We've started our trip through Indonesia on Bali - it's the most tourist-friendly island so we figured it would be a good starting point. As most of the visitors, we arrived to Kuta, which is a heaven for young people who want to surf and party. Without realizing it, we stayed the first night at a hotel right next door to the "ground zero" where the 2002 bombing took place. It's back to normal now, so our heads were bouncing on the pillows until 4am thanks to the music next door :)
Surfing - that's what's Kuta is all about. The town is full of surfers in early twenties with bodies that leave even me drooling :) There are surf-shops all around and surf-rentals dot the whole length of the beach. After watching the surf-students one afternoon, we've decided to try it ourselves as well. We went independent though - we've seen it enough, so no need for instructor we reasoned :) The guy renting us the surf-board asked about our experience and when he heard "none", he fished out the biggest board on the southern hemisphere. Not big enough as we found out soon. I was the first to go. Took the board and boldly walked to the water. The very first wave took me, spun me over, dragged me through the sand on the bottom and spat me back. So that's why surfers wear t-shirts. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get on that damn thing and stay for more than 2 seconds, being only partly successfull. At least I know  now where the surfers get their body-shape; the paddling around is sure exhausting. Kacka tried after me with pretty much the same results, which wasn't bad at all considering it was our  first attempt :) Later in the afternoon I went once more. This time the waves were a bit bigger and I actually managed to ride some of them for maybe 5 seconds or so! Despite all the bruises and scratched chest, it was great fun!
Paragliding - conicidentally, one of my cousins is married to an Indonesian and both of them were raving about the paragliding there. So I found a contact to an instructor online, got in toouch with him and agreed to meet him one afternoon close to Nusa Dua (east coast, south of Kuta). It's a cliff site, with pefrect alternative LZ (landing zone) on the beach below. When we got there, it looked just perfect, but soon we found out that it was too windy. That's the problem with paragliding - there're usually either too much or not enough wind :( One very experienced dude managed to take off, but then he had troubles getting down. I've actually read about it before - as he approached the LZ, he just couldn't get down, the wind was constantly pushing him up. Finally he managed by doing big ears, but you can tell he wasn't very comfortable. We kept hanging around for until late afternoon, but the wind kept blowing and so I didn't fly... :(
The final thing I wanted to do on Bali was kitesurfing. Unfortunatelly the season was about to end, the wind was dying out and our time was running out too. So I didn't get the chance, but that's just one more reason to come back one day :)

We have uploaded the photos from the Java part of our trip through Indonesia, so that makes the album complete for now. Overall, we've  spent about 2 weeks on Bali, 4 days on Komodo diving and another  week or so on Java. Bali was great fun and very friendly, Komodo was incredible diving and Java... well Java was a bit rough around the edges, but the volcanos and temples were worth it.
We've just moved through Singapore to Malaysia, where we start with the penisula first (2 weeks) and then move to the Borneo part. Check out the calendar, which we do keep as up to date as possible.
I've started writing on the Bali section already, but since we're on the road a lot now, I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to finish it. Will keep you posted though.

