Perth, Western Australia – A little over four years ago my girlfriend and I packed our backpacks with as much stuff as a we could carry and set out for an 18 month adventure.

We aimed to spend four months travelling through south east Asia. Oh, and a year and a half in the UK afterward, to see a bit of Europe and earn some money.

As so often happens with plans, they quickly changed. Europe was a big, busy and exciting place and we realised we’d need a lot longer than 18 months to explore it all.

I also discovered I liked things I had never even considered before: weaving within London’s peak hour traffic on a skinny road bicycle; warm, flat beers from tiny country pubs; and people watching from a cafe table anywhere in Europe.

Cyclists massing in London, UK

I’d always enjoyed surfing and photography and suddenly there was a big opportunity to do both in some very interesting places

Just a few hours flight away were some amazing scenes and I couldn’t get my camera out of my bag quick enough.

In Europe there were ornate churches thousands of years old. In North Africa dusty villages on the edge of a desert. And in Turkey cheeky kids in the hilly backstreets of Istanbul.

I surfed isolated reefs where the only spectators were mistreated donkeys and their herders; thumping waves that broke just metres from the crowded French shoreline; and rolling swells in English bays ringed by green hills and thatched-roof cottages.

Somewhere on the Moroccan coast.

It wasn’t until I was 25 that I first went overseas – to Bali. But in the next four years I visited another 20-odd countries. My passport quickly changed from a pristine, almost unmarked document to a sweat and dirt-stained, rumpled book.

And I think I’ve changed too, from a sort of typical Australian who liked simple things such as the beach, rugby and driving everywhere, to someone a bit more experienced and maybe a bit more confused than that.

I came to like the possibility of big cities and being anonymous in the crowd. Mixing with different people and being inspired by the different ideas that flow from them. The way that bitterly cold weather inspires people to work hard at creating cosy pubs and spaces and events, rather than the laid-back, barbecue and beer approach of Aus.

So this marks the end of the Backpack Storybook adventure. It’s been going for four years and three months and includes 238 blog posts, 291 photos and more recently a handful of videos.

I’ve blogged from open air internet cafes in Morocco, from my room in the middle of lonely English winters and in front of a crowd of curious teenagers in Cambodia.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve had writing it.

Rhys
November 2010

Dave at Sigatoka

Sigatoka, Fiji – I’m down on the south-facing Coral Coast again, spending my last few days in Fiji getting my fill of waves.

I’ve surfed by myself three days in a row now. I don’t know where everybody else is. Probably out at Tavarua or Namotu or one of the other island resorts. The waves are undoubtedly better and longer there.

But I’m content with my little righthander. It’s only 30 or 40 metres long, but within that is a tubing section and then enough wave for an off the top and maybe a cutback.

For something different I drove out to the river plain at Sigatoka to surf with Dave. It’s a little more forgiving here with the wave breaking over a sand bottom beside the river mouth. But the murky water, strong currents and regular shark sightings mean its a different kind of risk.

Tavarua, Fiji – A quick clip from a jetski trip out to the reefs this afternoon.

Cloudbreak was small and onshore, but we found some surf at a corner of reef called Desperations.

Behind the markets in Nadi

Nadi, Fiji – It’s hard to get a grasp on this town. It curls and fades and reappears like a ribbon of smoke through the landscape, without ever seeming to reveal its centre.

It’s easier to picture Nadi as a long settlement that stretches from the airport to the north all the way down to the main street about 10 kilometres south, with villages, sugar cane fields and resorts lining Queen’s Road.

Town itself is one long road lined with grubby curry houses, the ubiquitous Rups Big Bear department store and shops selling tourist tat.

God help any backpacker unlucky enough to stumble along here looking for a dorm bed for the night. Take your pick at any of the first floor sweat boxes.

Look beyond the main road, though, and there’s some gems. Bulaccino does the best coffee in town, as well as a mean breakfast of bacon and creamy scrambled eggs. All with a deck overlooking the bridge and river.

