You know you’re somewhere totally different when…
The roadkill is the size of a deer but has a long tail and jumps.
There are more things that can kill/hurt you than anywhere else in the world.
The sun, beaches, beer, and surfers define a culture.
Yes... I’d finally made it to Australia!

My sister Shirley flew out to Australia to meet me for two weeks of fun and sun and sisterly bonding time, and I was so happy to have her as a partner-in-crime as we toured Oz. Our first adventure was the Great Barrier Reef. We were in for quite a cool experience on board Taka II – it would be all diving all the time during our 4-day liveaboard trip. Twenty-seven divers and a happy crew set out on a Tuesday night – we’d motor up the reef all night and then dive all the way back to Cairns. What better way to see as much as we could of the 2500 km of reef than to dive on it 4 times a day?! It was like being at camp again with cool camp counselors, bunks, communal meals, and new friends. And, the diving was just spectacular! It was as if the fish life and coral were on steroids. The sheer numbers of different kinds of fish that were down there was awesome – sharks, turtles, snakes, Nemos, cod fish, giant clams, just to name a few. We were swimming in the coolest aquarium in the world! The fun people, sun deck and ocean views made for great downtime when we weren’t in the water - nothing to do but hang out and enjoy the sun and conversation. Night dives were an interesting experience. It was eerie, verging on scary, as I descended into darkness with my flashlight, looking for sleeping turtles, green eyes (sharks) or red eyes (shrimp). One green light/eye is OK (shark is swimming by you), two green lights/eyes is a little bit worse (shark is coming towards you). Some people love night dives, but I can't say that I'm one of them. Cold, dark and you can't really see what's out there. No thanks, sharks were freaky enough in the daylight!

In a country of only 4 million people, 1M live in the CITY of Auckland and 1M live on the entire south ISLAND. No wonder the motorways were so empty. It was so nice to be somewhere with ample space to spread out and room to breathe.

Te Anau was our launching pad for the Milford Track and is a hub of all things hiking-related. It was already hard enough to pack for 3 months, nonetheless prepare for all the different activities and locations and weather. I was hardly equipped for a major wet/cold/long hike having spent 2 months walking in nothing more substantial than flip flops and wearing little more than a bathing suit and shorts. But after 20 minutes in one store I had everything I needed - from backpack to socks to eating utensils. Since we would be carrying everything, the goal was to take the bare minimum. I was shocked when people started cooking their meals. While Erin and I were going to feast on dehydrated meals that only required a fork and hot water, granola bars, and salami and cheese pitas for 4 days, others were obviously not. People were pulling out fresh produce, spices/condiments, fresh meat, pots and pans, cans of food, and desserts! Some Japanese guys even had beer, and a German guy had eggs for breakfast! I couldn't imagine my pack being any heavier than it already was with so little in it, so really couldn't imagine what it would be like to hike up a mountain with their packs on!

I think I made up for 3 months of busyness/laziness/physical inactivity once we set foot on the South Island. It all started with a kayak/hike trip. One minute we were sitting on the ferry and the next thing we knew, Erin and I were sitting in a kayak, geared up and making our way up the coast of Abel Tasman National Park. The sun was blazing hot and the water was cold. Cruising past awesome blue/green bays, rocky cliffs, and sandy beaches helped take our minds off the 6 hours/12 kms of rowing that we had to get through. Three months of doing little more than keep my balance and "hold on" on a sailboat was hardly the right prep for paddling so I was definitely thankful that the wind and wave gods were being nice to us that day. The moment we passed a little blue penguin floating in the water next to us, we knew that we were somewhere special.

It seems like everyone I've ever spoken to who'd been to New Zealand has said the same thing - this was one of the most beautiful places in the world, with the nicest people. I tried not to set expectations because I figured they can't all be right, but they were. Whatever expectations I didn't set were far exceeded.

I felt like I stepped off the boat into a city that was a little bit of London, Seattle and San Francisco all rolled into one. There were sailboats everywhere as far as the eye could see, white sheep on every green patch of land, quaint houses, and water and islands all around. Everyone was quick to say hello, smile and befriend you, and the laid back vibe just made it that much more of a place I'd like to be. The weather was just transitioning from Spring to Summer and the sunny blue sky days made everything seem and feel like a postcard.

“Hello from Judy Lin
On New Zealand sailing yacht Antaeus
From Port Vila, Vanuatu to Auckland, New Zealand

Five wonderful days at sea thus far, two days left to go. Sunny skies during the day, bright full moon at night. Great company. A double strike of marlin! Strong winds keep us flying along. An amazing crew of 7 experienced Kiwi sailors (and me) expertly guiding Antaeus home.

I am a 31-year old American woman on a 6-month sailing/travel adventure. What an adventure! If I am lucky and you have found my message in the bottle, please get in touch.”

That was my message in the bottle, launched into the Pacific Ocean at 4:46pm on Monday, October 13, 2003 at 30.20 degrees latitude, 169.42 degrees longitude. The ocean is vast and the chances of my message being found are slim to none, but you never know… what more perfect chance to test my luck?

I'd never heard of Vanuatu before this. Or Noumea, Suva, Norfolk Island, Pango Pango. So, I made a point to myself to visit the local museum on the islands as I went, to try and be a little bit more enlightened about where I was. Perfect example was at the Fiji museum in Suva. After perusing many outrigger canoes, tapa cloth and war clubs, I came across a cool collection of beautiful 3-prong wood carvings. Megan and Callum were with me and they of course asked about what I was giving all my attention to. So, I read the description... these were cannibal forks! Used by the Fijians (and many other South Pacific islanders) not that long ago. Enlightening. Do you tell 5 and 8 year olds about cannibalism?