The next thing after Rainbow Reef on Taveuni island was doing the sharkfeed on Beqa (Pacific Harbour). So, we took a flight from Taveuni back to Viti Levu island (the main one), but this time not to Nadi (main city), but to Suva (the capital city), which was closer to the Pacific Harbour. We've arranged to stay in a new hotel Club Oceanus and booked to dive with the sharks on 2 days. There are two companies doing the sharkfeed - B.A.D. (Beqa Adventure Divers) and Aquatrek. They have split the week between them, so that if you want to dive 2 days in the row, you have to do it with both companies. Which turned out to be a very good thing actually. To keep us entertained for the rest of the day, we went to a cultural and firewalking show. It's ok I guess - 8 guys heat up couple of bigger stones, do some ceremony and then walk on them.
Sharkfeed with Aquatrek. Neither I nor Kacka have ever done a sharkfeed, so we had no clue what to expect. Even getting on the boat was a bit shocking - they had two large garbage containers on the stern along with two bags. All of this full of pieces of fish and boy did it STINK. Plus it was covered with flies. The boat was just disgusting - I was trying not to touch anything. We drove about 20 minutes to the dive site, where 3 other boats were already waiting. Not much of a briefing, except for "go down, hold onto the rope" and off we went along with about 30 other divers. The feeder took down the big garbage container and started feeding. There were millions of fish just circling around him - trevallies, remoras, snappers... Then the sharks showed up - large grey nurse - but we didn't see them, because they were inside the huge swirling fish cloud. It was only when they finished feeding and we were leaving that we actually got a bit better view of them. We also spotted some reef sharks and one or two bullsharks. All in all - it wasn't quite what we expected.
Sharkfeed with B.A.D. They do essentially the same thing as Aquatrek, but the whole experience is much more pleasant. Boat is very clean despite the fact that they carry the same amount of feeding material. The number of divers is very limited (it was 6 of us), the breefing was very proffessional and the dive-site is better (different from the one Aquatrek is using). Also the feeding is much "cleaner" and you really get to see the sharks. We were lucky enough to get about 4 bullsharks to come and feed, lots of reefsharks, etc. If you ever decide on coming over to do this, definitely do it with these guys.
Next we started moving along the coast towards Nadi and stopped at Sigatoga to spend the night. The plan was to go and see the Kula Eco Park and also the sand-dunes there. It didn't exactly work out due to the weather - it was raining (not heavy, but enough to make it unpleasant), so we went only to the Kula eco park. It's surprisingly well run and fun. You get to see the local iguanas, lots of vegetation with descriptions, canopy walk, etc. Once done with it, we jumped on  the bus to Nadi and went back to Wailoaloa beach.
For the final day, we've decided to FINALLY see the Fiji we know from posters. So far, we had maybe one half-day of sun, otherwise it was overcast or raining. So, we've booked a day-tour to one of the Mamanucas islands - Treasure Island. To our surprise, it was sunny, the island did have white sand and coconut trees and they did serve good drinks too :) You can walk  around the whole island in 5 minutes and all there's is the resort, but as a one day relaxation it was ok.
This concludes our Fiji experience. 10 days were quite enough and now we're off to Indonesia, starting at Bali.

We chose Fiji as our next destination after Australia. It would be a shame to be in the area and not to visit. We went there with visions of pristine white sand beaches, coconut trees leaning above the crystal clear water, dolphins jumping out of the water and half-naked girls serving sweet drinks with little umbrelas... Well, lets say that we did see a lot of coconut trees :)
Fiji is a lot of islands. There's a main island Viti Levu, where the Nadi international airport is. We arrived there late at night flying from Darwin through Sydney, so we stayed at a hostel in Wailoaloa beach (which is very close to the airport). Next day we jumped on the domestic flight to the Taveuni island, which is the 3rd largest. After hour-and-half flight, we landed on what seemed to be a football field with a shack on a side. The shack was the "terminal". If you think I'm kidding, check out the pictures :)
The main reason for us coming here was the Rainbow reef. It was supposed to be pristine, full of fish, soft corals, the works... Comparing the options online and from the guide, we picked the TovuTovu resot as our base. It was kinda scary as when I tried to call them from Darwin, I had a lady on a phone, who I think knew only one english word - "YES" - which was answer to any question I asked. Anyway, after landing and getting our bags, one of the two taxi drivers told us he'd take us to TovuTovu as we had no clue how to get there. Well, it was on the other side of the airport. Almost literally :) So in less than 10 minutes we were lead to our nice little bungallow.
The original plan was to start diving the next day, so that we can get 3 days of diving and the final day off to do some touring around. Well, the next day was sunday. World stops spinning around at Fiji on Sunday. So we were lucky enough to be able to get a driver to take us to the Bouma national park to see some waterfalls. On the way there I realized why all the cars on Taveuni were 4WD. Parts of the road must've been riverbeds on Tuesdays and Saturdays... :) Anyway, we made it there, the waterfalls were beautiful, the rainforest was dense, spiders, crabs, exactly what we expected.
Monday, finally, we started diving. After the disappointment at the Great Barrier, I honestly didn't expect much. Even less did I expect to be thrilled about corals. I've spent 6 years diving on Bermuda after all. Well, let me tell you, the corals here are, for the lact of better word, stunning. I've never seen anything like this. We were lucky to be able to do the White Wall (apparently very famous) as our first dive and it's just impossible to explain. Unfortunately even the pictures can't give you the true impression. During the two days of diving, we've seen so many corals and so much life... I consider this to be my No.1 place in the world so far as far as reef beauty goes. Oh, on the breaks between the 2 dives we always went to a beach with white sand and coconuts. On the 2nd day, I actually managed to crack-open one just using rock! I was very proud of myself, despite the deep bloody cut on my hand from doing so :)
On the final day we went to the western coast of the island. The is one main reason to go there. Taveuni happens to be one of the 2 places in the world, where the 180 meridian passes through land (the other place is somewhere in Siberia). So, technically, you can be standing with left leg in Tuesday and right in Wednesday, same time. We found the marker in the middle of a football field :) Btw, in the guide they said that long time ago, bad farmers made locals work on Sunday, claiming it was Monday where the fields were ;) There's also a shop which "opens as the first in the world". I guess they're right :) Then we went to see a pearl farm. Pretty interesting, the dude even showed us how they insert the pearl cores into the living clams, etc.
That was it for Taveuni, we were off back to the main island on the next day.

