Pacific Adventure (Australia, Fiji & Hawaii)

Melbourne, Australia

After four nights in Hawaii, we flew to Melbourne, Australia. Make sure you apply for your Australian Visa a couple months before you travel. You can do it very easily online. The flight was just short of eleven hours, still very long but a lot more manageable than 16+ hours. We were completely bushed when we arrived but we managed to stay up and have dinner at the hotel and make a quick run to grab a few things at the 7-Eleven up the block. We stayed at Pullman Melbourne on The Park. It was a great place to stay. For anyone attending the Australian Open, I can’t recommend it enough. We had a lovely suite that provided us with both a beautiful city view and also a view of the entire Melbourne Park area. It was literally a ten minute walk from the hotel to the front gates of the open. 

We spent four different days at The Australian Open. Originally we’d only planned on going three times but we ended up adding in an additional grounds pass day. When going to one of the Grand Slam events, I highly recommend attending a day session, a night session and spending a day there with a grounds pass. This gives you an opportunity to see all the stadiums/courts if you plan it out. It also helps to have stadium seats in the case of poor weather. We got to see so much amazing tennis. We had incredible seats at both Rod Laver and Margaret Court Arena’s. It was really interesting sitting so close that you could hear the conversations between the players and their coaching boxes. One of the hi-lights for me was seeing Taylor Townsend and Kateřina Siniaková play doubles. I love all the faces Siniaková pulls. She is such an emotional player and I love watching her at the net. They went on to win the whole thing. We also got to see the fantastic match-up between Gael Monfils and Taylor Fritz. Seeing the action up close really gives you such an appreciation for what incredible athletes they are.

One day we were walking up the stairs to go into Rod Laver Arena when we literally almost ran into John McEnroe. He was standing there doing an interview. That night on Rod Laver the sky put on a show for us too. It went from tons of clouds to bright purple in a matter of less than 30 minutes. We got to see a lot of other people that I really like. We saw Ons Jabeur, Hubie Hurkacz, Jasmine Paolini, and we even got to see Madison Keys practicing. She went on to win the women’s singles title. It was a great experience. We really enjoyed all the matches we got to see. We’d surely recommend it to anyone interested in going to a grand slam.

This portion of the trip was broken up over 7 days. We took some days off in between the tennis. We enjoyed walking around Melbourne. I loved how they had so many parks everywhere. Fitzroy Park, which was right adjacent to our hotel, was really beautiful. It was full of shady walkways and tons of interesting local foliage. There were also these incredible birds that lived there, they’re called Coconut Lorikeets. Vic and I are officially old. The amount of enjoyment we get from bird watching is a little embarrassing.

We also spent time downtown and in China Town. On a different morning we took the free city tram to Victoria Harbour. Places were easy to get to, whether you walk, uber it or take a tram, train or subway. As far as food goes, you can pretty much find anything you’d like. There are tons of Asian options along with Italian, American, Greek and just about anything else you might want. We also happened upon the beautiful St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was massive, taking up two city blocks.

After our time in Melbourne, we picked up a rental car and hit the road. They do drive on the other side of the road in Australia, so keep that in mind. I would definitely recommend renting a car if you want to get out of the city. Make sure you reserve an automatic car too. Trying to shift with your left hand while driving on the opposite side of the street is just too much. Thankfully, Vic is a pro at it now after doing it several times around the world.

Our next stay would be just outside Apollo Bay on The Great Ocean Road. This is a 151 mile stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia. It is an absolutely beautiful, though very twisty-turvy scenic drive. The most famous spot along the road is The Twelve Apostles. If you’ve ever scene a commercial for visiting Australia, you’ve seen this stunning location. We spent four days breaking up the drive. We drove two hours to where we would call our home base for the rest of our time in Australia. We booked a house through Vrbo. It offered a lovely view from atop a mountain. The house was okay, not the best house we’ve ever rented, but it served its purpose. We had an awesome welcoming party, two Australian King Parrots dropped by to say hello. The biggest downside to it was the motion-sickness-inducing drive to and from it every day. Vic and I both get motion sick, so we felt a little nauseous ever day. For anyone considering driving The Great Ocean Road, I recommend booking really early and finding a house, villa, apartment, etc., somewhere in one of the many small ocean side towns along the way. That way you don’t have to add in any unnecessary driving time.

After enjoying the sights at The Twelve Apostles we continued on and went to a very quiet and private place called Childers Cove. There were six of us on the entire beach. Vic ventured out into the water, but I said no thanks when I felt how cold it was. This would be a perfect spot to just lay out a blanket and chill away from the normal beach crowds. 

Something I really wanted to do while in Australia was to see koala and kangaroos in the wild. We were able to find some koala but didn’t have any luck seeing kangaroo. We were actually able to hold a koala on our previous trip to Australia, so I really wanted to see them in their natural habitat. Despite all the signs saying watch out for kangaroos, we never saw any. We saw so many beautiful birds and different types of wildlife during our stay. The Great Ocean Road is an excellent way to see lots of beautiful countryside and spectacular ocean views. The towns along the way are very small, so don’t expect anything fancy. If taking leisurely drives and making lots of stops along the way isn’t your cup of tea, you might want to skip this adventure. 

