

Happy 60th Birthday Dad

We send our greetings from miles away

And it's because we want to say....

"Have a great Birthday on Sunday Dad"

60 years old - you're not looking bad!!

We'll be thinking of you,

And whatever you do

Our time in Vegas - it was just fab

Lived the high life and rode the limo cab!

And now it's just left for us to say

"Love you loads - and have a 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY'!!

Viva Las Vegas!!

A 'whirlwind' (and whirly-bird) tour of the 'madhouse' that is Vegas! Even the airport is loaded with gaming machines. The pictures show little bits from the start (when Ron and Chris arrived) to the end, when they left.
That's us with our name cards waiting at the international arrivals (FIL and BIL - Father-in-law and Brother -in-law - just in case anyone was wondering!)

The next picture is them arriving - cop for the excitement on Darcey's face !!

The next picture is the lobby of the MGM Grand - pretty sumptuous wouldn't you say? The MGM is the biggest hotel in the world, load of pools, restaurants, theatres etc - not to mention thousands of games to lose your money on.

Anyone for 'Pork Crackling"? This is B.I.L. sleeping off the jet lag. It was 106 degrees that day - that could explain why he's sweating like a bull on heat. By the way he also burps and fa*ts on a three minute cycle - there's the snoring as well!!

The next picture is the roller-coaster on top of the 'New York - New York' hotel. We all rode this and some of us even kept our eyes open! (not Darcy - who made a sound like a camel giving birth the whole way around). It gets the adrenalin going though!

The next picture is lunch at Roxy's, a 50's diner where the staff (in this case the chef and the waitress) come out and do a singing act every 15 minutes. Chris and I were chomping at the bit to get up and sing New York - New York! Darcy wanted to do 'These boots are made for walking' and Ron was hoping they didn't ask for volunteers!

The next picture is a milk shake - this was a full 24oz job (he had previously had the 12oz but it wasn't big enough!

'It's life Chim - but not as we know it'
That's Spock on the left, whispering into Chim's ear "I dinnit fancy yours much Captain"

This is the fantastic front entrance to the MGM Grand - right at the start of the strip. As you walk down you see all kinds of crazy things at the front of all the themed hotels, for example - Pyramids, Statue of Liberty, Volcanoes, Treasure Island Ships, Venice, Dancing Fountains etc etc.

This is the hoover dam from the helicopter flight, the helicopter was incredible, to just float off like that was an amazing thing - we went over the hoover dam, right into the Grand Canyon then actually landed in the canyon itself for a champagne lunch (next picture).

The fountain picture is the 'dancing fountains' outside the Bellagio Hotel with the 'Eiffel Tower' in the background.

All good things come to an end - here is Ron and Chris waving goodbye on their way back to Blighty - meanwhile, we were off to another part of the airport to start a 10 hour flight to Raratonga - the main island of the Cook Islands, right in the South Pacific - but that's a tale for another blog!!