All in all, we've driven some 10,000 miles, walked about 130 miles, ate 100 cans of soup and 20 watermelons... and had great fun! 3 months almost to the day. That's it, our next stop is Fiji and then onto Indonesia. Thanks again to you Paul and the rest of the family here in Aus - we absolutely loved the time we've spent together here and you all have been incredible help! Hope to see you soon again somewhere :)

Alice Springs - is actually fairly nice little place in the middle of nowhere, plus you get to (finally) see some true aboriginal characters :) We went to see the Desert Park - it was more exciting for the girls since they like to take pictures of flowers and look at birds. I liked better our 2nd stop there, the reptile center. It's very little, but if you're there for the show, you get to hold and touch all sort of lizards and snakes, sweet! Plus they have one "saltie" (salt water crocodile) in the pool as well. Oh, and my sister bought here didgeridoo here too - despite the fact that women are not supposed to play it! Which reminds me - she didn't believe it, but to play it correctly, you have to learn how to exhale and inhale at the same time, so that you can make continuous sound. I'd love to learn it! Oh and we got our new home-on-wheels here - the Voyager from Britz.
Uluru - also known as the Ayers Rock, about 350 miles SW of Alice Springs. It is the world's largest monolith - which is basically really big one piece of rock. I always thought that it doesn't make sense to travel thousands of miles to see a piece of rock, but it really is worth the trip. It's fascinating to see it to change color during the sunset/sunrise. We also were lucky enough to be able to climb it, which probably upset a lot of aboriginal gods but hey, what else would you expect from white fella :) Reading about the climb, I expected it to be something difficult, but in reality it's just the first 300ft that are steep, the rest is nice and easy walk on the top. We went early in the morning, so we actually were one of the first ones on top, thus avoiding the crowds that followed. Next day we went to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) which used to be monolith 10 times size of Uluru, but it fell apart ages ago. There's a nice track through the valley of winds (really windy too ;).
King's canyon - 200 miles north from Uluru. To see it, we walked on the rim track which circumnavigates the whole canyon. It starts with steps going up the canyon wall and then follows the ledge. There are couple of side-tracks leading to various lookouts, all definately worth the extra effort. Unlike most other places, they're not paraniod about people falling over, so there're no fences on the cliffs, which makes it much better experience. At the back of the canyon it's possible to track down a bit to see "garden of Eden" with waterhole and some greenery. Nice change from the desert around :)
Katherine Gorge - this was a looooong drive from Alice Springs. Two days in fact, 750 miles. And virtually nothing on the way. We just made a quick stop at the Wicliff Well which is more than just a petrol station - it's an Australia's UFO center! We didn't see any though - except for the plastic ones they have at the front. Next quick stop was at Devil's Marbles - which are oddly shaped, oddly positioned rocks in the middle of outback. I totally see the connection with UFO though! :) So Katherine - it's a huge river which is quite refreshing sight after a week of red sand, dust and rocks. First day we made the "smart" decision to walk one of the long tracks, leading to the 3rd gorge (7 miles one way). It was crazy hot, pretty much nothing to see, so all the way we were hoping to reach the river and hop in. The swimming was nice though. We enjoyed it even more since we didn't know there were crocodiles all around us :) Only freshies (fresh water crocs) though - apparently, they don't eat people. Next day we rented kayaks and paddled up the gorge - only to make it to the very same spot we walked to the day before! To make it further, we'd have to mostly carry the boats, so not worth it. Well at least, this time we did get to see some of the crocs :)
Kakadu - the biggest and most famous national park in Australia. The problem with it is, that you need 4WD to make it to the most interesting places. Probably the best thing we've done in there was the Animal Track Safari - totally worth the money. It's guided by a young white-fella, but he really knows his stuff. He took the group of about 15 of us through a local buffalo farm, where he took a dead goose and fish from freezer for our evening dinner. He's showed us couple of the bush-tucker goodies (bush-tucker is term used for all the things in the bush you can eat - worms, ants, plants, etc.) and tricks. At the sunset we moved to the wetlands edge - to see the sunset better, prepare our meal and get eaten alive by mosquitos. There he built up a fire, let the girls to pluck the goose (at which point I felt very lucky to be a vegetarian :), prepared the fish, baked a bread, etc... Honestly, it was really nice - it was obvious that he really believes all the stuff he's doing, enjoys his time in the bush and has respect for it. In the end, it almost didn't feel like a tour guide. For the rest of Kakadu - we did some walks, watched birds and on the way we went to see the jumping crocodiles.
Lichfield National Park - about 200 miles west from Kakadu. This was supposed to be even better than Kakadu and more accessible to 2WD. I personally would not compare the two too much. In Kakadu it's more about birds, bush and nature. In Lichfield, it's mostly about splashing around in rock pools and waterfalls. I liked both :) There are also huge (15ft high) termite mounds - some are called magnetic, since the termites build them very flat and all orientated the same way (it loooks a bit like graveyard) - they say that the orientation is designed to that they expose only the narrow part to the worst midday sun - make sense I guess.
Darwin - our final stop on our journey through Australia. The city's downtown is tiny - we walked all through it in less than 30 minutes. We went to see the Crocodilus park, which is a combination of crocodile farm and zoo. I got to play with one of the crocodiles - having piece of chicken on a string and teasing the big saltie dude with it :) We also went to the famous deck-chair cinema to see an Australia made movie "The Tracker" - a bit too artsy for me, but the girls liked it. Finally, the night before our departure, we went to see the market at the Mindil Beach - mostly food, but some of the stalls had funky stuff too. Wallets made from frogs, kangaroo balls as shift-stick head, etc. Oh, the road-kill cafe was there too - their motto is "you kill it, we grill it" - once again, it felt good to be a vegetarian :) At the end we went to see the new Tarantino's film (Inglourious Basterds) and that was it!