At the opposite end, near the colourful Hindu temple is Tata’s, probably the best curry house in the southern hemisphere. They have a sink to wash your hands, wall-to-wall flyscreen to keep the bugs out and big plates of curry, roti and rice for about FJ$7. What more could you ask for?

Behind the main street is the real colour and life of Nadi. The markets are stacked with stalls selling bunches of taro, cassava, breadfruit and all the other starches that bulk up Fijian cuisine.

We spent a morning collecting the essentials for that night’s marinated fish curry: cassava, coriander, coconut, a magnificent Trevally and nama – a kind of seaweed grape. All for just FJ$15. A feast fit for kings.

The view at breakfast.

Coral Coast, Fiji – It doesn’t get much better than this.

We’re staying at The Beach House, a fantastic backpacker resort on the Coral Coast. It has a white sand beach out the front, swaying coconut trees and tropical gardens.

There’s only a handful of other guests about so we have the run of the place. We spend our days alternating between surfing the righthander out the front, laptop sessions and ping pong tournaments.

The righthander is about as fun as it gets. It’s reached via a 200 metre paddle across the lagoon. When the swells arrive they stand up abruptly on the shallow reef before plunging and rifling down the line.

Paddling into one is like loading yourself into a sling shot. Position yourself in the apex of the swell, get to your feet and go racing through peak and out onto wall to pull a cutback or hit the lip.

And then paddle back out and repeat.

Heading east along the Coral Coast highway

Guard dogs on a farm at Sigatoka.

Sunset at Mango Bay.

Buses here are slow, erratic and refuse to pull into bus stops

There’s dozens of waves like this along the South Coast of Fiji.

Coral Coast, Fiji – We’ve rented a car and taken a few days out to explore Fiji’s Coral Coast, the south facing coastline populated by resorts and traditional Fijian villages.

It’s cooler here by the ocean than Nadi on the west coast, which is a few kilometres inland and ringed by mountains. The Coral Coast also enjoys a slower pace of life, if that’s possible in the already-relaxed Fijian Islands.

Villagers sell paw paw and taro and mangos on road side stalls. The smoke from trash fires hugs the deep valleys. School children in their crisp white shirts and traditional sulus wait for the school bus.

They break out into big grins and waves as we putter past in our tiny hire car, two bearded Australians squeezed in beside surfboards and bags and camera equipment.

Stu getting ready to photograph Cloudbreak from the water

Tavarua, Fiji – One of the best things about surfing is that it’s a free activity. Riding swells in the ocean costs nothing . No ski lifts, no access charges, no membership.

But Fiji has operated a strange system of access rights to its reefs for the past few decades. You could only surf some of the area’s best waves if you stayed at the resort next to the reef.

In the case of Cloudbreak, probably Fiji’s best wave, you had to stay at the US$400 a night Tavarua Resort.

Surfers that tried to surf it anyway reported being intimidated by boat drivers from the resort.

Happily, the sometimes chaotic Fijian Government passed a decree a few months ago doing away with these restrictions. It was now possible for anyone to surf any wave in Fiji, including travelling low-budget surfers and even local Fijians.

The chance to surf Cloudbreak is part of the reason I’m in Fiji. I grew up seeing photos of this amazing lefthander, which breaks off the side of a coral reef almost in the middle of the ocean. There’s been international competitions held there and numerous videos made about the wave.

And now it looked like it was my chance to surf it too.

On the boat
My friend Dave teed up a boat to take us out to the reef. We set out from the ramp near Sonaisali Resort and sped through the shallow waters of the lagoon and out in to the deep blue.

Twenty minutes later Ben, the boat driver, slowed the throttle and we motored alongside the wave. There was already several boats moored in the channel and a few dozen surfers spread along the reef.

It wasn’t huge, maybe four to five feet, but it looked pretty serious. As we screwed in fins and waxed up our boards Dave explained the different sections to the reef, which was spread over several football fields.

The temptation was to start at the end section, closest to the boat, he said. But the wave was actually heaviest there, pitching onto shallow reef. I watched as a surfer dropped in, lined up for the tube but then went too high on the wave and fell, getting sucked over with the lip and pulverised on the reef.

