"reconsider your need to travel"

well it looks like we're not going to fiji anymore.

earlier today whilst trying to rearrange our flights to and from new zealand we decided to check the current situation in fiji as we knew there was already a degree of caution about travelling there.

when we checked the foreign and commenwealth office's website we found the following travel advice for fiji:

"We advise against all but essential travel to Fiji because of increasing tensions between the Government of Fiji and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces. The Fiji Military Commander has issued a number of ultimatums demanding that the Government resign, and has announced that military action will be taken if his demands are not met by 4 December 2006. The Military has announced that they will be undertaking night-time manoeuvres between Midnight 29 November 2006 and 0300 30 November 2006. There is now a strong possibility of a military coup taking place in Fiji. The security situation could deteriorate at short notice. The British High Commission in Fiji is monitoring events closely."

whilst we could wait and monitor the situation to see what happens nearer the time we are due to travel to fiji, we have decided to make a decision now incase the political situation gets worse before it gets better.

due to the australian visa we have we can only stay in australia for 3 months at a time within the 12 month period starting when we arrived. our trip to fiji meant that our visa was restarted upon our return to australia on 12 january.

because of this factor it means we are planning to go to new zealand one month earlier than expected. which also means we are doing some more re-arranging of dates.

i phoned virgin blue (airline taking us to fiji) earlier today and because of the situation in fiji they are offering to cancel our flight and give us credit to fly elsewhere...... which we will use to fly to cairns.

plus we will hopefully get the money back from the accomodation and boat trip we booked in fiji, so that may give us some extra money to spend on accomodation and having a good time in cairns.

our original plan was to leave marra's house on 3 january and fly to sydney. in sydney we would be staying with amy's friend erin. on 7 january we were due to fly to fiji and stay until the 12 january when we would fly back to syndey. after another week or so there we would be making our way up to john de teliga's house in surfers paradise. after some time there we were planning on travelling up to cairns and back down to brisbane over a 4 week period. once back in brisbane we were planning to fly to new zealand around mid march before flying home to uk around mid april.

now everything has changed this is our initial plan.

we will stay at marra's for a week and then fly up to cairns/great barrier reef area for a couple of weeks coming back in time for the arrival of george clarke, geo and phil. as planned stay at marra's over the christmas and new year period. we will still fly up to sydney on 3 january but only stay at erin's house for around a week before heading up to john's house in surfers paradise. from then on we would have to cut the times down but we would still like to travel a bit further up than brisbane. we would then have to leave australia by the end of february so we will keep our original flight to new zealand on 15 february and fly home mid april, as planned after 5 months. spending 2 months in new zealand.

it's a bit of a pain having to change everything but it's something we feel we need to do. after all my dad told me to be more decisive!

sorry this has been a bit of a long boring update but it's easiest to let everyone know in one go. we've made the decision and whilst we're both a bit gutted we can't go to fiji there's no point dwelling on it too much, so we're looking forward to our new plans. hopefully they will run quite smoothly!

on a lighter note it's been really hot today, we'll post some pictures later. x