The main lasting impression about Fiji in itself that I can share is that the people there are wonderful. From the moment we stepped in the Nadi airport, we were greeted by genuine smiles (saying Bula!).
We were at the very end of the customs line, so we were one of the last people from our flight to get out to the transportation area, where a van was supposed to pick us up to take us to our hotel for the night. But since we were holding up the van with a few people, the van left us behind… and one of the manager from Rosie Holidays took us, and was totally cool about it.

But anyway, more to the what-when-where of the trip report, as it should be!

The first night we landed into Nadi after dark, so we couldn’t go to our resort because it was on another island, and they don’t navigate to small islands at night. So we were taken to a hotel in the mainland, Sofitel. We didn’t really get to enjoy it much, because we were so tired from traveling that we pretty much ate, went to sleep, woke up, ate, and left.

After an hour-long boat ride in the Captain’s lounge, we arrived at our destination: Tokoriki Island Resort. Our boat was too big to come near shore, so the resort from the island sent a small boat to pick us up. About 12 people fit in the boat, with our luggage and all. Getting out of the boat, my feet landed on the beach, where I got my feet both in the soft sand and the warm water at once. I probably smiled from ear to ear.

The next thing that happened was the welcoming. While our paperwork was checked, a fresh fruit beverage was handed to us, and the manager Ramsey gave us a welcome speech. The end of the speech consisted of him and most of the staff within earshot singing to us. Check out this video, which even though is not us, shows you just how happy everyone that is greeted in such a way looks. We sure were!

From there, we were shown to our room. Ramsey himself (who I found very appropriately named akin to Ramses, because he is huge and imposing) showed us in, and told us “Welcome home”.

The decorations in our cabin bure had fresh flowers as decorations everywhere, but what they did to our bed took the cake. Kelly was speechless, and we were both feeling indeed very welcome, and at home as well. The magic had started.

Our daily activities consisted of sleeping in, enjoying our delicious meals from the very tasty resort kitchen (which is a VERY good thing if you’re going to an island that doesn’t have anything but a hotel on it!), sunbathing by the pool or on the beach, taking pictures and enjoying each other.

One of the most unique things we did was visiting Yanuya village, where most of the resort staff live and commute to and from by boat every day. We took a small boat with a few other people and a couple of “guides”, who were actually young men who live there and do work at the resort.
We were shown around the village, had a Kava ceremony with the Chief, checked out the women’s art market and visited the school.
Most people would say that Fiji is the 3rd world. This island only has electricity from 6 to 9pm, most houses consist of  metal sheets nailed together to form a one-box room, there barely is phone service and you can’t even think of using the internet. But they seem so happy.
We saw three toddlers playing together, with a plastic yellow toy bucket full of sand and dirt. It was so simple and just plain awesome. That kind of thing really makes you think and wonder about some of the things that we see everyday in the “first” world and we accept to be the norm.

This all ties in with how nice Fijians are. They’re well aware of how much they depend on tourism, but I don’t think that’s all there’s to it. Take for example tipping, which is not expected nor demanded; people are nice to you not because they’re trying to get some extra coin out of you. Also, even when we saw them talking in Fijian amongst each other, there was always laughter, smiles and a jovial tone. I might have a skewed point of view, but I’m comfortable in saying that Fijians are easily some of the nicest people on this planet. Whatever they’re doing as a culture, seems to put a lot of value on respect and friendliness, and many other cultures could stand to learn from this one.

On a more personal level, my favorite thing about our entire honeymoon was spending it with my wife. It seems obvious, but it’s also important. The moments leading up to our wedding were busy, and we didn’t get to enjoy each other as much. Having two weeks to ourselves, where we spent every minute next to each other, was the perfect way to start our marriage. We shared many memories, and we’ll always be able to look back on when we got married and remember the dreamy honeymoon before any of the busyness of the actual wedding.

We took lots of pictures, but there are some particular special ones there. We took pictures at sunset, every night. I’d set the camera on a tripod, place Kelly somewhere on the frame, get all photo-nerdy with aperture and exposure settings, set a 10 second timer and run to get in the picture. We would do this at least a handful of times, to make sure we got at least one good picture for every night we spent in our little paradise island.

Looking at those pictures makes me happy. I’m a lucky person, and the pictures remind me of it. I’m very lucky and very grateful of being able to experience a place like Fiji, with its wonderful people, incredible landscapes and warm weather. But above all, I realize that I’m the luckiest (and most grateful) when I think that I’m sharing all this with a wife that surpasses any dream I could have.

