Follow the Journey

We arrived at Blue Mountain Adventure Centre on October 16, for a jam packed week of fun. Our week started off with spelunking into the deep depths of a not so spacious cave. We got to explore the cracks and crevices of the underground world and fell in love with the experience. The following day was spent trekking up to a one hundred foot waterfall, and as if that wasn’t… Read More

For the week following our time in Auckland, we stayed on a dairy farm seemingly equidistant from the small town of Otorohanga and the black sand beaches of Marokopa.  On this farm, we milked the cows, grubbed the fields, cooked the meals, cleaned the homes, and fed the calves.  In the evening we hung out with the owners, David and Claire Carey, and their son, Mike.  Dan, Greta, Casey, Katie,… Read More

Everyone has adjusted to farm life amazingly quickly.  Everyone has a different job everyday: Milkers are out of the house by 5am and heading down to heard the cows in and then begin the process of milking 300 cows before breakfast.  The cows walk onto a giant rotating circular platform and the “Cups On” milker uses suction to attach 4 cups to the cow which milk her as she rotates… Read More

AUCKLAND IS AWESOME. Many of us are already planning an extended period of stay in the future, looking at what apartments we’d living in, etc. It was as if we got off the plane and entered into a different world from the one we had been living in for the past three weeks in Fiji. As we drove to our hotel we were all in awe looking at these surroundings… Read More

Bula! Looking back at our time in Rabulu Village I see the beauty of the simplicity in Village life. A small community of 72 houses full of people who welcomed us not only into their way of life but into their homes as part of their families. We not only became part of families but also party of a community; the time there was peaceful, the village safe everyone so… Read More

It is now Saturday and we have now been on this glorious adventure for a full week and each day keeps getting better and better. This past Tuesday is when we made the trip from Lautoka to Rabulu, which is the village where we will be staying until the 3rd of October. Before meeting Kali (our local contact who would take us to the village) the whole group was overcome… Read More

It is now our third day in Lautoka, our first stop of the semester. Our group all met in LAX without any issues and hit it off immediately, embracing our new family for the next two and a half months. We boarded, surprisingly, one of the largest two-story planes any of us had ever seen, and seated ourselves on the second floor, anticipating the endless journey across the Pacific that… Read More

Greta and Dan have just called to announce they’re through security at LAX and doing great.  Though they’re the last to fly the coup, they’re one of the best to depart!  The group is united, the crew looks excited and joyous, and above all, they all look like a great group of students. Let this journey commence with great auspiciousness and a resounding farewell. Yours in complete and total jealousy… Read More

Hello FANZ Hongi, Meet your travel crew… Matt, Andrea, Krysten, Caroline, Alistair, Ruby, Francesca, Casey, Trent, Avery, Katherine, Dan and Greta. We may be strangers in cyber space right now, but in a week we’ll all be living as a community, bouncing around the South Pacific.  We are excited to leave the office behind, meet all of you, and get on the plane to Fiji. Remember: LAX, Air Pacific Counter, … Read More

Two weeks ago, we flew from Sydney to Adelaide where we met up with our contact from the Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA). After a quick orientation where we met our group leader Hamish, we discovered that we would be doing work on Kangaroo Island. The work we did consisted of building boardwalks on four of Australia’s most beautiful beaches. We were also pleasantly surprised to find out that we would… Read More

From the farm, our group travelled to Te Anau for the beginning of our free travel. For our first activity, we hiked a portion of the Kepler Track that led to one of the highest peaks bordering Lake Te Anau. It took all day but the view from the top was completely worth the strenuous walk. The first portion of the hike ended at a hut near the summmit where… Read More

   I find that sometimes it is those completely unplanned, random moments that stick with me throughout the trip. It might be squeezing into a horse trailer on the way to the farm or having a conversation about organic food with Graham (the owner) or even finding yourself in a cemetery on Halloween surrounded by people you’ve come to know and love. Clearly our time on the farm was indeed… Read More

There is nothing more unsettling to me than being surprised by a gigantic winged insect whilst visiting the restroom. On an average night, I would have responded with A. a scream, B. an immediate retreat, C. the throwing of something heavy at the intruder, or D. some combination of the three. On our first night at the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuit Center, however, I encountered a bug that made… Read More

Kiaora from our new location– Taupo, New Zealand. Here is a poem to let all you mates know what we have been up to: We started this week on a Morai, where we picked thistles, painted fences, oh how time flew by. We went on a hike with tons of sheep and beautiful hills, and some of our group members learned how to catch eels.  For fun we played frisbee… Read More

The morning we get ready to take off from Nananu theres a solemn feeling in the air. We all grew so close to our families, but we were looking forward to the next location on our adventure, and trying some new foods rather than we’ve been having every day in the village. All of us are going to miss the families that we stayed with, the little kids that we… Read More

Bula friends!For the past 2 weeks, we’ve been at a homestay in a small village called Nananu. We took a couple of buses from Nadi and were welcomed into the village (after we put on our sulus) by the community in an opening ceremony. We all really loved our naus and magus (moms and dads) and became really close with our families. Our community service project was building concrete pathways… Read More

Bula!! Family and FriendsWe landed in Fiji on Thursday morning at 5:10am. During the first few days we’ve had been orientation, we have been getting to know each other through various exercises and games and spending a lot of time bonding. We went into the town of Nadi to explore and to purchase the traditional dress of the Fijian culture, the zulu. Currently, we are learning about the differences in… Read More

Dear Fanz Hongi 2010 crew:  Dimitrios, Kyle, Nina, Laura, Alex, Nick, Alexandra, Greg, Michelle, Michael and Catherine. We hope you have been enjoying the last gasps of summer and are psyched for our South Pacific adventure.   We leave in two days! This is our group trip blog, a site where all of your friends and family will be able to keep track of our movements and experiences over the… Read More