Andrea doesn't like cricket

It's official, Andrea doesn't like cricket. We were having a lazy afternoon in this lull between Christmas and the new year. We were watching TV(i hate to say it, but probably Dawson's Creek) and reading the paper. Yes, Andrea can multi-task very well, not like me at all. Anyway the front door made a noise, so Andrea went to check up on it and opened the door. She noticed something drop down from above(the ceiling not heaven), but couldn't see anything on the floor. She then closed the door and returned to the sofa for more TV and newspaper reading. After about 20 mins(!) she had finished reading the paper and put it down only to discover that a cricket was sat on her leg. This must of been the thing that fell down.

Now since coming to Australia (and the build up beforehand), Andrea has had the "fear" when it comes to bugs here. According to the world of Andrea, everything is poisonous and has great big fangs. Andrea screamed a little(well freaked out really) and demanded that i rescue her. I threw it out of the window where it flew off to find some other sucker to attach to.

Back to the cricket anyway. This thing was a bit freaky as it was like the picture on the link but massive. I think it was around 3 to 4 inches long, and the antennae coming out of it's head were as long as it's body.

Since then i've walked into a spiders web walking back from town, which spooked me a little too...

...I should really stop listening to Andrea on these matters ;) I mean what next, aussie ants the size of cars?!?!

Christmas Day in Manly

Christmas Day was definatly a different day here in Australia. I have to say waking up to Sunshine is strange. Sunshine was not forecasted for today so it was a pleasant surprise.

As Joesphine has disappeared to her boyfriends now, we have the flat to ourselves which we have managed to make a completely mess of as we have just dumped every thing everywhere. Simon and I are not tidy people and together we are even worse.

This year we set each other a budget to spend on each other, and we werent to go over it (though Simon did) and of course it cant be anything that wont fit in the suitcase (ignoring what i bought Simon as his main present :-))

I bought Simon:
Bodyboard
DS Game
A PC game (which is the wrong one so need to take it back) - which bought him a pair of running trainers instead.
Lots of Sweeties.
Twigglets
Pair of Flip Flops
Pair of googles
a bommerang
a keyring with a bomerang on it.
2 cds
a blowup globe

Simon bought me:
a pair of really posh comfy flip flops
a voucher to get a manicure and pedicure
a voucher to buy a bikini at Roxy ( i think im driving Simon mad moaning about the prices)
sim card storage thingy
chocolate bar
toblerone
a cd
more sweets

You see there is 1 big difference between me and Simon. Im a quantity person and Simon is a quality person. I buy him a cheap pair of flip flops he buys me a really posh pair.

Once we opened the pressies we peeled the veg (very english) and then instead of visiting the family etc. We went to the beach and attacked the enormous waves with Simons new Body board which (remembering im a quantity not a quality person), caused us both to rip our stomach as it rubbed on our bellys and when we left it out in the sun it started to get airpockets in it so that kind off changed the whole aerodynamics of the board in the sea as it wasnt smooth therefore didnt quite slide over the waves. Very good fun though.

Once we had finished on the beach we went back to the flat and Simon was head Chef and made us a beautiful Roast turkey dinner(very english) which considering he has never even made a roast before he did amazingly. We were able to eat this on the balcany looking out to the sea. We sat there with our Reindeer Hats on, my flashing earings, our Christmas napkins and our San Francisco/Hawaii place mats. It was really really nice.

After that we did the usual english thing of sitting on the sofa and moaning that we had eaten to much and didnt really move till it was time to ring home. Which completely frustrated me as the day i wanted to speak to everyone the connection was unbelievable poor. I hated that as it made me miss home but i also can apprecate what a great day we had and i wouldnt have changed it for the world.

Preparing for Christmas in Manly

The blogs are getting more and more infrequent, i apologise but as our days consist of sunbathing, or job hunting or shopping we dont have to much to report at the moment. Anyway:

Its Christmas Eve now, and we are currently in between walking down the steep hill to the shops to get some food for tomorrow and wrapping each other pressies.

The weather is not great at the moment which is a shame therefore we have decided that whilst we will walk down to the beach and see whats happening we can have the traditional Christmas dinner which we are going to eat on our balcony.

So far me and Simon are sat here with our Reindeer headgear getting into the Christmas Groove. I might put my flashing earings on. :-)

Ive just re-decorated the tree (its one of the really cheap plastic trees). Scotty and Ingrid and Joesphine left it here and as Joesphine has disappeared to her boyfriends for Christmas, ive moved the tree and added a pink feather boa to the tree to add my pink touch to it :-). It has all the pressies around the bottom of it now.