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Oh, one last thing which is just a funny anecdote: When we were leaving Fiji, on the boat ride to the airport, something strange happened. A song that we heard at a most random time in our trip to Argentina came on the radio: Gangster’s Paradise, by Coolio. We looked at each other in disbelief, and agreed that from now on, we’re bound to hear this obscure hit from our youth when we’re abroad, traveling together. Which we hope is often, and plentiful.

Cute, right? Don’t eat your heart out yet, and save room for dessert! Just a few steps from the Koala, we saw a kangaroo that seemed to be a little bit on the fat side. Just kidding, we have no idea what magazine-cover kangaroos look like! But this one sure did have a pouch, and a whole lot in it: A joey!

One of my favorite pictures I took at the Zoo involves animals that don’t actually live in Australia, but I still quite like it, so here it is:

I like the contrast of city vs “nature” (because it is, after all, a zoo), and how the giraffes are like nature’s skyscrapers. For a better idea of what the giraffes are looking at, check this one out:

Now, I also mentioned that we did other things in Sydney. Of course, the most outstanding one (and a must-do if you ever visit!) was to see the Opera House from as many angles as possible. We visited and took pictures at morning, at midday and at night. We also went inside it, on a fabulous tour. It was definitely interesting, and I’m going to probably read up more about all that went on with the construction of such a landmark.
– –

We also enjoyed some of the other sights of Sydney. One day, we went on an adventure to find Cuban cigars, since they don’t have an embargo against a totally chill country. The trip was all on foot, and we just walked around like tourists with a tiny map and BIG eyes. Kelly and I like being in big cities, there’s so much to look at!
We tried to go shopping one day, and at the end of the day we were empty handed. Things were either too expensive or not of our taste, but the window shopping in itself was top-notch. We walked into the biggest department store cosmetics department that Kelly had ever seen, and walked out of it smelling like all sorts of samplers and testers. Good times!

Since we stayed at the Marriot at Circular Quay (pronounced just like “key”…), the district of The Rocks was really close to us. It was yet another place to discover by walking, getting lost, and checking things out. We walked so much that Kelly had a pain on her knees!

In Port Douglas, things considerably slowed down. Our lodging wasn’t a fancy hotel, no. Instead, it was a fancy “boutique apartment” with the soothing name of Shantara. This worked quite well for us, because we got to go to the Aussie supermarket for things to eat, and to the “bottle shop” for things to drink.
Port Douglas is a cute little town that has an incredible 4-mile long beach, locally owned shops (not a single chain restaurant, even!) and is much warmer being  just 1500 miles north of Sydney (Australia is pretty damn huge, just in case you didn’t know). Just what we needed to slip away from the see-it-all tourist mode and into the chill-out vacation mode.

Taking advantage of my still slightly whacked out internal clock, I was able to wake up very early to take some pictures at sunrise. It was a great time, seeing the sun come up! The pictures I took don’t make it much justice, but they’re still something to look at, so here:

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One of the selling points of Port Douglas is its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef. We had a day planned to go check it out, so in the morning we got aboard a nice sailboat and headed out to the Low Isles.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great and it was pretty much overcast most of the day. It even rained a little bit on us. Boooo!

That didn’t stop us, we went in anyway. Kelly lasted a good couple of minutes, and the sheer size of the Pacific Ocean stopped her from going any further. Cute.
I snorkeled my ass off, and probably spent a couple of hours coming and going, literally soaking in all the sights. I’d never snorkeled before, let alone in one of Earth’s snorkeling paradises.

We had a little bag so we could take Kelly’s small camera underwater, and I took hundreds of pictures, hoping that at least a few would turn out. Not a lot of them were keepers, but this one definitely was one:

Nemo!

Something else we both got to do once back on the mainland was eat something new. I ate kangaroo twice, and Kelly tried it for one dinner opportunity. The meat wasn’t bad, but nothing to write home about – specially for a spoiled meat eater from Argentina as myself. But hey, we get to say we’ve eaten it, so that in itself is pretty cool.

All in all, Australia is a country that I would love to go back to. There are so many things to see, and just not enough time! Kelly and I talked about going back in 5~10 years, renting “hiring” a car and driving cross-country… but then we realized that we’d have to drive on the other side of the road, and we quickly turned our attention to the beers in front of us.