Mission Beach - along the coast from Townsville, this is one more of our nature-hunting stops. This time for cassowaries - sort of emu-like bird, with big hump on its head and quite colorful. We didn't actually expect to see any to be honest - there were only two short tracks where we had "chance of spotting one". This time luck was with us though - while walking through the jungle track, Kacka spotted one on the track. It was  about 200ft away from us, but we did see it!
Lava caves in Undara - yet another side-track to the outback, this time not so far though. The lava caves used to be the longest ones in the world until the found longer ones somewhere else :) They're formed by lava flow (duh!) and the cave entrances are actually collapsed sections of what used to be one long tunnel. One thing we noticed on our way there worth mentioning is the A1 highway. It's the one that goes around the whole Australia. Well, it's sealed (i.e. not a dirt road), however in some sections, only in the middle. It's not a problem as long as you're the only one on the road - which is for the most part. However, sometimes you do meet traffic, most in form of the flipping huge road-trains, which makes you sh*t your pants when you have to pass them :)
Great Barrier on Mike Ball liveaboard - we've managed to get a really nice deal for 4day liveabord with these guys. It was the first time on liveaboard for both of us and we were very excited. We were to visit the famous cod-hole as well as spend 2 days on the Ospray reef, which is only visited by liveaboard and supposed to be absolutely amazing. Well, I guess it is, but we didn't get to see it :( The weather was bad and the boat had to stick with sites on the inner barrier. It was ok, we did get to see the cod-hole and even ran into minky whales (unfortunately not underwater), but overall we couldn't help to feel disappointed. Maybe we're just spoiled by all the great dives we've done so far...
Daintree - the national park with rainforests north of Cairns. We went to Mossman as well as to Cape Tribulation, took a cruise on the river to see the "salties" (salt-water crocodiles). If it wasn't for the crowds of tourists it would've been nice, but we're just not used to be in so crowded places. One thing worth noting was our first car failure. We dropped our Wicked camper before we boarded the Mike Ball liveaboard, so after we rented regular car for the last couple of days in Cairns. So here we are, all the way in Daintree's rainforest, going uphill on narrow road, the car starts making funny noise. Minute after it just stops. Cars start piling behind us... Well, turned out there was a hole in the cooling and it overheated. Luckily it was  toyota, so all we had to do was to beg passing cars for some water, wait for 20 minutes for it to cool down a bit and off we went again.
Cairns - we've actually spent couple of days here, since we were waiting for my sister and niece to join us. It's obviously a tourist hub with a lot going on, tour-booking offices all over the place, bars, cafes, the works... They even have artificial beach on the beach-front which is very nice to hang out at. Once the girls arrived, we took them for a day dive-trip to the reefs with Haba. Nothing exceptional, but we did get to see the cuttlefish at last.

