Fiji

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We arrived on Fiji and took the advice of various people not to waste too much of our time on the main land and intead head straight out to the islands. After just one night on the main land we caught the 'Awesome Adventures' boat to Manta Ray island.

This idyllic island resort was occupied by just 50 guests and had a sunrise beach and a sunset beach within just a 2 minute walk of each other. We were lucky here, not only because we were on a Fijian island in perfect sun, but because straight away at dinner we made friends with our own little group of about 8 people. After dinner we took our drinks down to the beach and experienced one of the funniest moment of all our lives. After multiple drinks and drinking games, we managed to convince this Irish guy called Mo to try and do a running jump onto a hammock. Full of confidence he ran up, took a jump with such commitment and belief, pulled a pose as if he was about to make the perfect landing before missing the whole thing by at least 2 metres, thus landing his arse on some hard sand. Even after seeing how much pain he was in, we couldn't get over how funny it was, so resultingly all tried various stupidities involving the hammock. As the temperature through the night was still an intense 25c, resultingly we all woke early. All our meals were provided and prepared on the island, so after breakfast we hit the beach. Due to it being so hot, you constantly had to make retreat to the sea or shade. This was not a problem though as the sea was like a warm bath and with our snorkling gear it was easy to pass our time swimming amoung the reef and fish! We also passed time on the easy going island by cracking coconuts, kayaking and eating ample amounts of food at meal times. On our second night on the island, there was a local performance by locals down on the beach around a fire. Here they entertained us with tribal dancing and imbarassingly got Nick, Paul and our group up to dance infront of of all the other guests. The night carried on down at the beach long into the night. The next day we left for another island and having had such a laugh with the group of people we met, it had a lot to live upto.

We arrived late in the day on beachcomer island, this was well known as the party island and is arguably more in keeping with your preconceptions of a fijian island. It is minute in size, infact its simply a lump of sand comming out of the sea, with a few coconut trees in the middle and it only takes about 5 minutes to walk round the whole island. In reality this was an amazing island to be on and we were so privilaged to be here, however we couldn't help but compare it to the prior island and feel a slight disappointment. Neretheless we still had an amazing time (as we were on a perfect desert island and not in Manchester in the rain) and passed our days by playing crazy golf. After 2 nights on beachcomer island, we headed back to the main land, to stay one more night a Nomads hostel. Expecting to just have a quiet night before our flight to NZ, we soon found ourselves chatting and playing drinking games with 2 girls at the hostel.

Throughout our travels we have heared great reports and praises about NZ, so we our heading there with great anticipation and also looking forward to meeting up with Mike (George thats, biggles or digby for your info).

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