Tomorrow, we leave on our honeymoon. The destination: Australia (Sydney and Cairns) and Fiji. Oooooh yeah!
We’re packing our suitcases right now, so I’ll have to share about our wedding day when we come back from our honeymoon, in a couple of weeks.

Until then,

~The Aguileras

• Pre-race
  Kelly and I left for San Jose the day before the race, Saturday. We stayed in the very nice Dolce-Hayes mansion, getting a chance to enjoy the great weather and their swimming pool.
  I went to pick up my packet and to also take part of the course description talk, where I found out all the small details about the race. It wasn’t anything major; the highlight was when the guy said that Almaden Lake was at its best this year, with the lowest levels of E. Coli on record. GREAT!
  I tried to go to bed at 9pm on Saturday, but I wasn’t able to fall asleep anytime near that. I woke up once in the middle of the night, at around 1am. Just as I was starting to fall asleep again at 2am, my phone rang, apparently because someone in India pocket dialed my Google Voice number. Super strange, and very annoying timing.
• Race-day
  The alarm was set for 4:45am, and by then I was already awake and ready to go. I wanted to make it to the race site by 5:30, so I could set up my transition and not freak out about not being there on time.
  We made it there a little bit before 6, but this was still plenty of time, and everything worked out perfectly, with a good parking spot and all! It was quite the juxtaposition of energy levels, with me ready to bounce off a wall and Kelly fighting off her instincts to sleep for a few more hours. I set up my transition area, and did some warm up running drills, while Kelly sat on a chair and watched hundreds of people at least as crazy as I was.
  I was going to be in the 2nd wave, which started at 7:04am. I was able to do a little warm-up in the lake, which was also my first ever swim in a wetsuit. The warm-up swim felt pretty easy, which was probably because of the extra buoyancy from the wetsuit, but I also felt like a million bucks. I was just happy that I felt ready for what was to come!
• Swim – 1.5km
  The swim started right on time, and I tried to stay at the back of the group. There were about 60 people in my wave, and I wasn’t planning on racing anyone but myself.
  I got passed a couple of times, but I also passed a couple of guys. Mostly, I remember getting grabbed, hit and climbed on. I can’t complain, because I did a little bit of that myself! The water was pretty murky, and it was impossible to see through the water more than a couple of feet in front of me.
  The biggest issue was swimming in a straight line, which didn’t really happen. Every now and then I looked ahead to find the buoy that I was supposed to pass, and it turned out that I was swimming a little too much to one side or another. Whatever, it happened, and I corrected my trajectory without thinking about it too much.
  I ended up finishing the swim portion in 34 minutes. That was a LOT faster than I had predicted, I was expecting to finish anywhere between 40 and 45 minutes!
• Transition 1
  From the time I got out of the water and the time I got on my bike, 2:43 minutes flew by. In what now seems a blur of jittery legs, excitement and going through a mental checklist; I got out of my wetsuit, half-assed dried off, put on my helmet, sunglasses, jersey, bike shoes and ran from the beach to the start of the bike portion. I do however remember seeing Kelly as I was changing, and giving her a sloppy and wet kiss before taking off with my bicycle!
• Bike – 24.9 miles
  The bike was sadly my big let down. I expected a lot more out of me, but make no mistake in thinking I’m not proud of what I did – because I am.
  Since I started on the 2nd wave, a lot of the extremely in shape people from waves behind me started catching up with me, and passing me. I only passed a couple of people, but I’m sure I got passed by about a hundred people.
  I focused on keeping my cadence in the 90s and staying hydrated, and letting my speed fall into whatever that meant. I enjoyed the bike course a lot, it was flat for most of the first two thirds, and there was a small climb with some nice downhills to pay off after it. (I got up to 35mph in one section!)
  I ended up averaging 18.2mph, which is not too bad, but I wish I’d been a bit faster. I took me 1 hour and 22 minutes to finish the bike course.
• Transition 2 – 1:19
  I speedily ran my bike into transition, took off my helmet, glasses, bike shoes and my jersey. It was getting nice and hot out there, so I was going to do the run shirtless. I had some trouble putting on my socks because my legs were a bit shaky, but I was overall pretty speedy about getting out of there ready to go on my run.
• Run – 6.2 miles
  The first thing I remember about the run section was looking up as soon as I left transition to see Kelly smiling at me and taking some pictures. I was very happy that she was there cheering me on, it made me feel very special and gave me some much needed warm fuzzies to embark on what was to come.
  Immediately after that, my quads started cramping. Ouch! I guess I should have done a few more brick workouts! I didn’t walk, I instead took very small steps and kept on jogging. I knew my legs would transition from bike mode to run mode eventually, so I just had to get my legs to know that with some high cadence running.
  Some guy ran past me and suggested I punch my legs to get them to cooperate, so I did. Placebo or actual remedy, it kind of worked and I was able to speed up a little bit more.
  For the first couple of miles, I nursed my aching quads with a slow run. I was probably doing 6mph, and getting passed left and right all over again. I didn’t care, my goals were to never stop, never walk unless it was at a water station, and to keep pushing until my legs responded like I knew they should.
  At mile marker 3, I was running. It felt awesome. I set my sights on a couple of people in front of me, and made it a point to catch up to them and pass them. I did just that.
  Mile marker 4 came and went, and I stepped it up to what I was going to consider “giving it all I’ve got left”. I got passed by a dude with long gray hair. On his calf was written his age with sharpie: 61. Hot damn. That was some pretty strong motivation to keep pushing, I knew it was almost over, and that the faster I went, the sooner it’d all be over!
  When I got in the last mile, it was basically time to go a half loop around the lake. I could see the finish line from across the lake. My heart started beating faster, even though I wasn’t running faster. It was asking me to push harder, and it took me a while to figure that out, but when I did, I went as fast as I could.
  I finished the last hundred yards in a full-out sprint – the kind of run that I did in the past when a dog was chasing me or when I was trying to catch a bus to get home because the next bus wasn’t coming for another 30 more minutes.
  The finish line was there! There was music, there were tons of people cheering. I couldn’t hear or see anything, I was just focused on every step I took and every breath I took…. until I looked up and saw the clock by the finish line. It said 2:58, and I was suddenly overcome by a feeling unlike any other: I had made it, and I had beat my goal! I unconsciously punched the sky as I ran past the finish line.
  I finished my run in a 54:22. I could have done that a lot faster if I hadn’t cramped up at the beginning, but I finished as strong as I could, and I have no complaints about that!
• Total time: 2:54:26
  Right after finishing, I stopped running. My legs were about to give out, and cramping pretty hard. Or at least I think so.
  I can’t remember what they were doing, because what I do remember is how damn good it felt to have made my goal, to have finished strongly and how much fun it all had been. I tried to focus on my breathing so that I could catch my breath, and noticed that I was smiling. I couldn’t even control it!
  A small moment later, Kelly came out from within the crowd, and that completed what ended up being an extremely wonderful experience for me. She saw me running, she saw me doing my thing -and even got some great pictures of it all- and I could feel how happy she was for me.

