Easily the highlight of the trip was white-water rafting down the “Grand Canyon of Fiji”. That is what the posters called it, but two American’s we met who had been there said it didn’t even compare. It was still magnificent though. We got picked up from the hotel in a 4x4 again and taken to a nearby resort, The Pearl, same as we did for snorkelling. It’s kind of dodgy really, both cars were full of junk in the back and the seat belts in the back seat were stuck under the seat so you couldn’t use them.

We got a bus into Suva on Monday morning to check out the big city. The bus in was an adventure, we got a local bus, which was only $3.30 FJD to Suva from Uprising. The bus stopped for anyone on the way that waved it down, even in narrow sections of the highway at the top of hills, or in the middle of a turn off so that it was blocking traffic from turning.

Today Rachael and I went in the Peak2Park fun run from Picnic Point to Lake Annand. The weather was pretty terrible, cold, foggy and rainy. The amount of people there was impressive though, I didn’t expect so many people to turn up. We didn’t think to take a photo with our bibs on until after we got home (right). I did the 10km run in a time of 56:50 (on the clock), and Rachael did the 4km (actually 5km according to her Strava recording) in a time of 34:42 (from Strava).

On the flight over to Fiji, we flew over some other islands, which were probably New Caledonia. Those islands, and the reefs of Fiji itself looked awesome from the plane. As we are landing I also noticed a pretty cool temple, which a quick Google reveals it is called the Sri Siva Subramaniya temple. We later saw it on the bus/in and out of Nadi but didn’t visit it for a close look.

Triple J provided a nice shareable link this time around for your votes. I found this year was continuing the trend of getting harder to pick 10, as I no longer have a clear idea going into voting what my favourite songs were - due to slackness on my part of listening to new music. Luckily the voting website is improved, and lets you listen to all the short-list on the fly.

We got up at 4:00 on Christmas to go for a surf. The surf was terrible until the tide came in a bit, but at least we arrived just in time to see the sun rise.

So I was in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago for work, and stayed at the Oaks on Margaret. I stayed there in November last year as well, and the building next door, 234 Margaret St was being constructed, but was full of water as a result of the flood at the start of the year. Was pretty cool to see, there was even boats that I am assuming the construction guys use.

I’ve always thought it would be cool to see a solar eclipse. I knew about the one in Cairns for a few years now and had intended to head up, but what with not knowing where I would be working couldn’t book travel. And since we are going to Fiji early next year, and there is no airport in Toowoomba, it wasn’t worth trying to get time off work to drive up, and Rachael definitely couldn’t.

So a while a go I discovered a really nice route to go for a bike ride, by looking at Strava segments. The segment had a ridiculous amount of people riding it compared to all the other ones, and it is quite close to where we live. After riding it, the reason why it was so popular became pretty clear. It has incredible views looking out over a valley and there are various farm animals along the way.

Rachael and I went to see The Beards on Thursday night at The Spotted Cow. It was a very strange venue, basically a pub where they had blocked off the front room. Was very cramped but was a pretty good atmosphere. The first support, Kim Churchill was excellent. Rachael likened him to a cross between Xavier Rudd and Ash Grunwald which I agree is a fairly accurate comparison. He had an incredibly full sound for a single person.