Kanye West to Kalalau

Fullmoon Rising over the mountains of the Kalalau valley.

Happy to have completed the 11 mile hike, to paradise.

This was our campsite, with a waterfall to the right that we showered in and drank out of,

still not sick:)

A seal who joined us for the day, have you ever smelled a seal fart? We have.

Alix striking her pose in a cave on Kalalau beach, Yoga Journal anyone?

A view of the Na Pali Coast from the boat.

The last couple weeks have been laid back, yet amazing. We've been chilling at Phil's, had a brief stint on a Kanye West music video, got paid well for it too. Alix was going to fire-dance for the video, but the ignorance of Los Angelians shone through when they built a giant bonfire on the beach, not realizing that tides change and it was soon washed away, cutting the shooting short, we still got paid for sitting around a bonfire on the beach, watching rap stars play with their baseball caps in front of a camera.

We hiked the Kalalau Valley trail with an amazing Austrian girl named Claudia, she extended her trip to stay with us for a few days, which is turning to into over a week, and happens to be a professional snowboarder. The journey was 11 miles each way along a rugged coast line, up and down cliffs and in and out of lush valleys. When we got to the beach where we camped, a man with stunningly, abornmally, bright blue eyes came out of the jungle and gave each of us an orange from the valley to welcome us, then he walked away in to a rainbow. He was definately a symbol for what this place is like. A lot of people, like this man, live deep in the jungle and sustain themselves on the garden of edenesque land.

We planned on staying one night, but it was hard to leave even after 3 days. We had to get creative with feeding ourselves, so one night we went fishing for prawns in the river and cooked up a feast! We also lived off the extra food that people left behind when they hiked out, or went into the valley looking for tomatoes, oranges, and squash.

At night, we watched whales breaching during the sunsets, and then sat around a campfire playing music, and watching the clear night sky. This place is too powerful to describe, guess you'll have to go see it yourselves!

Only bummer, when we returned from the hike our car had been broken in to. Luckily our valuables were not inside, but all of Alix's clothes and souveniers she'd collected along our travels were stolen, even her travel journal. But she says "At least my bag is lighter!" After being in such an amazing place where the land and the people just keep giving, it is really trivial in comparison.

Just over a week before we come home, we are relaxing at the moment but might hop over to the Big island.

Happy Easter!

Aloha from Hawaii!

As you can tell, we like jumping off things. This is a waterfall that Sam is flying off of.

Taking a dip in to Queen's Bath, a turquoise swimming hole filled with colorful fish on the rough ocean waves.

We left paradise for paradise, went from Bula to Aloha; Alo- to confront, be in the presence of, Ha- the sacred breath. We started off staying in a hotel for a couple nights in Lihue, Kauai. Our hotel had the towels to the Marriott resort right on the beach, so we went ahead and used their amazing swimming pool and spas. Now we are in Kapaa with Phil, a native Hawaiian who suprises us everyday by guiding us to amazing waterfalls and ocean swimming holes. He lived in the jungle for two years and is very connected to the land here, and he took us out in to the jungle, showed us how to harvest bambooo, and make flutes from them! His life is about keeping traditional music, dance, and awareness of the abundance of our land alive for the next generation. Yesterday we harvested buckets full of huge, sweet grapefruits which we have been living on.We feel blessed that he is teaching us how to play all these instruments, fire dance, and live in the Aloha spirit! We went to one of his shows, it was like the Cirque de Soleil of Luau's. Amazing hula and fire dancing, and we had an all you can eat buffet with traditional foods, a good night. A highlight was when we took a cadamoran along the Napali coast and saw whales breaching, dolphins, and we even swam with sea turtles, and the best thing, we (accidently) got the whole day for free :) Such an incredible coast line, we hope to hike the challenging Kalalau valley trail soon if weather permits.
ALO-HA!!

Bula from Fiji!

Singing songs at sunset, and preparing Kava in the wooden bowl

Bula!! Fiji wasn't quite what our preconceived notion of Fiji had us expecting, but it was the spirit of the people that made it one of our favorite spots so far. The water was not like what you see in the pictures of Fiji, there was a storm right before we arrived that sent all sorts of debris into the water making it the opposite of crystal clear, but we did find a sandbar that had nice bath tub warm water around the island. We spent the majority of our time on the tiny island of Robinson Crusoe which we were able to walk around in 15 minutes. It was a welcomed change of pace from our hectic traveling in NZ. We slept in a thatch hut and never knew what time it was until a lunch or dinner bell rang. We enjoyed spending time with the local staff, they were much chiller people than the horrid, teenage English girls that were inhabiting the island when we got there. We did a jungle walk at night, they were already very apprehensive about the whole thing, after a few poisonous snakes had crossed our path they were hyperventilating and repeatedly screaming "I want to go home!" we found this hilarious. We partook in the native drink, kava, which is just water and a powder derived from a pepper plant root, the locals seem to love it, and so did Sam, who earned a position as chief at the kava ceremonies for being a true "kavaholic." Our days on Robinson crusoe were very laid back, spent mostly in Fiji time as they say, we played some volleyball, went fishing with a big net and sticks (actually caught fish), made coconut jewelry, watched knife and fire dancers, sat around bonfires, and ate fresh coconuts. It was rewarding to stay in one place for a week, because we saw people come on tours to our island for the day, we were very content to not be rushed off on a boat at the end of the day. If the water had been clear, we would probably have been writing letters home to tell you that we were never coming home.

