The Big Trip...

Bula everyone!! (hello,welcome,goodbye,have a nice day, whats up? etc in Fijian)

So, I am sitting in Sydney airport after a 4 hour flight from Fiji and i have 4 hours to kill before my flight to Thailand, so i decided this would be a good time to update my blog on the past week's events.

I left Auckland first thing in the morning for Fiji, and arrived mid afternoon. The heat hit me as soon as i walked off the plane which was a welcome surprise since NZ was just going into winter. I had my first expereince of 'Fiji Time' in the airport when we were told the courtesy bus would be picking us at at 4pm, and didnt turn up till 5pm. Great. I must be the most punctual person in the world so this was a shock to my system!

I arrived at the hostel (which was absolutely beautiful) and met up with Claire again. After dinner and relaxing we headed to bed because we were going to picke dup at 7am the following morning to start island hopping.

At 7:45 the next morning, we were picked up (again, fiji time - see above) and taken down to the harbour where we boarded the boat to take us up to the Yasawa group of islands. There are 336 islands in Fiji and they are grouped into 15 lots. We were staying on 2 islands only, but visitng many more.

It took 4 hours to reach our island which was called Nayuna Lailai. Basic does not descibe it. Our room was one big dorm and i had a top bunk with a ladder that i was seriosuly scared would come away from teh bed if i climed on top of it. thsi resulted in a 2 man operation of claire hoisting me up on the bed. Great. The toilets were vile, the place was ridden with mozzies and teh food was pure stodge. other than that we were set in paradise, surrounded by palm trees, crystal clear ocean and probably some of the most friendly people i have ever met. We spent 2 nights on this island. The activities on the first night consisted on a crab race - all very exciting stuff..before heading to bed early. Food was served at 7am, 12pm and 7pm, and everyone on the island sits down together to each meal, which is really nice and it means that you get to know people really well. On the next day we went to the Sawailau Caves which involved swimming underwater to reach into teh caves, then resting in air pockets..was really beautiful. That afternoon we hiked for about an hour to reach the Blue Lagoon and we spent around 2 hours snorkelling in amazingly clear waters before heading back to the resort. That night there were no organised activities, so we took it upon ourselves to creat a bar around a box of lifejackets. there we were, 8 of us, one bottle of lethal 60% Bounty Rum and 3 cans of Coke to mix it with - made for a very funny night. lets leave it at that.

The next morning we headed back onto the boat to take us to the Wanna Taki. This is a liveaboard boat around the Naviti area. We had such fun on this boat. Everyone (24 people) all slept in the same room (and it was airconditioned - such a luxury) and you could snorkel, swim, kayak, fish etc straight off the boat. The views were spectacular and every night we sat on the top deck drinking cocktails and sampling some Kava. Kava is a the national drink of Fiji and its made from some pepper tree roots and water. It tastes of filthy water and really has no appeal. Apparantly, if you drink enough of it then it will make your entire body go numb. There is a whole procedure for drinking the kava, and it is offensive to refuse it if someone offers it to you. The fist night i didnt try any of the vile tasting drink becausei had a dive booked for te next morning, and nothing was going to spoil that!

My dive was off Manta Ray island -another tropical paradise island. the dive was miuch better than my dives in Australia and fuelled my desire to do some more! (this is bad because it is not a cheap hobby!) The rest of the timeon the boat was spent sunbathing and snorkelling in different locations. On our second day on the boat, some of our friends from the Kiwi bus joined us which was a lovely reunion.

We left the boat the following afternoon and headed for our final island - South Sea Island. Now, i am not exaggerating when i saw that we could walk around the entire island in less than 5 minutes. The entire island consisted of the rest or we were staying in and thats it! We watched a lovely sunset when we arrived and then me, martin (my new dive buddy from the trip) and the instructor did a night dive straight off the beach. Well, let me tell you...it was so good that i went to bed that night with a smile on my face. Enough said. The next morning i woke up and had managed to convice claire to do an intro dive (she is scared of the water so this was a major feat for me!) so i waved her off, had some breakfast and then got my gear together to do my third and final dive on Fiji. this was a shipreck dive which was awesome and the deepest dive i have done at 23m. the rest of the day was spent sunbathing, swimming around the island (takes 20 mins) and we had a huge BBQ lunch which was fantastic!

We were picked up by the boat at 5;30pm and it was really sad because we had made so many friends and had to say goodbye to all of them, and headed back into Nadi (pronounced Nandi because thy put a 'n' before every 'd'). It was 7:00pm by the time we arrived back at the hostel, and we had a quick dinner with our friend Ben (someone we met in Queenstown) before heading to bed as we had to get up at 5:30am this morning.

All in all, it was a week of complete heaven (apart from the mozzies on the first island) and i recommend everyone to go there to chill out.

My next update will be from Thailand - take care everone

Bula! xxx