Ode to a Travel Book

Just two weeks ago you were a beaming brand new book full of information. Bought for a mere 30.95 CAD you have led us towards great adventure, food and accommodations. In return we have folded, thrown, packed, bent and soaked you. You now bear the wounds of a well seasoned book fit for the shelves of a second hand store. That said we will not discard you, that would be cruel. No, you are bound for the bookshelf at home. Your final resting place will be among the other champions of the past like; Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Australia and the South Pacific the 3rd Edition. Today you fade to the hall of legends, I say thank you for your weeks of service.

Samoan Fia Fia Night

One of the nights that we were delayed in samoa we had a chance to see a Traditional Samoan Fia Fia. A good thing that came out of the delay as I wanted to see this awesome traditional dance! This is basically the Polynesian dances that you have seen in movies. This one has the men and women dancing together on the stage while there are loud drums playing in the background. All in all, it was about 1 and a half hours of dancing and this is what started it.

After this the lights when down and the fire dancers came out for their portion of the show. It was SO SO cool to see their talents!! They had to warn the front row just in case the fire spread... it never did and they looked in complete control the whole time. A few of the men barely looked over 16 years old!!

A really cool evening to remember!

Ongoing Samoa...

I apologize for the order here but with things being backlogged due to the incrediably shitty internet available in the islands.

Anyway we have a story to tell...

Dear Air New Zealand you suck for the following reason:

1. THE FIFTY (50) HOUR DELAY LEAVING SAMOA!!!!!!

Yeah that is correct, we were handing a delightful handful of sit around and wait for two entire days before we got the chance to board the plane and head onto Tonga. With hindsight we should have stayed in Samoa for longer with Tonga being a less desirable place but here were are.

Lets go back to the begining...

Wednesday 4:30 AM: Wake up and head to airport for flight at 6:30 AM.

5:00 AM: Arrive to a completely closed port, no plane it forgot to come from Los Angeles. We know now that it was a faulty fuel pump and the plane was not allowed to fly from LA.

6:30 AM leave airport and head back to Apia (the capital of Samoa) which is a 30 minute bus ride.

7:00 - 9:00 AM - Drop bags back at hotel, get breakfast head to Air NZ to find out just WTF is going on. Get informed that flight is delayed until 11:30pm Wednesday night. We get comp our hotel room and money to take taxi back to airport. We then made friends with a couple of other backpackers in order to save money on taxi fair and spent the balance on beer.

8:00 PM: Head back to airport, check in and clear customs.

11:00 PM: Board plane, do saftey check, and wait.

11:30 PM: Get announcement from captain stating that they were conducting more tests on the same fuel pump to see if it was fit to fly onto Tonga...guess what nope. Everybody deplanes into the terminal.

12:30 AM Thursday: Blankets and pillows from plane are handed out to passengers freezing in the air conditioned airport.

1:30 AM: Snacks handed out from plane to starving passengers in airport terminal.

2:00 AM: Flight is cancelled! We are then told we will be put up for the night at a hotel. This takes and hour to sort out who is going where.

3:00 AM: Leave airport after a serious amount of bullshit waiting around.

4:00 AM: Arrive at 4 star hotel with pool and head to room.

4:30 AM: Go to sleep with assurance that we will be informed when to come back to the reception to get back on the shuttle to the port for our flight which is supposed to be leaving at 1:00 PM.

12:30 PM: Wake up and find out that the flight will not be leaving at the 3:00 PM time, which change while we all were alseep.

1:45 PM: Get informed from other passengers who went to Air NZ office that we will now be leaving at 5:40 AM Friday. Also told we have a 35 dollar per meal allowance at the resturant and we need to be at reception for 3:00 AM to get shuttle.

Spend afternoon at pool.

8:00 PM: Told shuttle is now leaving at 1:00 AM.

10:00 PM: Try to go to bed, no sleep.

1:00 AM Friday: Get up and head to shutte.

1:30 AM: Leave hotel.

2:30 AM: Arrive at airport and line up.

3:15 AM: Check in system goes down.

6:00 AM: Finally clear check in, security and board plane.

7:00 AM: Lift off.

In the end it worked out to be a serious screw up and we were along for the ride. The worst part of it all was the lack of custormer service from Air New Zealand. Not once from the begining of the ordeal to the end was there a posted notice at the hotel or personale available from Air New Zealand to infom us of what was going on. It was all ruomour and hearsay. You had to go their office to get the details. Me = unstoked!

Tonga....Grrrr

Ok where was I

oh right...

Tonga, you suck for the following reasons:

• Theft - it happens in your country, to me and Andrea to the tune of $300 CAD. Stay out of my hut while I am eating dinner assholes!