Yesterday we were going to go for a walk but we ended up walking down to Manly Beach and never got any further. They were hosting a beach volleyball competition. They was about 10 courts (or whatever they are called) but it was really amusing because it was in fancy dress. The most amusing to us was 7 girls dressed up as the dancers from that aerobics video, ie in leatards bending over playing against the Karate boys. The girls were really bad, i think they just joined in for the fancy dress competition and were just posing and dancing. The other amusing one was the beach dudes dressed up in womens swimming cossies. These guys were really funny as they didnt take the competitiion seriously and were to buy kicin the ball, heading it, bending over in the cossies. Needless to say unlike the girls they got to the final (there was about 30 teams altogether) and lost with the last ball. But even in the final they were still messing around. At one point they climbed on top of each other and were trying to get the ball like that. Not once did they ever get serious. The winner of the fancy dress party was the Ninja Turtles with the chickens at a close 2nd. The only downside of this comp was that it rained on the final which made me and Simon feel more Christmasy.

Its a big weird seeing people sat on the beaches with Christmas hats on. Its a bit weird.
Ive also discovered that there is a serious lack of Christmas card shops. so i suspect buying cards is not a big thing here. Perhaps me and Simon should open a shop here.

Our 10mins of claim to fame.

Simons view of our 10mins:

Lets face it, for those of you who saw this, it was wet and cold ! I mean, we come all the way to Aussieland to do the gmtv christmas thingy hopes of sun and sand, and it rains on the day where we could prove it too you all.

Well, the whole event got off to a flying start when i bent down to get something out of my rucsack and some over enthusiastic pom accidently kicked me in the head whilst he was trying to hop over the fence. Anyway, it never hurt, although Andrea said that there was quite a "crack" sound.

There must of been about 60 brits turn up for this event, the producer said that if the sun was out then it's usually around 200. 60 was still a fair bit though when it comes to getting squashed, and most of the shots we we're blocked by 6 footers, so you would of only seen two bouncing heads at the begining. Due to the fact that there was just a small number of us they were scraping the barrel for different messages. The producer amused Andrea. She was the most tactless person we've ever met. She asked the audience if somebody had an ill family member and would they like to come up and have an interview to send a message. Some bloke stuck his hand up and it was almost a "Great!, come on up then" from the producer...sheesh! The presenter was a bit of a diva, the camera woman didn't stop eating, and the director was always trying to come up with christmas carols for us to sing. After we did one of the carols, the director indicated that the next link wouldn't be for another 50 mins, that was the cue for most of the audience to leave :) .. Not us die hard wannabies though! They then got everyone up and spread us out to make it look like there was loads of us. (did it work?) The producer asked for the people with signs to be at the front. Cue Andrea's Christmas sprout!
I'm not sure how we looked or anything like that 'cause we were on the otherside of the camera, our internet here is also too bad to look at the clip on their website too. Anyway, we had our moment of fame. For me personally, i'm glad they never interviewed us as we would of just jibbered our words and then really looked like a couple of planks :)

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=23941&cachedarticleaction=streamingpopup&display=video

Andreas view of our 10mins:

Well i did it. I managed to get a picture of a sprout on tele. For all of you wondering what i am talking about. Its traditional on Christmas Day that i have 1 sprout on my plate and its traditional that i dont eat it. Mum (and Simon this year) try to hide it under other veg but i still manage to sniff it out and push it aside.

The gmtv link above has a cracking view of Simon, but i have to admit even i dont recognise myself in it. From what people have been saying though im more on the real tv then the internet :-) so i am actually more famous then Simon.

I reckon if me and Simon had been brave enough we could have got on the camera and sent a message but between the 2 of us we are just 2 shy.

If you watch the vid there is a family from Stroud as well which Simon later had a chat with which was funny. Come all the way to Sydney and Simon meets people from the next village. The women said she recognised Simon but he said to me it was because he has the signature Gardner forehead. :-)

17/12/2006 Sundays ahhhhhh

Okay its only a week before Christmas, if i was at home now i would be racing round trying to buy presents and stressing. Here in Sydney, our Sunday was spent leisurely getting up, walking down to the Botanical Gardens, and laying the towel out and watching the world go by. We took our books down but really they werent necessary. We could sit and admire the Opera House, Sydney Bridge, the big boats going past, the speed boats taking people on thrill rides, the parrots in the trees above us, the 3 weddings that were on in the park, the japanese with the tripods, or the 3 girls posing for pictures in christmas outfits. It was certainly entertaining.

