Bula!
So somehow Stu and I had decided to head to Fiji as it was a place both of us wanted to go to but hadn’t made plans for during our travels. We headed to STA travel when we were in Queenstown and booked a two week “holiday in a holiday” in Fiji! I headed back to Australia with mom and dad for two and a half weeks after that then flew out the day they flew up to Brisbane. So I headed out from Australia super excited for my two weeks in Paradise. I had no problems on the way there and managed to even grab several glasses of free wine and the air stewards phone number lol. I landed and was greeted in the airport by Fijians playing their traditional welcome song (something I would get used to over the next two weeks). I caught a shuttle to my hostel and was greeted by Stu in our 35 bed dorm room: the dormitories here are just massive. We met two other English people and ended up having some duty free vodka drinks on the hammock outside during the evening. The mosquitoes are really bad and everyone ended up with massive bites except for me.
Embarrassingly I woke the entire dorm up that night at 4am when the alarm on my phone went off. It was locked in a locker and Stu couldn’t find the key so he spent twenty minutes on the beach looking for it while several pretty angry people came to see why the alarm wasn’t being shut off. It turns out the key was on the top bunk the whole time… whoop!. Not exactly a great start to our first morning in Fiji. We got up for an early breakfast and grabbed the free shuttle to the wharf where we were to catch the ferry to our first island. However, I managed to realize that I had forgotten both my iPod and cellphone back at the hostel so we had to cab back to get it and miss our ferry. We went back to bed and chilled out eating some fresh coconut from a tree and waiting for the next ferry out that day. Finally we were aboard the ferry and on our way to our very first Fijian island, South Sea. We pulled up on the ferry and Stu and I looked at each other super excited as this island was tiny! You can circumnavigate the whole island in four minutes and stand in the middle and see the beach all around it. We disembarked and were pretty much giddy with excitement. We were met by a group of Fijians playing the welcome song and enjoyed a delicious meal watching their performance. After that we spent the entire afternoon in the extremely warm, turquoise waters snorkeling and swimming. We were lucky enough to even see a reef shark! Later we chilled in some hammocks and enjoyed some wine and beer watching the sunset.
The next day we enjoyed the Sea Spray Sailing Adventure included in our holiday package. We caught the ferry to another island then hopped aboard our boat where we would enjoy a bit of champagne at 1030 in the morning and free booze all day. We spent a bit of time sailing until we came to Rangitiki island – the island where they filmed the movie Castaway. We hopped off with our snorkel gear and spent the rest of the morning snorkeling until we swam back aboard the boat and enjoyed an extremely good barbeque. Unfortunately this is where my camera broke so pictures after my second day in Fiji are fairly limited. I think water got into it. Stu’s camera also broke the same day but luckily sort of came back to life a few days later so we could at least get scenery pictures. We stopped at another nearby island and enjoyed our very first Kava ceremony. Kava is a pepper herb of which the crushed roots are mixed with water to form a drink with a mild sedative effect (and it also makes your tongue go numb). Kava is used in Fiji in ceremonial and social custom generally performed by the chief of the village. The Kava is mixed together in a large hardwood bowl and when it’s ready, the chief claps with cupped hands and guests are offered a drink from a small bowl made from half a coconut. The drink isn’t to be sipped but consumed all at once which represents the guest’s acceptance into the village. After we toured the village we had a chance to shop and purchase some cool jewelry made by the women in the village. After that we spent a couple more hours on the sailing boat and then headed back to South Sea for an evening of drinking games with Jamie and Amy.
The next day we moved onto our next island, Waya lailai. This island was much bigger than South Sea and you couldn’t walk around it. The two days we spent on the island aren’t very exciting as we chilled out with lots of swimming, sleeping, relaxing in hammocks, and enjoying the sun. The second day in Waya lailai we had a snorkel trip that we went out on. We caught the boat out into the middle of the ocean and hopped out to snorkel around an amazing reef. Two Fijian’s came with us and they can free dive down as deep as 20 meters for up to two minutes at a time (this is one reason they are so successful at spear fishing) but the two with us just chilled out on the bottom, feeding fish and petting reef sharks. It was pretty awesome and I wish I had been able to take some pictures of it. Later that afternoon I taught Stu and Jamie how to shotgun a beer as they had never done it before. We also met Kat & B, two girls from Australia (and Germany). We spent the late afternoon and evening drinking and enjoying some Fijian entertainment.
The next morning we woke up about 430am to do a summit walk on the island. It was still pitch black out and we had to carry a torch with us. The hike took about an hour and a half up to the top of the rocky summit but we had lots of stops as it was incredibly humid through the rainforest. When we got to the top we got to watch the sunrise. It wasn’t very amazing as it was cloudy but it was still really cool to watch it come up as it’s one of the very first places in the world (along with Samoa) to see the sunrise
We were catching the ferry that late morning to our next island, Korovu, and it wasn’t until I had boarded the ferry that I realized that they hadn’t packed my backpack for me (thankfully just my little one) so I got a woman on board to call the island and they would send my backpack along to me the next day on Korovu… Haha sometimes I feel like I’m so unlucky. But otherwise we got to Korovu with no problems. Korovu is a really nice resort on the island with an actual fresh water swimming pool to chill out in. The weather was fairly nice as often there are short bursts of thundershowers or rain throughout the day which is a great way to cool down from the heat. It’s really cool as most of the day you can see storm clouds brewing on the horizon yet it’s beautifully sunny where you are and you may or may not get some rain (often accompanied by rainbows). Stu and I spent most of our time swimming in the pool, chilling in the hammock outside our room and napping. It was a pretty tough life on the island.
After two days of complete relaxation and no activities to keep us busy we headed to our next island, Nabua Lodge which was the furthest North we were going. We actually lucked out and had our room upgraded for us for free as there was no room available in the dorms. We didn’t do much on this island either. The first morning we had a cave trip which was really neat. We hopped on a water taxi and headed to another island where we got to swim in some really neat caves. At one point you had to swim underwater to get into the next cave system. Again, another place which would have been nice to have a working camera…Stu got sick after this so I spent the entire time swimming, sleeping and reading a book in a hammock. One afternoon we hopped in the water in beautiful sunshine to have it pour rain down on us two minutes later. It was really neat though as the water was completely calm and still except for the raindrops hitting it. Odd to see such calm water in the ocean. I also made a friend with one of the cats who liked to sneak into our room and sleep on the bed. She actually woke us up one morning when we heard her munching on some food left on a plate.
After Nabua Lodge we spent one night on Manta Ray Island which was owned by Australians. Definitely a different vibe than the other islands. We had some amazing food there and relaxed on the beach sipping Pina Coladas. We left the next afternoon for our final destination: Beachcomber (Party) Island. We stayed in a huge, 110 bed dorm and spent the afternoon going on a snorkel trip and hanging out. We had some drinks that night and watched the entertainment and spent the next afternoon relaxing and partied it up for our last night with the English & Australian crew. Needless to say it was an epic way to end our holiday out on the islands. The next day we caught the ferry back to Denaru and made it to our last destination in Fiji. We cabbed to one of only two McDonalds on the island so I could eat my traditional Big-Mac-in-another-country and spent the night watching movies. The next day we headed to the airport and actually almost missed our flight because we were goofing around in the airport and didn’t realize our plane was boarding until we looked around and saw absolutely no one left in the airport. Stu and I are always the last ones to get anywhere. Next stop for me: back to NZ for another month and a half!