I’m extremely grateful to all those who have shared encouragement and shown support to me. Even if I’ll never be a triathlon superstar, the gratification that the whole experience yields is indescribable, and a lot of that has to do with all the people that helped me get there. You know who you are: Thank you!

Above all, I’m endlessly grateful to Kelly. She gave away her first weekend in her summer break to spend it with me, driving 10 hours, waking up at a strange hour on a Sunday, standing around for 3 and putting up with all the shenanigans of my training. I couldn’t have done it without her, that’s for sure!

Punch the sky! Finished in less than 3 hours!

The rest of the pictures are here, on Flickr.

I just went to the Cal-Neva and put 2 bets in for this World Cup. One betting that Argentina will beat Nigeria on the opening game, and the other for Argentina winning the entire thing.
I had no idea what betting in a sports-book would be like… and I still don’t. I just talked to the attendant, told her I wanted to be for Argentina to win the thing and tomorrow’s game, and that was it. She took my money ($5 on each bet), and gave me two tickets.

All I have to do is go back and claim my prize when it’s all over. Yeah.

I’m waking up at 6am tomorrow to watch the game against Nigeria. I don’t think Kelly understands how watching soccer games is rooted in my culture , but hopefully she won’t be too surprised or annoyed when she wakes up after me to find me in the living room in a situation not too different from this:

I’m really excited about all this. For the last week I’ve been waking up from my sleep with thoughts related to the event on Sunday: Do I have everything on my checklist? Am I going to be in shape enough to not bonk half-way through? Am I going to make it to the venue on time? Thankfully, I’m feeling pretty well prepared, so I can answer: Yes, I have everything; no, I’m not going to bonk in the middle of it; and maybe, but who cares if an old lady passes me.

