Finding Moksha: Well technically it's still 2010...... Right?

Christmas holidays in south east Queensland is just plain stupid. It gets stupidly hot, often followed by stupidly devastating afternoon storms. But the worst thing about Christmas here is the crowds, all the crumbs rocking up at shopping centres doing Christmas shopping, and sapping as much air-con as their pores can handle. Then there is the circus that rocks up from the southern states holidaying up here and crowding our beaches and any other tourist destination we have.

In my younger years I was usually lucky enough to be away at sailing regattas around the country over the stupid season. But that is not so much the case now and last year we decided to make a break out of here. Originally we had about 8 of us keen on a road trip between Melbourne and Adelaide, but the logistics and growing costs put that on the back burner about 6 weeks out. Running out of time and after a few weeks of trolling the internet looking for inspiration it was my mate Ben who, after a couple of drinks one Saturday afternoon, put it in my head to hit Samoa up.

He had done a few surf / photo trips there in the past and gave me the lowdown on a lot of surf spots as well as general tips. So after a little bit more research, I rang up my good mate Heerey who, working in a mine in the South Australian desert, is always haggling me for an excuse to get away. Running the idea through him for 5 minutes, discussing dates and costs, he tells me "I will message you back in 10 minutes".

Sure enough 10 minutes later, I receive his text saying "Polynesian Blue 23rd december 7pm - flights are BOOKED". And that was it, me and Rocky on a plane 10 days later to Samoa. It was a great 10 day break, the surf gods were asleep for the middle 4 days, but when they awoke, they certainly came to the party, and bought their friends with them! Our final two days were full of 4-6ft perfect surf with just us and, at most 3 other people in the line up (a lot of the time it was just us!) - a whole world away from stupid season at home. The morning we left, the swell was back in the 2ft range and we left quite satisfied.

The rest of the time was spent cave diving, snorkelling, waterfall jumping, playing pool and cards, reading, exploring Samoa's Islands and general relaxing good times!

As for bringing in the new year, well we jumped on the plane in Apia at 2pm Dec 31, 5 hours later we landed in Brisbane on the afternoon of January 1st.