As the weeks have progessed me and Simon have spent a lot of time together and we have learnt to understand each others little quirks. The noticable one at the moment is that Simon is really anal about which route to take to get somewhere and we have to backtrack exactly to get back to where we started. Im a bit more casual and willing to get lost, so whilst we have walked a number of times down to woolomoloo and the gardens one route Simon insists on walking back the same way. I finally convinced Simon to follow me today a differnt route back (i didnt want to climb some stairs if im truthful) he grudgingly followed me while we went up all these different roads mumbling behind me that he would like to get back to the room before dark and perhaps we need to turn round and start again. And did i get us back to the hotel, yep and there was no stairs. Simons has now got to learn that sometimes i know where i am going, its just sometimes i dont and get myself into a mess.

GMTV on Wednesday

Have a read of this:

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=18024

We are going to go down to Mrs Maqueries Point on Wednesday evening which will be live on tele Wed morning in England so look out for us. You know quite well though it will be me trying to make a prat of my self and Simon walking off in the opposite direction because he is embarrassed.

and no i wont have a sprout with me. Im not prepared.

I don't like cricket

I love it really, but the Aussies heads are so large at the moment that Pom bashing will soon take over their national sport. Needless to say, i don't like cricket at the moment ;) That leads to another problem that might arise when we come to leaving our flat in Manly: it co-insides with when the cricket comes to Sydney. hrm.

Anyway, since Andrea's post we've done a lot of walking. We've pretty much walked round the city. The botanical gardens are our favourite at the moment, a lovely place to while away the hours in the sunshine with views of the harbour to boot. :) They also have parrots flying about and tonnes of really big bats :) Bondai beach (or Bonzai as Andrea keeps saying), is quite nice but there are other better beaches nearby. You just can't read a book when you're getting sand blasted from the winds that whip up there. I suppose it's better than getting really rained upon though ;) We also wandered round the opera house one day through circular quay and over to darling harbour. Bars and restaurants are littered across this stretch of the city but they are chock-a-block with Christmas doos.

On one of the days that it has rained here we went to Taronga Zoo. It's a pretty good zoo as it concentrates mainly on the stupidly named animals from around Australia... Dingos, Platypuses, wombats, possums, dugongs, chazwazzas. Of course the jewel in the crown is the Koala bear, an animal so slothlike that you almost fall asleep watching it :) We paid the extra to go into an enclosure with a couple of koalas and get our photo's taken with them. Also watched them getting fed. Animals really don't get much cuter than a koala bear :)

We also saw some wallabies "havin' it off" and a chimpanzee picking his bum and eating it...nice. When it came to the spider exhibit i clocked that we had already seen some of the spiders around the zoo...loose !

Life in Sydney so far and our new address

Well its been a strange couple of days. After being ill on the first day (bad stomach again) and feeling generally sorry for my self things are definately on the up. Word of warning to anybody. If you ever decide to visit sydney DO NOT arrive when Robbie Williams is playing in concert and DO NOT arrive in December. Sat at the airport on a Saturday night trying to get a hotel is pretty disheartening when you ring up everywhere and its fully booked up or its say £300 a night. Luckily they had the internet at the airport and we managed to get a hotel for £45 a night and to be honest we struck gold. Its a simple hotel around the corner for the Kings Cross train station and has got the tiniest bathroom you will ever go in. Tim you would not have a chance at sitting on the loo you knees wouldnt fit. In fact me and Simon can only just sit down and we are diddy. But appart from that its really good, we can even if we stand on our tip toes see the bridge.

The time so far has consisted at laughing at Simons head as it peeled, and grumbling that Sydney reminds me of Manchester when its sunny. Kings Cross is not a nice area to stay around and as we have been concentration on trying to find somewhere to live instead of taking the sights in its just felt like a normal city. We found Nandos yesterday though to cheer me up.