Gone awry. Or maybe it's really called serendipity. Whatever the case, Saturday came and went and I'm still in Vanuatu.

Hitchhiking across the world on a sailboat is really not as crazy as it may sound. There are always tons of sailboats looking for crew for journeys and passages and there are always tons of crew hanging out in ports looking for a ride to wherever, whenever. It's really an amazing phenomenon. Both spend lots of time in the yacht club waiting to run into each other and see if things work out, or chatting with other yachties to see if they've heard of boats looking for crew or vice versa. Boats need crew to help sail them as much as crew need boats to hop on - all this is very common. Message boards, email and channel 16 on a VHF radio become lifelines of communication for people who are just boat-hopping all over the place across thousands of miles... Dealing with immigration in terms of signing on and signing off boats is pretty much as complicated as it gets. You check out a boat, they check you out; you both try and decide if the dynamics are good, and then off you go... You'd be amazed at the fluidity of it all.

How quickly this week in Vanuatu has flown by. Suddenly it's time to leave... We set sail tomorrow and it'll be a long haul until we hit land again. Maybe too long. I'll be ready to be on land, and stay on land for a while...

So many things have just become part of life since I left Atlanta 3 weeks ago: Wearing flips flops. All the time. Transportation by dinghy. Meeting at the the yacht club. A hot sun. Shopping in markets. A pocketful of foreign change. Getting wet. Being wet. Coconuts.

Some new Australian and Kiwi friends and I went to the kava bar last night. It was just one of those things that I had to try - it would be a shame to be here, where the kava is "famous," and not have a go at it. We wandered through dark streets and alleys to the nakamel (Bislama for kava bar) which was recommended by a local. The definition of "bar" as we know it does not apply to the drinking of kava. It was nothing more than a tin-roofed shack, with a red light on the street in the front of the structure to let us know it's a kava bar. Brings whole new meaning to red light district... We went "inside," and in the darkness and hushed tones we could barely see a bunch of ni-Vanuatu men sitting on wooden benches. Besides the conversations in Bislama, there was a lot of hacking and spitting on the ground. The reason for this became very apparent to us very soon. Glad we had shoes on. The only light in the place came from a single lightbulb behind a counter where another ni-Vanuatu gentleman was dishing out the kava. We placed our order and were handed gray-dirty-dishwater-looking liquid in dingy Chinese plastic soup bowls. Drinking kava was a tradition/custom where you drank kava with tribal chiefs out of special coconut shells during a ceremony. Evidently, its evolution as a daily social activity brought on the Chinese soup bowls. I sat there looking tentatively at the gray murky liquid and sniffing it, as if it were wine. Troy, Sonia and Daniel had all had it before in Fiji and Tonga, so knew the drill. We all said "cheers" and downed the bowlful like a shot of liquor. Shock to the system. Once you got over the horrible taste oozing down your throat, and the silty residue that the stuff left on your teeth (hence the hacking and spitting), you just sit there in the dark, chatting and waiting for it to take effect. Slowly, your teeth and lips start to go numb. The Vanuatu kava is particularly potent - 10 times more so than anywhere else in the South Pacific. It's technically a narcotic which is used as anesthetic in some places, and outlawed altogether in other places. You get very mellow and chill out, and it's actually a pretty relaxing experience. After a few more bowlfuls, we all could feel the effects and were spitting ourselves. You can't really help it. I felt like I was having a slightly out-of-body experience, where my hearing and sight were on a time delay. Daniel and Sonia both felt like they were on a Gravitron ride - the carnival ride where you're spun round and round and the floor drops from beneath you - and they felt a buzzing sound in their face. Troy was just kinda quiet. We had some pretty weird interesting conversations, though I don't know if it had anything to do with the kava - eating worms and moths, the Brady Bunch theme song, trying to remember the name of Judy Jetson's dog... Getting up to walk back was a hoot. You feel unsteady and can't really stand still and balance for too long. Falling asleep was no problem last night and there wasn't a "hangover" this morning. It was fun talking with all these guys while in a haze, but I doubt I'll go back for more tonight.

We sailed into the harbor at Port Vila, Vanuatu silently this morning as the sun was coming up. Though the 5 days and 600 miles before now was anything but calm. It was 5 straight days at sea with nothing but blue ocean and a 360-degree horizon as far as my eye could see. We were pointed almost due west from Fiji for about 500 miles -- 500 miles with the southeasterly wind nearly at our back and the HUGE waves to go with it... big 10-foot waves that tossed the boat around like a horrible irregular rollercoaster ride. It was quite a sight to watch the horizon disappear from view from inside the cockpit as the boat rocked and rolled with each wave, and the feeling of it is even more unsettling. I wondered at how we were staying afloat at all.

I got on my plane on Monday night and suddenly it was Wednesday. As I walked off my plane, it finally hit me that I was in a place far far away from Atlanta. I could smell/feel the island air, and if it wasn't 315am in the morning, I would have seen the ocean and the green lush mountains that are so distinctly Fiji. My adventure had officially begun, but it had yet to begin at that point. It was a buzzkill of sorts to land in such an exotic place and end up sitting around in the airport for 4 hours awaiting the first bus across the island to Suva, where I would meet Salamandra and my "family" for the next month...