South Pacific 1997

At the last minute, we cancelled our shuttle ride to the air and took up Colleen (our neighbour) on her offer of a ride to the airport....

Ten hours, forty two minutes, two crap movies, 7 hours of highly interrupted sleep and two plastic meals, courtesy of Air Pacific we’re there. We all stick our noses to the windows for our first, non-photographic view of this south pacific paradise. Will it be all it’s alleged to be, or will turn or to be another society given over to greed, poverty, blatant tourism and abandonment of their cultural identity?

Our first full day at Yasawa. Breakfast is interrupted by Vili – the activities director, who tells abut all the fun activities talking place today in Paradise. This guy is more camp than Mr Inman ('Are you being served'?).

Wow, Valentines day. And what a way to spend it. We woke up in the Kiwi International Motel in Auckland. A nice enough place, if a little sparse. Still, the Air New Zealand pilots stay here, so it can’t be all bad.

So here we are, in the land of stinks and eruptions! We are staying on the shores of Lake Taupo, in the center of the North Island and the volcanic heartland of this country. We learnt that NZ actually straddles the gap between two tectonic plates and Lake Taupo (which is quite large) is actually an old caldera.

Lynn’s is overdosing on the Dramamine in preparation for our 3 hour ferry ride to Picton on the South Island, and I hedge my bets and down a couple too. We dump the car at the port and climb aboard the ship. We’re off, and I’m up to date again!

We wake to clouds and a major temperature drop. Had to happen sometime. Our planned picture shoot of the mountains (which come right down to the sea here) are curtailed and we head off for Christchurch, our last stop in NZ (sob, sniff).

Welcome to the next chapter of the great vacation diary. As I'm sure you've noticed, this journal has grown too large for one page and I've broken it down into separate chapters. It's amazing how much time you can spend doing this kind of thing.

Greetings, and welcome to chapter 5 of the journal, which brings us to beautiful Adelaide and the Barossa valley in the state of South Australia. This chapter is a little brief, mainly since all the boring repetitive bits have been left out (boring to you anyway).

Well, here we are again, slowly making our way across the bottom right hand corner of Australia. This chapter is brought to you from the picturesque state of Victoria (go straight north from the island of Tasmania and you can't miss it).