In regard to us living in Sydney. We are in a Chicken and Egg situation at the moment. We dont think its worth getting tied up in 3 months accommodation when we dont know whether we can get jobs but obviously we need somewhere to stay whilst we get a job. The fact is that Sydney is fully booked up hotels wise for Christmas and New Year, therefore we have been debating about gettig out of Sydney for Christmas, staying in a campervan, or something. Anyway the something is that we decided to flat share for a couple of weeks. It seems that there is people that have got flats here in sydney that are going home for Christmas and want someone to pay their rent. Therefore yesterday we arranged to see 3 places. The first place meant we had to jump on the Ferry to a place called Manly. We were woo'ed by this from the start. (Sydney is getting better and better) and we found this flat that belonged to a couple that they shared with a girl. They were going away for 3 weeks. The flat was okay but the view was amazing, i can sit on the veranda and see the sea. heaven. The area seemed really nice as well. The couple Scott and Ingrid explained that they were going away but wanted to tell the flat mate that it was a friend and his girlfriend going to take over the room so they were keen to make sure we looked normal, they commented on the fact that we looked like a respectable mature couple (should i take offense by this :-) ) . We left them and headed for the 2nd viewing, debating on the ferry journey back whether to just take this one or hold out to the rest as we hadnt seen any before. The sign came when the 2nd one rang up and said the room was now taken before we even got there, we took this as the push we needed and rang the 1st one back up and said we would take the room. They didnt give us a yes or no answer on the phone at that stage and said they would get back to us after they had spoken to their room mate. We decided therefore to continue on to the 3rd viewing instead which was near Bondi Beach which we wanted to go and see anyway. Needless to say the 3rd viewing cancelled on us as well, so we were relieved that we hadnt waited before ringing up about the 1st one we just had to hope that they wanted us. Which luckily we did. We are now signed up ready to move in on the Tuesday 19th December and if you want to send us Christmas cards you can :-) you can send them to:

5/20 Ocean Road
Manly 2095
New South Wales
AUSTRALIA

We met the couple for a drink last night as Scott wanted to make sure we had our stories straight in regard to how we know them. Simon and Scott have a mutual friend called Dave (it was cos Scott reminded me of my Dave - ie he had blond hair) and they had met in London and Dave and Scott used to work together in the building trade. Having said this, Scott was a really good guy he wrote up a little contract for the money and showed us ID etc and so it all seemed above board. He even said Simon could use his surf board as he had beginners boards in the garage and we can also use his bike. I can imagine us being friends with them when they get back.

Jobs and some Sightseeing is the next thing to do.

ooo and the geeky side of me and simon have been wooed by the public transport and the fact that the trains are double deckers, thats cool. London should take note.

In regard to food we had a really nice Italian the other night, it was a small walk away from Kings Cross and it was in a restaurants where you bring your own drink, so when we were sat down i ran over to the off license across the road, and whilst i was in the off license it absolutely chucked it down, wheres Trudies rain mac when i needed it. Now apparently you get more wet if you run through rain, have you ever tried to convince your self that if you walk though rain you wont get wet its really difficult. Needless to say i was wet and Simon laughed at me. (it was my own fault because it was me that wanted a bottle of wine)

28 err 29-Nov-06: Back to the future!

Trying to figure out how to slot this in to the other posts, but in the end i think i'll just publish it anyway :)

The flight from Hawaii to Fiji was an interesting one. Pretty much all day was taken up travelling so i wont bore you with those details, suffice to say that Andrea was pretty cheesed off that "Devil Wears Prada" was one of the movies on the plane. She's lost all motivation now to read the book she's been carrying since London.

The flight had one stop over, and that was to the Christmas Island (apparantly there are two sets of islands called this in the world). It's pretty much due south from Hawaii and really is in the middle of nowhere. When we landed the plane had to hang around on the runway by the "terminal" in order for supplies and fuel. Whilst there we were allowed to step out onto the steps and get some fresh air. Kids were waving to us through the chain link fence on the other side of the airport terminal (about 50 feet away). The terminal itself consisted of a shabby hut. I suspect that Pasport control/customs/cleaning was carried out by the same person. Baggage claim was the best though as it consisted of a bloke taking the suitcases off the plane, going over to a hatch in the hut and just handing the travellers their bags through it. Another world entirely compared to what we've been used to in the US and UK.

Going over the date line had more of an impact than we thought. Although our body clocks were fine, figuring out what day it was was more of an issue, to the point that when it came to transfering to the other resort after the first 5 days in Fiji, we had to rely on the hotel to tell us when we were leaving. From my point of view, i had real problems with figuring out what time/day it was back home. Andrea was fine with this matter, i think it was because of my man-brain not coping at all well with it.

Simon's views on Fiji

to be continued... :)

Andreas views on Fiji

Next stop Fiji for 10 glorious sunny days. 5 days in Bekana Island Resort, 5 days in Niviti Resort.

Okay the first thing to say about Fiji is that its hot hot hot. 2nd thing to say its got a lot of mosquitos.

To be continued....

