Venice Beach reminds us of one of those PC games where you have to avoid obstacles or avoid getting hit by aliens. In this case you weave through the streets of Venice Beach avoiding hippies, the homeless, druggies and oddballs speaking to themselves or the pigeons. There are so many of them its untrue! Our personal favourites are: 1) The unwashed guy surrounded by pigeons holding a sign saying "Parents killed by pigeons, need money for a BB gun" 2) ...

The trip to San Francisco took 7 hours on a Greyhound bus with views of absolutely nothing apart from farmland and a few oil wells. We then got on a local bus with a fellow traveller, an Irish girl, and quickly were packed in on all sides like sardines. When it came to our stop we were so wedged in that we couldn't get off the bus despite yelling 'excuse me' and wiggling our rucksacks from side to side. It took another two stops for us to barge our way off and ev...

We spent 24 hours in Auckland, at an airport hotel, before catching our flight to LA. The only notable occurence during this time was some cretin stealing our cheese! After a 12 hour flight (in which the in flight entertainment system for rows J and K (us!) conked out once every hour - usually when nearing the end of a film) Mark was greeted by the most miserable immigration officer in the world... Mark: "Good Morning" Official: "Whats good abo...

After a miserable, wet two days in Nadi we were told a boat was sailing for the Yasawa Islands the next day. We were sceptical...the weather forecasted indefinite storms but the company we had booked our package with were uncontactable and rumours were rife that no refunds were being given and that people were told they had to take the boat back out regardless... We headed out to our first destination, the island of Waya Lailai and to our amazement the sun came ...

Bula (welcome) from Fiji! Starting our plane descent into Nadi we found out that Fiji had declared a state of emergency and looking out the window we could see that the country was underwater. The worst cyclones for decades had hit two days before we arrived and Fiji was experiencing storms, floods, landslides, food shortages, military curfew and potential disease outbreaks....all the ingredients for a perfect tropical paradise! After getting through immigratio...