Christmas in New Zealand

A pohutukawa tree which flowers at Christmas

A bear sized Christmas cake!

Bear in The Bay of Islands at Christmas

Can I eat all this?

Kia Ora from New Zealand!

Hello (kia ora) from New Zealand. We are here for Christmas and New Year. Unlike our other stops this feels very like England. Apart from the warm, sunny weather Christmas is like home. Turkey, christmas pudding, mince pies, carols on the green, all the same. Swimming snorkelling and lunch outside on Christmas day are rather different!
New Zealand is slightly larger than Great Britain but it is divided into two large islands, north and south island. They are separated by The Cook Straight, named after Captain Cook when he surveyed the coast in 1769.
The capital of New Zealand is Wellington which is on North Island next to The Cook Straight. We flew into the largest city, Auckand, on North Island, which has a population of a million, a quarter of the total population of  four million people in New Zealand. Britain has a population of over sixty million people in a smaller land area so it does not feel crowded here! When Cook arrived the native population were a polynesian race called Maoris. A treaty was signed between The British and The Maoris and today about 15% of the population are Maori.

Island life

Teaching at the village school

The school bus

Coral reefs

The reefs come right up to the shores of the islands so on with the mask and snorkel to see a fantastic underwater world. The colours are amazing, both fish and coral with shades from the whole spectrum that do not look real. The shapes of the coral are also varied, some smooth and rounded whilst others are spikey and sharp. There are soft corals, which move in water, and hard, rigid corals.  All provide food and shelter for a huge variety of fish. We found Nemo! Among the corals are sea anemones  where the clown fish, like Nemo, live. As large fish, like us, swim by they all dart back to the shelter of the anemone. Other types of fish use the coral as shelter. Damsel fish hide in coral of the same colour so blue damsel fish go to blue coral, green to green coral and so on.  The reefs in Fiji can grow at a rate of 5 centimetres a year, the clear water around Fiji helps this as sunlight is essential to healthy coral growth.

Food

Traditional food consists of  root vegetables and fruit with lagoon fish and pork.

The vegetables include taro, cassava, breadfruit and sweet potatoes. Pork is cooked in a ‘lovo’, this is a kind of underground oven. The pit is filled with coconut husks which are burned with coral rocks. The pig or fish is wrapped in banana leaves and the hot rocks are put around it then all buried in the sand for a few hours. The meat is delicious, very tender and succulent, with no washing up! Cassava is used like potato, we had chips, roast and mashed during our stay.  Fijians used to be cannibals and sailors who were shipwrecked were liable to be killed and eaten as they were thought to be cursed and abandoned by the gods. Captain Bligh, set adrift after the ‘mutiny on the Bounty’, had his boat chased by cannibals as he passed the islands. The channel that he went through is still called the Bligh passage.

School visit

Cassava

Is this Nemo grown up?

Big blue starfish in the coral

Blue damsel fish

Why is this called a brain coral?

There are no roads on the small islands so transport is by boat or footpaths. Each village has a kindergarten and most islands have primary schools. If the school is a long way from the village children from 6 years old sleep at the school during the week. The only secondary schools are in the 2 large islands so all children from the small islands board at school. We met some children going home from the mainland for their Christmas holiday by boat, different to the school bus! We visited the kindergarten in our local village and gave them some pens and note books as presents from Scole. They would really have preferred to keep Scoler Bear but we thought he might get hot and homesick on a Pacific Island.

Off to the islands

I want to fly this!

coral islands

Safe ashore

What a welcome

The distances between the islands is very large and although we are not going to the most remote ones it is still a 5 hour boat trip to Nacula island, one of The Yasawa Islands to the north of Viti Levu.  We decide to go by sea plane! The islands are too small to have airports so it is the only alternative to a boat. Our sea plane was very small, only holding 4 passengers, and we got into it whilst it was on land. The big floats under the wings have runners, not wheels, which means it can be pushed from the beach into the water by a tractor! The runway is the sea and it has to be quite calm for the plane to get enough speed for lift off. Once in the air it is only half an hour over islands and coral reefs to Nacula. The plane lands just off the beach and a boat comes out to meet us. There is no jetty so the boat runs up the beach and islanders come to help us out and carry our luggage ashore. We have to roll up our trousers and get our feet wet. We are staying in a bure, a thatched hut on the beach, made from local materials like leaves and small tree trunks. There is a welcoming ceremony with the islanders singing and offering us drinks. 

The distances between the islands is very large and although we are not going to the most remote ones it is still a 5 hour boat trip to Nacula island, one of The Yasawa Islands to the north of Viti Levu.  We decide to go by sea plane! The islands are too small to have airports so it is the only alternative to a boat. Our sea plane was very small, only holding 4 passengers, and we got into it whilst it was on land. The big floats under the wings have runners, not wheels, which means it can be pushed from the beach into the water by a tractor! The runway is the sea and it has to be quite calm for the plane to get enough speed for lift off. Once in the air it is only half an hour over islands and coral reefs to Nacula. The plane lands just off the beach and a boat comes out to meet us. There is no jetty so the boat runs up the beach and islanders come to help us out and carry our luggage ashore. We have to roll up our trousers and get our feet wet. We are staying in a bure, a thatched hut on the beach, made from local materials like leaves and small tree trunks. There is a welcoming ceremony with the islanders singing and offering us drinks.

Bula from Fiji!

Coral reefs and green islands

A Bula welcome!

Our next spot another set of islands in The Pacific. We flew into Nadi on the island of Viti levu, the largest in Fiji, the capital of Fiji, Suva, is on this island. There are over 1,000 islands in Fiji but only 106 are inhabited. There is only one other large island Vanua Levu. The islands are scattered over The Pacific  Ocean in an area 5 times the size of The UK. Bula means hello and welcome in Fijian, the main language. English and Hindi are the other languages. Like Hawaii the islands are all volcanic, rising from the floor of the ocean during eruptions thousands of years ago. Coral reefs have had longer to grow around Fiji and every island has coral reefs surrounding it. Fiji has more than a quarter of the coral reefs of The South Pacific. Our flight was delayed but a hurricane warning, it turned into a tropical storm but was a bumpy ride. Hurricanes occur between latitudes 5 and 20 on either side of the equator when the water temperature is over 27 degrees. With the warm water and coral we hope to spend a lot of time snorkeling.