• Friends Cafe in Nuku a Lofa, got us both sick a mere 6 hours after landing on your soil, we spent the next 2 days in bed.



• EVERYTHING closing on a sunday - church is not THAT important!!!! (this includes all food outlets, not even water for purchase). It was 3 before we finally found a bakery open, the only place in capital city!



• GOLD TEETH look ugly, stop doing it Tongans.



• No surf



• Almost dening me boarding to the airplane because of NZ errors on my work visa - appenently I was listed as a female on the NZ records, what the hell is that all about.



• $100 US flight change fee



• Gross dogs everywhere...



• Seagrass



• Colder water, it was only 26 C



• No turtles



• Yachties - driving up the prices for everything. A package of pepper for example should not cost $4.00 CAD.

We left a week early, the grass is greener in Auckland.

I have one good thing to say about Tonga, one island we went to had a ship wreck that you could snorkel around. I saw fish. See the photo below. The resturant is called BIG MAMAS YACHT CLUB RESTURANT. Do not stay there is you want to be stolen from...tell your friends.

Coconut goes Boom!

Actual qoute from Dion.:

"I blowed them coconuts up good!"

Dear Tonga,

You suck for the following reasons:

to be continued...

Palolo Rising

This is a story of how the Samoan People fish for a certain coral based worm that rises from the sea bed twice a year, 7 days after the full moon in October and November in fact. We were on the island of Savaii and all geared up to help the people go and fish for the sea based worm called Palolo (Pah-lo-lo). In order to catch the worm we needed to wake up at 4 AM and wade out into the lagoon (shallow water in between fringe reef and beach) and scoop them up with a skimmer and place in bucket. The lagoon was filled that morning with heaps of Samoans marking their territory for their chance to obtain this worm, the caviar of the Pacific. It looked as though it was a National Geographic film with all of the sillouttes of people wading in the waist deep water in the twighlight of the Pacific morning...at least that is what I am told.

We never made it up that morning because we met a Canadian couple that were from Toronto. As with any conversation with Canadians overseas it quickly led to a dispute about hockey. So we stayed up and drank rum and I continuely berated this couple for cheering for the lousy franchise located in Toronto. Needless to say, I slept through the wake up call of crashing buckets and outrigger canoe launches. But I did manage to wake up to a hangover, and a good one at that.

To make matters worse the next day was a travel day back to the main island. This was inclusive of leg one; a 45 minute van ride down windy roads along the coast spotted with random speed bumps. We machositically choose the back seats. Upon arrival at our destination we embarked on leg two; a 1.5 hour ride across a bumpy sea on a ferry loaded with large trucks. the boat lurched and listed, as did our stomaches. And to top it all off it rained...HARD! We were soaked, as was all of our luggage. Upon arrival, we needed to catch another taxi for yet another 30 minute ride. The taxi was a pickup with no topper for our luggage. Because it was the last taxi available we had no choice but to take it. Our luggage did a wonderful impression of a sponge and soaked up all the available water it could. The day was a memorable one.

The moral of the Palolo fish... When met with a one in a lifetime chance to experiance a significant cultural experiance, always make sure the hockey fans in Toronto know that they are just plain wrong!

Beautiful Samoa

The whole week... and 1 day, has gone by in Samoa and we have been so busy lying around on the beach... Dion finished 3 books!!.. that we haven't been able to post a few pics of what life is like for a Samoan. After a day in the big city of Apia, we headed off to another island, Savaii, and checked into our 'Beach Fale' for the night.



As you can see, it was a spectatular beach hut raised over the lagoon, with plenty of fish swimming in the reef below. A great place!! Once I got used to the geckos on the roof. :)


After a few nights here tired of the spot and headed up the coast to check out a few more fales. Below is pretty much what most of the country looks like... pristine white sand and the bluest water I have ever seen!

We made a stop at the local blow holes and I think this has been Dion's highlight of the trip so far as we were able to get close to these holes in the sea wall and throw in a few coconuts. The blow holes look like geysers from a far but are actually holes in the lava along the coast that blow up the sea water as the waves come in. Movie to follow.... Internet too shitty here to upload. :(

After 4 nights on the other island we headed back to the Main Island where we rented a car and headed up the coast for more sight seeing. We stumbled upon this awesome place that was a lava tube cave. Basically, that means a cave that connects to the ocean and fills up with sea water as the waves crash in. It was like being swirled around in this 50 feet DEEP swimming hole. Being slightly afraid of heights, the huge ladder was a bit much to climb down, but it was totally worth the hike. You can see a very small me at the very top of the ladder here to get an idea of how far it was below!

