Wellington

This weekend 13 of us went to Wellington, the capital city, for our first rugby game. The city was really beautiful even though it was freezing and rained on us most of the weekend and the game was great. We sat right up front and the NZ All Blacks beat France. Woot!

City Center. View from the top.
Westpac Stadium.

Day at the zoo.

Wellington Zoo has the most violent signs in the world. This one says:

"If you sit on the fence you will fall in." (You can't see it so well but in the last frame the kid has blood on his face and there is a tear drop of blood falling onto the floor)

"If you throw things at the chips they will get hurt and you will be asked to leave." The chimp has blood all over his arm and the little boy is crying!

And last but not least, "If you feed the monkey it will get sick and may die." There are even white X's on the dead monkey's eyes.

Conclusion: Wellington obviously hates children.

Fiji

From Tonga, the others went home and Sam and I continued on to Fiji, about an hours flight away. For some reason I had thought they would be similar, but the two countries are drastically different. Tonga is flat and small with dirt roads. Fiji is much larger, hilly, covered in rain forest, and has some very developed cities (including Suva, where we landed, and Nadi, where we departed).

Day 1. When we arrived in Suva it was love at first sight. We arrived with absolutely no plans and booked a hotel based on the advice of our super friendly taxi driver. The city is big, crowded, loud, totally unsafe after dark, and there is Indian food everywhere. I loved it. We also happened to arrive the weekend of a big soccer game so the city was jam packed with crazy fans from all over Fiji. The gigantic marketplace was my favorite. I had pineapple slices, kumquat juice, and we got a big papaya...they were all SO good!

View from our balcony.

The insanely huge market which dominates the city center. It has a two-story indoor section and two huge outdoor areas.

Suva Harbor.

Day 2. Today, after finally figuring out how and when (there's no visitor info center in this city even though its the capital), we headed over to Ovalau Island. We got on a 1.5 hour bus at the craziest bus station I've ever seen. Then the bus boarded a ferry to Ovalau Island (another hour). Finally the buses drove around the island dropping various riders off at their villages which were nestled in the islands thick rainforest. Finally we got to Levuka and luckily they had a beautiful (and incredibly cheap) room for us at the hotel!

Ovalau from the ferry.

Riding past small villages.

Day 3. We spent the next day lounging about and walking around Levuka, the original capital city of Fiji.
Day 4-5 Today we made the 4 hour return journey to Suva (bus, ferry, bus) with a group of thirty 7th graders returning from a school trip who kept us very entertained the entire way. After arriving in Suva at 3, we found a bus to take us to the Coral Coast along the south side, the more touristy area which was on our way to Nadi. We soon found out why it was so touristy. As opposed to the clouds we'd been seeing, the Coral Coast was sunny, clear, and the water at the beach was soooo warm! We stayed at a resort and spent most of day 5 on their amazing white sand beach swimming in the clear warm waters.

(That's me!)

Day 6. Our last day was spent in Nadi which was much more touristy than Suva and much more humid (which also meant we spent our last day getting devoured by mosquitoes).

Tonga

Well its finals time now but luckily I don't have any exams! I turned in all my final papers a month early and flew on over to the Kingdom of Tonga with Sam, Maura, Joe, and Henry.

Day 1. Got in around 3 to Nuku'alofa and spent the rest of the day walking around and exploring.

The really cute guesthouse where we stayed.

Streets of Nuku'alofa.

Market in the middle of Nuku'alofa

Day 2. Today the taxi driver who brought from the airport offered us a full-day tour of the island. The coolest parts included...

...exploring a cave with some candles and swimming in the dark lake in the middle of the cave...

...visiting these amazing blowholes...

...and being invited to lunch at the taxi driver's house for a traditional Tongan meal which even included fresh octopus.

That night we went to a (delicious!) Tongan buffet dinner at the Cultural Center where local university students performed taditional dances. Day 3. Today we took a small ferry boat over to Fafa Island. The island is so small you can walk around it in 20 minutes. It was so beautiful and incredibly relaxing. We went snorkelling and saw tons of fishies, blue starfish, and I even saw a trumpet fish.

Day 4. Another day, another beach. Ha'atafu Beach Resort to be exact. The other three went cycling so it was just Sam and myself...literally, there weren't even other people at the beach so we had the whole thing to ourselves!