Ok going to try and write this, its going to be a long diary entry as its got 10 days worth of memories. Simon is gonna write his view on the same 10 days as well.

Bekana Island
This was to be my dream accomodation in that it was the beachfront Bure with a hammock in front of it. Since meeting Simon one of the things i have always wanted to do was sit in a hammock with him and watch the sunset, well we nearly did that. We sat in the hammock and got bitten on the arse by the mosquitos and watched the big boats in the marine. Im happy to tick it off my list of 'to do's'.
On arriving at Fji airport it was very weird in that loads of people come up and try to help you, our guards were up as we felt like we were gonna get fiddled and was gonna get thrown into a taxi even though we had already arranged transport, but really it was because they genuinally wanted to help. We discovered this as the 10 days progressed.

To get to the island we had to go on a little boat and when we arrived the hotel manager who was very very gay welcomed us to 'our new home'.

In regard to Bekana, we went off exploring and did discover that their really is nothing to the island. its just the holiday resort and thats about it.

Ive got to be realistic and accept that im probably never gonna finish this blog so im going to list all the things abut the place so i dont forget them.

• Airplane/Christmas Island
• The trip to bekana on the boat
• Snorkling at Sekana Island (desert island)
• Learning to Kayak
• Skirt and Shoes going missing then reappearing the day after
• Food included in price/Food really really nice. Steak and pepper sauce mmmmm
• Simon getting his lamb chop pinched my cat of his plate
• Steven Siegal (the entertainment guy)
• Trying to phone home. They have to ring the operator who was busy to ring home
• tipping not compulary they recommend that you put a big tip at the end of the holiday into the staffs christmas fund. We instead tip like the americans
• When sat eating a meal (there is only about 4 tables of people) they sing songs (steven and his band)
• When you arrive the gay manager declared how we have to act like this is our home now.
• hammock
• mosquito bites
• Kava Ceremony (instead of drink the locals get high of this stuff)
• My beautiful beachfront bure.
• THe melbourne family (Grant & Louise, Rebecca 18, Ryan 12, James 16)
• The owners being there at the same tiem (perhaps thats why the food was so so good). Geofrey was the son in law of the owners that owned bekana island and sekand island (Note they own the islands) and he was the CEO of the bank UBF in Hong Kong. He had lived with his wife in London and New York and was now in Hong Kong, but he was about 35 and a really really nice bloke. Really down to earth.
• Drunk and being sat arund the band with people singing and playing the bongos. Well Simon was playing them.
• Going to Church in Lautoka and sitting through a Fijian ceremony. watching the little kids at the front being bored and fidgetting and getting slapped with a ruler.
• Taxi to the Church had 7 of us in it.
• The drapers (the melbourne family) was the only people with us on the island on the last couple of days so we spent a lot of time with them drinking gin and tonics and vodka. They are a really really nice family.
• Buying room spray instead of mosquito spray. didnt read the labels properly and it was the cheapest thing in the shop.

Niviti Resort

• Different atmosphere - Like Egypt. All inclusive
• Chatted with English couple Kelly and Mark. She was very similar to me. Tey going round the world the other way so going to las vegas. Gave them our travel book.
• Fishin - I caught my first fish.only 2 of us caught fishes and mine was the biggest
• Learnt how to do Archery (badly)
• Did a lot of people watching. - Women Spewing, russion man and woman, 2 people on a dating holiday, and the ugly bunch of girls.
• Taxi journey there and back was just us, resort really really quite because of the coup
• Fire walking
• Simon liked the burgers i liked the chinese
• Swim up bar. Lots of vodkas and oranges.

27/11/2006 Arbiiiieeeeesssssss on our last day

We found Arbies today (at last) and Hard Rock Cafe. Some of you may know about my obsession with Arbies so it was a good feelin that finally we found an Arbies and i could sit and enjoy my roast beef sandwich. I made Simon have somethin completely different as i didnt want him to not enjoy the roast sandwich and therefore be disappointed in the meal i enjoy so much. :-)

I saw Santa today as well in the shoppin centre admittedly for us we are still trying to get our head round the idea of weather being hot but Santa will still be wearin his big red coat and will still be delivering Simon his Nintendo Wii for Christmas if he is a good boy. :-)

The barman in Hard Rock told us off for not going up to North Shore as there had been a lot of Surfin comps been going on this week and we had missed them. All the champions had been there apparently. We said next time we come to Hawaii this is what we would make an effort to see.

We never made it to Pearl Harbour in the end. As we werent in the mood for sittin on a bus for a couple of hours on our last day in America after doin so much travellin the day before. Shopping seemed so much more appertising and since when am i gonna say no to that.