Recapping New Zealand

The last couple weeks in NZ were fairly uneventful, and we're falling behind on our blog so we'll be brief. We spent most of our time driving around trying to cram in everything we wanted to see into a couple weeks. We went to see the Franz Joseph Glacier, we decided not to do the hike on it because we were both a little under the weather and walking on a giant ice cube didn't seem like a good idea at the time, though we did snap some photos (above). We spent a few nights in the little peninsula town of Kaikoura, enjoying the views of snow capped mountains and ocean together. We spent a day enjoying the fruits of the Malbourough wine region, chocolate, Pino Noir, liquers, double-baked-blue-cheese-suffles and mussel chowder, then spent a few nights in Picton, a little port town where we stayed in a hostel with bikes, kayaks, and two cool cats. We took a ferry to Wellington, where Alix ran into a few friends from UCSC, small world! We relocated a car for a free ride back to Auckland, where we stayed with the same people we started the trip with. Apart from spending most of our time there in court, we were just happy to make our flight to Fiji!

Milford Trek

Us at the highest point of the pass.

Turquise blue glacial waterfalls.

The lake water is this color from glacial rocks rubbing together.

We flew to the south island to get to Queenstown to begin the Milford Trek. After a 10 hour bus ride through mountains and turquoise blue glacial lakes, we got ready for the 5 day guided hike. We have been ridiculing the tourist buses filled with old and/or Japanese people that we see everywhere, but before we knew it, we were on one! Being the youngest participants by far, we were regretting being on the guided tour, but found that having a hot breakfast prepared for us at 6:30am was well worth the cost. The hike was incredible, and night sky was brilliant, we saw galaxies and constellations only visible from the southern hemishpere. Our fellow hikers were actually very nice, and while the Japanese didn't speak English, Alix had fun stretching with them every morning before hiking. The rivers were crystal clear, we even saw a few big trout our first morning on the river. The first 3 days we had great weather, and on the last it poured night and day. However this wasn't too bad besides the wet hiking boots, the waterfalls started pouring down from everywhere. We saw more waterfalls than you can imagine that day, probably numbering in the thousands, it was the full Milford experience.

First Impressions of New Zealand

Simply put, New Zealand is awesome, and with the current enchange rate of 2 to 1, it is awesome, and cheap. Our first couple nights in Auckland we couch surfed in a house full of college students, who we will probably stay with again on our way out. We love Kiwi music, so we bought some new CD's a great music store so we would have some local music to listen to while we explored country. The next place we went was the Coromandel Penninsula, which we could have spent weeks at because of the beautiful beaches, including one ranked in the top 100 in the world. It was very nice but our favorite was hot water beach(above), where at low tide you can dig your own hot spring in the sand! We headed to yet another town that we could have spent weeks, Roturoa, where we had an amazing day of mountain biking on challenging but beautiful trails (Alix ran into a few trees). Our hostel had a geothermal spa, so we spent the end of our day relaxing in it before going to the local pub, Pig & Whistle, to enjoy some live music. It wasn't until we had a few pints that we remembered it was our seven year anniversary, (Sam remembered first by the way) guess we were having too much fun to be caught up in trivial things like that (subtle sarcasm). A little late, but at least someone remembered!
We arrived in Hawkes Bay to another couch surfing host, we didn't believe the house we were staying in at first, we had to go back to the car and double check the address because it was the nicest house on the street with the one of the best views of the bay in town, and it was inhabited by five guys in their twenties, all working at the one of the golf courses Sam has dreamed of playing. We had one day to spend in Hawkes Bay, we had a beautiful day planned out, golf at Cape Kidnappers, and a Fat Freddy's Drop concert at a winery. Of course, it poured rain that day. Golf was cancelled, so we spent the day indoors, watching movies and going bowling with our couch surfing hosts. They snuck into the concert with us and we danced in the mud, bottles of wine in hand, Sam ended the night in jail, nothing bad, we'll explain upon return.

Road Trip to Melbourne

After a lovely dinner in Katoomba of pizza and our favorite red wine, and a miserable night sleeping in a parking lot and freezing our butts off, we headed to to Woolongong. A bar tender at the local brewery told us it was the local basketball team's last game... ever! After a few jugs we decided to go to the game and had a fun night. We kept heading south working our way towards Melbourne, stopping in boring little towns that you've never heard of. One night our van was accosted by a big kangaroo, Alix was looking out the side window and didn't see it jumping across the road until it almost slammed into her window and she let out the most bone chilling scream... ever! We decided not to drive much further that night because the kangaroos were a bit jumpy. We stopped at the wetlands pictured above for sunset and some delicious canned chili... The mosquitos were fierce so we retreated to a parking lot in the next town for a good nights sleep. We headed to Wilson's Pomonatory National Park the next day, but we had to turn around because it was literally on fire, then finally made it to Melbourne to stay with Brigitte, a high school friend of Alixs' mom.We did the typical tourist track in Melbourne, Botanical Gardens, beaches, monuments, pubs, more pubs. Waking up in Brigitte's driveway was a glorious moment, stepping out into the morning sun, in our underwear, to be greeted by the shocked and awed stares of the bourgeois modernites that Melbourne seems to be full of. Our last few nights we spent couch-surfing with Tim the engineer in Sydney. We watched street theater and wandered through more botanical gardens, then hit the pubs before catching a train, which we fell asleep on, fortunately Tim lived at the end of the line so when the conductor jostled us we were right where we needed to be. Tim was a great host, and even made us pancakes at 4am before driving us to the train station to catch our flight to New Zealand.