Something that I really loved in Apollo Bay was their amazing Monterey Cypress Trees. They were so cool and each one was different. There were some that looked like monsters. They lined the road going into town from the east. The day before we headed back to Melbourne, Vic and I decided to do a hike around the property we were staying. We found the most amazing Eucalyptus tree and I attempted to climb it. I didn’t get very far due to some super thorny bushes that were wrapped around the trunk. Unfortunately later that day when I climbed into the bathtub, I found a tick trying to embed itself into my calf. Thankfully I caught it before it got too far.

After a glorious twelve days in Australia, we packed our bags and boarded a flight to Nadi, Fiji.

Melbourne to Fiji was a five hour flight. Not too bad, definitely better than our other options. We landed in Nadi early in the afternoon and had to wait an hour for our helicopter that would take us to Royal Davui Island. Fiji is an absolutely beautiful country made up of more than 330 islands. Only a couple of the islands are pretty large with a higher population. Most of the islands are very small, including the one we stayed on. Much like the Caribbean, most of Fiji is very poor. There aren’t a ton of options as far as 5-star resorts, so make sure you do plenty of homework if that’s the type of place you want to stay. It took just 30 minutes by helicopter to arrive on our little island. We were welcomed with a beautiful serenade and got settled right in. We wanted to visit Fiji after Australia as it would be very slow paced and relaxing, no driving, no tourist sites to see. Below is a photo I took from the helicopter as we circled the island.

Our private villa stood on a small hill overlooking a beach. It was beautiful and very quiet. We had everything we needed, including a wonderful plunge pool that we used everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. The reason for this is that Fiji is very, very, very humid. I’d venture to say that it was the most humid place I’ve ever visited. The temperatures were in the mid eighties most of the time, but the humidity was through the roof. Having that cool plunge pool was so refreshing. You could walk around the entire island in about ten minutes. There are 16 villas on the property. All meals were served at the Banyan Restaurant, which you’ve probably guessed, sat under the canopy of an amazing Banyan tree.

We spent our days snorkeling, paddleboarding and just generally relaxing. I spent a great deal of time wandering around taking photos of all the beautiful flowers that grew all over the island. Orchids grew especially well there. We did have a few days of rain while we were there, but amazingly, the water was even more clear when it was raining. This was by far the best snorkeling I’ve ever experienced. The amount of fish that I saw was incredible. I saw so many fish that I’d never seen before. We also saw black tip and white tip sharks too. I could have done without the sea snakes that I saw around the island, they were beautiful but also a little creepy. They were always sleeping when I saw them, so at least they weren’t a threat. Another interesting thing about the island was the enormous amount of hermit crabs there. You had to watch your step because the crabs were everywhere. They were really interesting to watch. One night we had a hermit crab race in the restaurant. My crab came in second place. Woo-hoo!

The entire staff was so friendly and kind. They would literally help you in any way that they could. There was a really good variety of food available at each meal. You could also have your meal delivered to your villa, and there were also a couple private spots to have a romantic meal if you liked. There were a few instances where some of the food was poor, but overall it was really enjoyable, and we’re hard to impress when it comes to food. We loved all the different wildlife on the island. Once the sun started to go down, the bats came out to play. They were fascinating to watch from our deck. We even witnessed a couple bat fights. It was awesome. 

On several nights we had the most incredible show of stars overhead. With there being no light pollution, the view was incredible. The photos don’t even begin to do it justice. There were so many stars that it was quite overwhelming to look it. Dark, clear nights like that are so amazing to experience. Unfortunately on the day we were leaving, the weather was poor, so we couldn’t fly back to Nadi in the helicopter. This is one downside to staying on a small island. You have to get back to the big island to fly onward. We had to take a 30 minute boat ride, followed by a 2.5 hour drive around the island to get back to the airport. Definitely not what we were hoping for, but sometimes these things happen and you just have to roll with the punches.

Our last leg of the trip was heading back to Hawaii for four more nights. It was a 4.5 hour flight from Nadi to Honolulu. We stayed at the same villa up on the North Shore. It was a very chill couple of days. We did some hiking, drove around the northeast corner of the island and went to a couple beaches. The lush green mountains there are so beautiful.

Throughout the trip we had some pretty good food. Australia offers a wide variety of cuisines, pretty much anything you have a hankering for. Fiji, of course, is more limited as they rely on importing many goods. Our resort did a fantastic job at acquiring local produce grown on the neighboring islands. We had a lot of really fresh and tasty seafood, of course. I love trying new foods & flavors while traveling. In Apollo Bay, I tried Vegemite Ice Cream simply out of curiosity. It was quite strange but not horrible. The other locally made flavors were really yummy: Pepperberry and Honeycomb Malt. The locally made Lamington (layer cake) took me back to eating Raspberry Coconut Zingers as a child. We even found a pretty good Pastel de Nata.