That is it for me, I want to post this short note before the internet crashes again. Hopefully once we hit New Zealand we will be able to post a few of the videos that we have taken. Hope all is well and winter hasn't fully hit yet!!

Samoa, South Pacific Islands

Ok Kids...

Has everybody found Samoa in Google Earth? Good... so you know that it is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right? An Ocean that is bigger than all other Oceans put together, right? So you understand that when in Samoa things sometimes run a little different, right?

Kids: Well no what do you mean?

Us: Example the first...

9:00 pm last night: Andrea and Dion were talking to the boss of the Valentine hotel..." you can get us a taxi to the airport for 4:00 am correct?"

Boss: "Yes no problem, we will even wake you up at 3:45 AM with a knock on the door"

Us: Perfect...

fast forward to 4:30 AM... we wake up, with no knock on the door...PANIC!!!!!! We jump out of bed and secured a taxi and were off to the airport for our flight at 6:20 AM. The airport being a good 30-40 mins out of town we still had lots of time but it was a bit of a heart stopper to realize that we just about screwed ourselves.

5:oo AM: Arrive at airport to find that nothing is open and that Air New Zealand forgot to send the only flight off the island for the week! Yea that is correct, no airplane, no Air NZ reps and a terminal full of confused Palangi (Samoa word for Tourist). We got word that the plane had mechanical problems in L.A. and was never sent out leaving us stranded at the airport! So here we are now, with a full day to kill in the capital (Apia, Samoa) until the new plane leave tonight at 11:15 PM. We fly to Tonga and cross the international date line which means that we will completely lose the day of October 23rd, 2008....whooomp it's gone!

So that is the current update as of today...

the way this blog works, read above for the things we have done and seen in the last week or so...

Hope all is well!

"Two kids who did"

If your going to San Francisco...

Today was our second day in San Fran, we went to Alcatraz aka "The Rock". It was pretty cool... even though Nick Cage has stepped foot on the island. I figured I would go beyond my personal ban of going somewhere that Nick Cage has been because it is a National Park.

Enough about history though... the highlight so far was the barking Sea Lions at Pier 39.

Did you know about these Sea Lion Facts?

1. Sea Lions Range on the Pacific Coast from Vancouver to the southern tip of Baja
2. Grown males reach 850 lbs and 7 Feet in length, females can grow to 240lbs and 6 feet in length
3. Sea Lions in the wild may live up to 20-30 years
4. One of the biggest dangers to Sea Lions today is becoming entangled in plastic pollution
5. Sea Lions have external ear flaps, seals do not!
6. Sea Lions will bite if provoked

I asked a local what "provoked" meant, he mentioned something about subjecting them to the redneck musings of hockey mom Sarah Palin.





Oh Yeah... We have seen a lot of bums, hitched rides on the cable cars, walked the worlds crookedest street and tried our hand at crab legs too!

Getting Ready

So here is the deal. Personally I am fed up with certain seasons. Winter I am looking at you. Constantly sucking, year after year. I am tired of your bare trees and blankets of snow. I've had enough and I have convinced the girlfriend to head for greener pastures. Tomorrow AM we leave for a good seven months. First leg of the tour will bring us into the heart of rice a roni country, San Francisco. Don't kill me if that is spelt wrong, I've been trying for a month and cannot manage to get it right. But I don't really care to be honest.

After San Fran (note the ultra hip nickname - for spelling reasons) we are off to the small island group called Samoa. Deep in the centre of Polynesia we will be surrounded by the lush mountains of the rain forest and vibrant and jagged corals of the deep blue. We have a week here to do, well nothing really. I guess that is what retirement is all about. I have my surfboard in tow and Andi is bound and determined to dine on fresh coconuts acquired from the beach.

After Samoa we head south and west across the international date line to the Kingdom of Tonga. We have two weeks here, see above for intended itineraries.

New Zealand is our destination for the first leg of this trip. We have work visas, and no real idea of what kind of work we are going to do. Andi wants to make Lattes, Dion reckons swinging a hammer might be good for him. Well see what happens, the road ahead is about as clear as San Fran on a warm night.

Stay tuned for more musings from the two kids who did...

Calgary

Well we are definitely getting excited! 2 More sleeps until we fly to San Francisco.
We leave for San Fran Oct 12
Then to Samoa, a little island in the South Pacific on Oct 14
Check it out at http://www.samoa.travel/
Then to Tonga, another little island in the South Pacific on Oct23
Check it out at http://www.tongaholiday.com/

We get into New Zealand on Nov 5!

We had a great time out in Ontario and are hoping to post pictures before we take off!