Christian's Travel Blog

And here the road ends. Only the "Rich, Famous & their Beauties" make it further - just over the date line . I guess it's not the curiosity to re-live the day again to spend a night more thousand dollars than toes on your feet - in honor of the globetrotters that stay for less than 10 dollars at one of the neighbouring islands. "7 stars, yes, my son", Nau (granny) Tila insisted while jewing some herbal leaves from her tropical garden to ease her cough, "and he is Austrian like you!". "You mean Australian ...", I doubt. "No, no, he is ... Red Bull ... Arnold Schwarzenegger and his family, Oprah, they all come ...". Later I can find even a small note in the Lonely Planet budget travellers book: The billionaire and owner of Red Bull, D. Mateschitz bought (?) the island from billionaire M. Forbes, and turned it into Laucala Island Resort , including a 18-hole golf course and a private (?) international airport. Don't kn

My days at Beverly's passed quickly. What have I done? Eventually only that what you are supposed to do in paradise: nothing. Oh, I admit - glancing from my tent for hours up into the pitch-black sky lit by a myriad of stars. But as mentioned earlier - here I am. After another timeless hour by bus winding along the coast through ever more dense tropical vegetation. At the end of the Northern Pacific Highway! Lavena - a small village that runs on a self-managed basis a simple lodge and maintains the Lavena Coastal Walk along the Bouma National Heritage Park . They don't promote it as "the most beautiful track in the world". No, its a simple coastal walk. Yes, its true, the unspoiled beauty of the sandy beaches served 1991 as the stage for the movie " Return to the Blue Lagoon " - still, the way up to the Wainabu waterfalls is simply called a costal walk.    It might well be that the "Fiji Time" was invented in Lavena. The small population of

I  thought  I spend a few days in Auckland on my way "back" from Tahiti onto Fiji.  Visiting some of the island states in the South Pacific as "stop-over" with a Star Alliance ATW ticket on-route to L.A. requires nowadays, compared to my route Auckland - Fiji - Cook Islands - Tahiti - L.A. some 20 years ago, each time a departure from Air New Zealand's homebase. No worries, it is still summer time down south. And three days are just enough to take time for some unfinished business, including a decent farewell. I decided to stay this time at X-Base , one of the popular new generation "brand" backpackers: offering a bed in top centre locations, with lobby, reception, internet and WiFi, bar & restaurant, equipped kitchen and dining room, TV/video room, laundry, as well as tailored travel services and even a job promotion center. With revenues of at least 200 dollars per 8- bunk-bed -room/night, and clients that won't complain a lot, a highly

Early morning a short heavy breeze pulled on the strings of my tent, followed by a flash lightening the inside. It was still too early for the neighbourhood cocks that usually mark my first wake-up call. Or was there a reasonwhy they shut up, hiding under secure shelter? I was warned. Weather in the South Pacific during wet season is as changable as New Zealand's Fiordland. It's the day of my departure from Rangiroa atoll . Should I get up now to pack my tent or just grab my blanket and hang on? Too late - I should have known better: when the wind takes up speed, the rain won't stay behind. And already I found myself in a tropical heavy weather front. There are not many things to grab when travelling with a backpack, nor I may put the guilt on the darkness, but one thing for sure: I got totally soaked in my senseless atempt to reach the common kitchen as emergency shelter. Meanwhile the wind pushes the rain for hours in waves against the small wooden hut with no r

As an adolescent I gave myself a hard time at school in the early 70ies. However, I do remember the double sided map in my geography atlas of the vast south pacific and its atolls - harbouring my imaginations in its unique circle of coral reefs, sandy stripes and coconut palmtrees. I also recall the unfamous part of nuclear tests at the Mururoa atoll. It took the paintings of Paul Gauguin to keep my positive interest on those remote groups of archipelagos somewhere lost in the south sea. Well, what do you know about or associate with an atoll? So I bought a triangle ticket with Air Tahiti to the Tuamotu archipelago to find out in person what an atoll is all about: some kind of island that eventually is a lagoon, surrounded by coral reefs and sporadic elevations of white sand and palm trees, some of them inhabited, long before the first European navigators like Magelan or Cook "discovered" them. Like Tikehau - its lagoon measuring more than 20 km in diameter, and co