I’m sure I could have trained harder and longer, but I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve done, so I’m not regretting anything. The hardest part of all the training has been the time juggling, because time I spent sweating was time I spent away from Kelly.
Regardless, she’s been super supportive and encouraging, and I couldn’t have gotten to where I am if it wasn’t for her.

She’s so awesome that she’ll be traveling all the way to Silicon Valley with me (a total of about 8 hours traveling, round-trip) just to see me get in a wetsuit, disappear for about 45 minutes, get on my bike, disappear for an hour or more, come back to leave the bike and disappear for another hour, while I run. Triathlons are not a very good spectator sport (unless it’s on TV!), so I’ll be owing Kelly a big one for being there for me.
But in truth, I’m very excited that she’ll be there, even if I’ll only see her for a few minutes while the race is actually on. I’m sure that seeing her as I go through my transitions will give me a much needed morale boost, and knowing that she’s waiting for me at the finish line will make me want to finish faster!

I really had no idea where this blog post was going to go, but I wanted to mention how excited I am about what’s in store for me this coming Sunday, and to also give a shout-out to my BB for being so wonderful.

Wish me luck! I’ll post results and stories after Sunday.

The official results from the final DEXA scan:

You can see the results of both scans, the one in March and the one in May. (if you’re wondering about the Android/Gynoid ratio like I once was, read here: http://www.answers.com/topic/gynoid-fat-distribution). I lost 7.9 pounds and my body fat level went down to 14.8%. That’s well past my goal of reaching 18%, and evidently reason enough for me to win the challenge at work! I’m now $250 richer, and I have my membership to 24-hour fitness paid for a full year.

Training for my first Olympic-length triathlon has definitely helped in getting fitter. I’ve swam twice a week for the last 3 months, and it’s my biggest indicator of how much more fit I am. When I started, I would get winded after swimming 4 laps; this week I was able to swim 50 laps non-stop on Tuesday, and two sets of two sets of 30 laps on Thursday!
On top of that, I’ve been running a bit, and riding my bike another bit.

However, I think the biggest impact was that of my diet. I’ve always been a believer that it’s not about what you eat, but about how you burn it… but this time around I tried it the other way around, and while I certainly exercised a lot, I’ve been a nutrition nazi, and watched what I ate meticulously. Kelly even endearingly called me “anorexic” a few times as I passed up things that I’ve always loved: potatoes, pizza, donuts, ice-cream. I basically stuck to a diet low in carbohydrates, and it seemed to help shed the fat while giving plenty of nutrition for lean mass development.

Blah, blah, blah, I could write about stuff you can read about anywhere if you were so inclined, so I won’t. However, since one of my motivation was from looking at before/after pictures from real people that committed to fitness, here’s my little evidence:

Before and after

The event of choice is the Silicon Valley International Triathlon, which will be just south of San Jose in Californi on June 13th (just a month and a half from now!). Kelly and I will make a weekend-trip out of the thing, but Sunday morning I’ll be sweating amongst hundreds of other people.

The event consists of:

• 1500 meter swim. This is almost a mile!
• 24.9 miles (40 Kilometers) on the bike.
• 6.2 miles running – a full 10k.

Now, I’ve got a goal time to finish in. Considering that I finished the sprint Tri of last year in 1 hour and 41 minutes and all of the following things…

• The Olympic/International distance is double the distance of a Sprint.
• I have a better bike!
• I weigh at least 15lbs less than last year.
• I’ve been swimming at least once a week, and will continue to do so to be ready for this race.
• I’ll have a wetsuit, either borrowed or rented, but some buoyancy help for sure!
• The race is at sea level, which should give me a small oxygen advantage.
• The longer distance means that I’ll be going slower, so as to not burn out.
• I haven’t been running as much as last year.

My realistic goal time is then exactly the double of the sprint: 3 hours and 20 minutes. But I’ll be pushing myself to finish in under 3 hours. I think it’s doable, and I’m going to be training hard to try to make it happen.

If anything, all the training I’m doing will help me accomplish my goals of being in shape and looking good for the summer!

So, on May 2010 I will be considered an official citizen of the United States of America; I’ll be applying for a US passport the very first week of May, so that I can fly to my honeymoon as such. Exciting times!