The trick, said Dave, was to ride further up the reef out towards the ocean. It was easier to get into the waves and they peeled rather than pitched.

Out there
It wasn’t perfect Cloudbreak, but it was still bloody good. I watched Dave catch a few medium sized ones and go speeding down the reef, turning off the bottom, off the top and then down again.

When my turn came I was surprised by the speed of the wave. A week in Portugal hadn’t prepared me for how fast the swells moved and I almost slid out at the bottom of the wave on my first turn.

But after a few more I sharpened up my technique and managed to fit in several turns on the 100 or 150 metre rides.

It was an Australian surfer on a short, yellow single fin that was showing everyone how to do it. He’d take off deep on the reef and hug the wave, letting the lip come over and then weaving through the tube as it got faster and faster down the line.

As the morning wore on the crowd thinned as the boats took the early morning surfers back for lunch. The sun came out and the multi-coloured reef shone brightly from below. I was surfing a US$400 wave for the cost of a short boat ride.

Backpack Storybook tip: Californian photo supremo Stu Johnson takes water photos out at Cloudbreak. If you see him out there with his yellow underwater housing, check out his website to see if he captured a shot of you.

Life in the South Pacific

Nadi, Fiji – They don’t still do this sort of thing, do they? Five smiling men dressed in floral shirts and sulus playing guitars and strumming out a South Pacific-style song to welcome the tourists into Nadi International Airport.

But it brings a smile to my face anyway. The rolling music, the open faces and the warm tropical air. My European adventure is over but my Fijian one is just starting.

I stumble out into the arrivals hall, loaded down with backpacks, surfboard bags and two bottles of duty free Bounty Rum.

The latter is a request from Dave, an old school friend and Red Bull’s man on the ground in Fiji. “Get a couple of bottles of Bounty,” he asked me before I left London. “They’re great with Red Bull. We call them Rum Bulls!”

Big hugs with Dave all round. And then we’re out into the carpark. It’s barely 9am but already the land is steaming. The heat haze and jet-lag makes everything in the distance shimmery and wavy.

Bags into the truck and we’re bouncing through Nadi’s back streets to Dave’s compound. A big, airy place on the hill surrounded by mango trees and high grass. He lives here with his Fijian wife and young son.

There’s just enough time to unpack before we’re back in the truck, this time bound for Fiji’s capital on the other side of the island. It’s Fiji Fashion Week and Dave is fuelling the show with the little blue and silver cans. His presence seems to be required for the next few days so we start out on the 180km, 3 hour drive to Suva.

In the back of the truck is a couple dozen cases of Red Bull, our surfboards and catwalk-side tickets for the next two night. What more do we need?

Heading east
I look out at the landscape passing by and, like many lazy travellers, I want to compare Fiji to somewhere else I’ve already visited.

High in the hills above Suva, Fiji’s capital.

Maybe Thailand, with it’s slightly shabby, down-at-heel buildings and faded hand-painted signs. Palm trees compete with vines and high grass by the roadside.

Or maybe an Australia I was too young to remember? Darwin from the 1960s? Practical, honest shop fronts. What you see is what you get. Bookmakers next to grocers next to bottle shops. No room (no demand?) for street-side cafe tables or other fineries of life.

We speed up over the hills away from Nadi and then down onto the Coral Coast. The beaches here are protected by barrier reefs. Five star resorts and tourist bungalows occupy the best bays. In between are long stretches of empty road. Sugar cane and taro fields blur past. The odd cinder block and tin-roofed shed.

Fiji fashionistas
Who knew Fiji had a fashion industry? I do. Now.

Fiji Fashion Week

Catwalk-side seats for two nights in a row. Programs flapped like fans in an attempt to beat the tropical night air and the white hot stage lights. Pumping dance music and poker-faced models, stepping in time to the beats, down the catwalk and back again.

Interesting, but not as much fun as the after party. Jet-lag mixed with bottles of the local boutique beer Vonu and, later, Rum Bulls. Cornered by Australian ex-pats comparing war stories about dojng business in Fiji. “It’s all about the lifestyle, mate.”