Australia

---

We tackled our very last blue water passage and finally made it to Australia! It was the sweetest feeling to realize that we’d safely sailed over 11,000 nautical miles and reached our goal. What an epic adventure!

As soon as we stepped foot onto firm land in Bundaberg, it was a full immersion into every possible weird and wonderful Australian experience. We’ve encountered wild kangaroos and poisonous snakes, petted koalas and seen salt water crocodiles up close. 

We’ve become huge fans of Bundaberg’s famous beverages and have eaten far too many local macadamia nuts. The next stop is Gold Coast where Optimystic will hopefully find the perfect new family. 

We discovered our favorite island so far, with its delicious French food, laid back attitude, beautiful forests, cowboy culture and the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world. New Caledonia will definitely be seeing us again.

We biked through rainforests with rare birds and carnivorous plants, swam in crystal clear mountain streams and kayaked through a drowned forest. 

New Caledonia is filled with cattle ranches, wild turkeys and big Rusa deer. We reveled in their beautiful back country wilderness and attended their annual Fete du Boeuf, which was a totally awesome rodeo event.

Our week in Savusavu Fiji was a full immersion in the wild and wonderful Fijian food world. We ate purple ’star apple’, fiery peppers, chili coated pineapples, bitter melons, mud crabs and more. The cultural combo of southern Indian and Fijian was a sensory delight. 

Fiji’s waters can go from wickedly choppy to perfectly calm. We’ve had them both and everything in between. Beneath the surface is a rainbow of reef colors and an abundance of fish like we’ve never seen before. 

The World Surfing League championships are happening at Cloudbreak this year and we got front row seats to see the top surfers in the world warming up for the finals. It was incredible to watch these super-athletes carve up the waves.

Tonga was a magical kingdom made up of perfect little mushroom-like islands. There were beautiful anchorages with purple sea stars beneath the water and giant fruit bats in the trees. 

We swam in sea caves teeming with bait fish and even ventured through tunnels to surface in dark open spaces under the rock. 

One of our top ten experiences on this trip so far was a morning swimming with humpback whales. We witnessed a mating pair breaching in all their glory and swam with a humpback calf and its ever-attentive mother. 

The geology on Niue was breathtaking. There were soaring sea caves deep chasms in the coral bedrock. We swam in turquoise blue sea pools and hiked through the islands tropical forests. 

Niue’s translucent waters were some of the clearest that we’ve ever seen. We dove through underwater tunnels and beneath bommies, encountering dozens of the island’s famous and highly venomous sea snakes. 

One of our most memorable experiences was swimming in the pitch black fresh water chasms. There were deep caves lurking in the dark waters beneath us. We were only able to stay a few days before the weather chased us away, but Niue was a fantastic adventure.