This concluded our coastal part of the trip. From Cairns we were flying to Alice Springs (which is in the middle of Australia's outback) and from there we were to drive up north to Darwin on the final leg.

Glass House Mountains - this national park is about 100 miles from Brisbane. It's essentially couple of very spiky-looking hills, some of which can be climbed. At first we went to one called Ngungun, which was supposed fairly steep track, but still doable for regular people. It wasn't anything expectional to be honest, fairly nice view though. For the second day I wanted something more and so I've picked the Beerwah. It was described in the rough-guide as very difficult, but who'd pay attention to that, right? :) When we got to the parking lot, we were greeted by "track closed due to rockfall", "extreme danger" and similar signs - just to make it a bit more exciting. First couple hundred meters were steps. That lead us to a platform, where the fun started. It's hard to describe - try to look at the pictures. It was just very steep and smooth rock. No ropes or anything. I've managed to climb up about 30ft barefeet, then came back and then we both climbed about 60ft up, called it a successfull day and turned back :) Still very nice trip - I'm by no means a rock-climber, so I felt very adventurous doing this.

Seals at Seal Rock in Huskinson:

Nurse Sharks at Solitary Islands:

Turtle at Solitary Islands:

Warrumbungles National Park - some 400km NW from Sydney. We went there to get some hiking miles into our shoes again,  after all the museums and sightseeing. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating too much. We did a track to a rock called "breadknife" - very narrow, kinda longish rock which probably resembles the breadknife. We didn't get to see it from a distance though as all the tops were covered by clouds. On the way there from Sydney we also stopped at the ZOO in Dubbo, which was ok, but nothing to write home about. Then we moved onto Gunnedah, where you're supposed to be  virtually guarranteed to see koalas, but either we were extremely unlucky or it's a hoax to attract tourists. We saw exactly ONE during 4 hrs walk through the whole reserve area. My suggestion - if you want to see koalas, go to Otways :)
Diving Solitary Islands from Coffs Harbour - 600km NNE from Sydney. I can't write enough good things about this dive trip. I've seen sharks before (not many though), but nothing like this. We were literally surrounded by large sharks during the whole dive. I was so excited, I "lost" the rest of the group on the first dive just to enjoy them more :) To make perfect dive even better, we (yet again) saw humpbacks on the way back. I've managed to snap a picture of one breaching even with my puny little camera!
Dorrigo National Park - 600km NNE from Sydney. This was a bit of disappointment - it was our first true rainforest, waterfalls and all. However, the main track is closed (couple months already) due to rain damage. Apparently, half of the track which included the main attraction (walk under a waterfall) got washed out. We did see there quite a selection of trees though. One which I like in particular is a "stinging tree" - if you touch its leaf, you'll get a painful itch for MONTHS. Seriously. No doctor can help you either - essentially you have to wait until your skin dies and is replaced with new one. Wicked - I have a list of people who'll be getting green present from me this year :)
Diving at Fish Rock - 500km NNE from Sydney. I've been dreaming about diving this spot as soon as I read about it. It is little rocky island close to the South West Rock town and what makes it so special is the fact, that there's a cave running through it. Sharks were supposed to hangout in this cave too. Well, there were 2 serious problems with that particular dive. First, the water was rough and so the visibility was maybe 10ft or less. To make it even worse, the mask they gave me was fogging like crazy all the time to the point where I think i'd see more without it. Spit/antifog didn't help at all. To top it, the flash-light they gave me for the cave was hardly visible even if you looked directly into it, so I had no hope of actually seeing anything that was further than 5ft from me. Oh, did I mention the annoying 3 teenagers that were constantly everywhere around me? Ugh, I was SO disappointed... It was still a nice dive - I did "see" couple of sharks, but my expectations were SO much higher. I'd love it another try some day again though - the site itself is totally cool.
Bald Rock - 300km SE of Brisbane. As the name suggests, it's a big granite rock. Second largest (after Uluru) in Australia (213m high). There are quite a few walking tracks around it, but we just climbed it and drove on towards Brisbane. Most of the access roads there were unsealed and Wicked doesn't like us driving in outback anyway :) Probably the biggest highlight of this trip was the fact that I actually bought an icecream called "Golden Gaytime". Kacka ate it though :)
Brisbane. We've just walked through the city, no museums, no cruises, nothing. It was still very pleasant though.Actually we did go to DaVinci machines exhibition, which was really cool. Brisbane seems to have very "friendly" face - the whole riverband is one big park where people hang out, markets take place, etc. They even have artificial beach there for kids. Even the business district seems to be pleasant place to walk through. Beware though, hippies are everywhere! :)