Articles from this Category
27 May 2015
I was at the car rental office before 0800; they open at 0730. I was given a Mazda Premacy hatch for NZD50 (discounted from NZD55 as the A/C didn’t work). Having plotted out the key points of interest, I gathered that most of the sights that appealed were in the north-west corner. Some were best […]
26 May 2015
The flight from Auckland on 27MAY and landed on 26MAY after crossing the International Date Line. At Niue’s Hannan International Airport, we disembarked by stairs and were given big blue arrival cards to completed. I suspect the airline had run out of stock of thse in Auckland, so we had to fill them in on […]
22 October 2012
I was going to take the public bus into Apia today for a look-see before my night flight. I realised at breakfast that the owner was going to see the Prime Minister today to try get some funding for tsunami repairs required by the village. They offered me a ride for WST20 and dropped me […]
21 October 2012
Samoa is very Christian but perhaps not as much as Tonga. I was surprised to learn that dive shops are open as in Tonga, all activities come to a halt. As I had been to church before (in the islands), I didn’t go here. The singing is supposed to be very good. After breakfast, I […]
20 October 2012
We dived with Aquasamoa while on Upolu, Samoa. At that time, they were the only dive operator on the island as the other ones which we had read about appeared to have gone west. As with any dive outfit, the experience depends on who your dive master is on the day. We were very lucky. We […]
20 October 2012
We woke around 0700 and had breakfast of toast and fruit in the poolside garden. The Outrigger Hotel is an old but very well-kept place. It is somewhere we would come back to for another stay if we were to pass through Apia again. At 0815 we were collected by Aquasamoa for our dives back […]
31 August 2012
Above: The King’s Palace in Nukualofa. Today we head back to Tongatapu on the 1535 flight. The timing would allow us some activities (at a push) if we had been unsuccessful with whaleswim on the preceding days. Since we had been rather lucky, we could do absolutely nothing but laze around the guesthouse then go […]
30 August 2012
Today is our “spare” day in case weather or other factors prevented us from achieving our whale-swim or dives. Since everything had gone so well, we rented a scooter today to go sightseeing around the Vava’u. Due to its odd octopus-like shape, we thought we could go to a few different arms of the island. […]
29 August 2012
Above: With no underwater camera, all we can capture is a surface photo of the crystal-clear water. Diving in Vava’u was a bit of an afterthought after such an awesome day yesterday’s whale-swim where we got really close-up to three humpback whales. We toyed with the idea of doing more whale-swims. But no one could take […]
29 August 2012
Above: With no underwater camera, all we can capture is a surface photo of the crystal-clear water. We toyed with the idea of doing more whale-swims. But no one could take us; they’re all full. It’s probably better that way as our companions told us our experience yesterday was unbeatable compared to the other days […]