Paperjam

Letter from..... Rugby

Rant // Vanessa // 20th February 2004

As I sit here at my parents' computer in the exotic town of Rugby, I'm already ready to rip my hair out and scream out in agony. Been back home for a whopping two weeks and I'm telling you one thing, it's not down to earth with a bump...more like a bloody good thump on the nose. Yep, it makes your eyes water. Since leaving New Zealand, land of The Lord Of The Rings (yes, I stole Air New Zealand's seat head cover promoting the brilliant film), time has vanished. Surely it can't go that fast. Still on a high from my skydive, we landed in Fiji. White sandy beaches, crystal clear blue seas and palm trees hiding cute little beach huts. But bloody hell were we bored. Six days of tiny islands, one which you could walk around in ten minutes - and that's if you're walking slowly - we nearly went out of our minds. All the time appreciating the beauty and awe of paradise, and knowing full well we'd be at home soon, as we are, and tearing our hair out, as we are.

The only bit of real excitement we had for the whole two weeks on Fiji was on our way to the final paradise island. On the Yasawa Flyer, a ferry that takes you between the beautiful Yasawa islands off the coast of Viti Levu, the main island in Fiji, I had to sleep. You see, boats and me don't mix well (see Letter from Australia when I chundered on the Great Barrier Reef boat). So I thought sleep would be good. Apparently not. This time it wasn't a chundering problem. It was in fact, a sleeping past our stop problem. As we both dozed, the boat stopped at our island, and then promptly took off again. As soon as it started moving, we realised, but it was too late. Yes, those passengers who overheard our little problem did laugh, and we felt very silly, but thanks to a kind booking lady on the boat, she transferred our stay to the island it only takes ten minutes to walk around. So we had a lot to do for a day and a night. Rarotonga, Cook Islands again, is a beautiful place. Full of greenery, white sandy beaches, crystal clear blue seas, thousands of horrid sea cucumbers lining the bottom so you can't walk in the sea without squashing them.

This time, we thought we'd put our stay on a paradise island to good use and take up an activity. We decided to do the cross-island trek. A 10 kilometre walk through the mountains from one side of the island to the other. (It's a small island).Even though the Lonely Planet gave us precise directions to follow, we still managed to get hopelessly lost and ended up scrambling up steep slopes and trying to get down off a mountain ledge by swinging off the roots of trees to get down again. I thought we were going to die. After finding our way to the bottom of a mountain, we found ourselves in the middle of a forest with no path and standing on an old river bed. Frustrated husband transferred his frustrations onto me, so while he was laughing, I,hot, bothered, sweating like a pig, and wearing a hat that obscured my view, walking into a tree branch and dented my forehead. And the noise made it worse. You can guess we made it out alive, but not before monster-sized mosquitoes had had their fun (I was finding bites for days afterwards in places you wouldn't imagine). I was also aching for days afterwards and vowed never to trek through a forest again, unless it was with a very commercial tourist group. And I thought the Pacific Islands were supposed to be relaxing.

Rugby - not Fiji

So on to America, a place where everyone fits a stereotype and no one has a clue about the word, manners. Burgers and fries are the staple diet and shouting when you talk is a pre requisite of conversing with a native. Don't get me wrong, I had a fantastic time. Hollywood was a buzz and seeing Mel Gibson's hand and feet prints nearly made me wet my pants. Rodeo Drive was nearly as exciting and walking through the doors of Cartier and slagging off their jewellery was fun.

San Francisco is probably America's most liveable city (not that I've been anywhere else), but the people, food and the town are quite nice. But the icing on the cake of the whole trip was probably Las Vegas. Not at all what I imagined but great for people watching, bad food and the dancing fountain at the Bellagio. I won enough money on roulette to pay for one night's horrible barbecued ribs dinner (with the sauce on the side and the ribs as dry as a bone). It's the strangest place on earth and no one bats and eyelid when they see kids handing out leaflets to tourists advertising naked ladies of the night.

So after the buzz of seeing the Grand Canyon and being able to wander around the MGM Grand, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace and New York New York wore off, we were ready to come home.

What fools we were.