Its been a nice day today just taking in Hawaii we both agree that its a great place to be and would like to come back here as there is things that we havent had time to do.

One of things we did buy was an extra piece of luggage. We decided that it was worth having an extra bag to take some of the pressure off Simons case as his wheel would work some days and not others and if it helped to make my suitcase any lighter then that can only be a good thing. Now the bag we bought is TACKY but in Hawaii looks normal. Ive started to realise that as we have travelled through Fiji to Sydney actually it looks mega tacky and at some point im gonna have to disown it.

For tea we had KFC. Instead of the normal fries i had mashed potato and gravy. Strange menu.

26/11/06 - Volcano

Today was always gonna be a long day. It was a trip to The Big Island and look at one of the most active volcanoes in the world. We set the alarms for 3:50 in the morning in order to amble down to the lobby and hop onto our transfer to the airport. The first thing that hit us was that Waikiki doesn't sleep, it could of easily been nine at night. The Denny's restaurant was full up ! Anyway, after picking up another couple on a different tour of the Big Island we got to the airport and got checked in. Our suntan lotion was duly confiscated (never liked that one anyway) by security. Then we discovered that we had to wait around for ages because that couple that we picked up had a flight that was around an hour and a half earlier than ours! It's instances like this that really wind Andrea up...being required to get up early and then just hang around for an hour and a half when she could of been asleep in bed. I just took the opportunity to grab a Starbucks wakeup call. :)

Getting to the Big Island we were greeted by our tour guide called Hank. Hank was a native Hawaiian/Elvis look alike. He also grew up on The Big Island too, so had a lot of historical and childhood stories about it. The first part of the trip was to a little store to stock up on water and sun tan lotion. Outside this little unassuming hut, is a massive tree that was planted by a chap called Babe Ruth :) That was quite cool seeing that. Then a load of Japanese turned up on two coaches and swamped the tree with camera flashes. Then it was to a famous waterfall there that I'd never heard of. That was quite impressive. Again, those crazy Japanese turned up with their cameras and swamped the place. On both occasions though we'd managed to see and do everything that we needed. Andrea already noted this and congratulated Hank on the matter.

After that it was a wander through a lava tube which was a bit like a cavey kinda tunnel. Then it was off on a long drive over the volcano and down the other side to the coast to watch where the lava meets the sea. The drive there was very impressive, you would see jungle like vegetation and then all of a sudden it was disappear into a bald Mars like landscape with steam coming up from the ground. We reached the end of the road, literally as three years previous LOTS of lava poured over the side volcano and straight over the road. This lava is still coming out of the volcano and is hitting the sea 'causing massive plumes of steam. Unfortunately, we never had time to hike right up to this point and we could only see it from a far ;( Anyway, the place was amazing and pretty surreal too.

Next was a drive back up to the volcano museum to learn about, err, volcanoes. The drive there was really cool as there was loads of steam vents and fissures to see. Our only gripe was that we never got to stop off and see these vents.

Then it was a very late lunch at a restaurant on top of the volcano. It was another all you can eat buffet but the best thing about it was that the Japanese turned up at the buffet too, creating great mountains of food on their plates. It really wasn't uncommon to see some of the people coming out with a plate containing: lettuce, potatoes, rice, other veg, pineapple, other fruit, cake, and one bit of steak on top.

The last few stops of the day was basically to kill a bit time. One an Orchid nursery/garden centre, and the other a Macadamia nut factory! *sigh* Anyone that knows the two of us knows that Andrea can't stand nuts and i'm allergic to them. Luckily the factory itself was closed so it was off to the store to find out what was there...errmm...nuts, lots of them. However, there was one of these pearl shops like the one where Andrea got her earrings from earlier in the week. This time we watched as an American lady paid to open two oysters and each oyster contained two black pearls. Very impressive, but not for the husband as the wife's expectation went from a pair of $60 earrings to an entire $600 necklace! The husband just told her to not get carried away, that they needed to go soon, and then walked off rather briskly.

Hilo airport has the best departure lounge i've ever been too. It consists of a speaker system that constantly plays hula music and has that kind of outdoor wooden furniture (with cushions) that you might see for sale at garden centres. It all creates a rather relaxed atmosphere, which was lucky for us as we were about to have quite a wait (again). Another two hour wait at the airport and then it was delayed by 30 mins too. We got back to the hotel at around ten(ish). Exhausted, we just crashed out for the night.