Fiji and a whole lot of organising!!

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Dear all,
Here I am in Fiji! Yes I am in paradise and so you would think that I would be feeling blissfully relaxed..but sadly it was not to be!

We flew in two weeks ago and after spending two nights in Nadi we went down to the Coral Coast. We stayed in a room in the village of Korotogo. For the first three days we hired a car as there was some diving that we wanted to do which was a couple of hours away.

So we drove to Pacific Harbour and did a days diving on Shark Reef in Beqa Lagoon. We dropped down to 30 metres and sat on the bottom and then the divemasters let out a mixture of fish guts which attracted a lot of fish! There were huge trevally’s but the most impressive sight was the 40 or so Bull sharks that arrived. The biggest one was 3.5 metres long...she was huge.

You would think that seeing 40 Bull sharks would be scary but it really wasn’t! The sharks were there because they know that there will be food. After two dives with the sharks I decided that it was lovely to see them but that I prefer to see things when they happen to swim past rather than fake situations where fish are lured to an area by food. Having said that if a bull shark just happened to swim by it might very well be hungry and it might be very scary!

After our diving we drove to the capital of Fiji which is Suva. Dan stocked up on junk foods (Macdonalds!!) and we also stocked up on boring stuff like mosquito repellent. The next day we went to the airport to pick up Jamie as he had come to visit us for a week. He was fresh as a daisy as he only had a quick three hour flight from Australia!

On our last day in the car we decided to head to Natadola beach which is supposed to be the seventh most beautiful in the world and one of the best in fiji. We managed to miss the turn off and ended up driving miles along a dirt track. Eventually we came across a very old farmer and asked him where to go but sadly he didn't speak English. We decided from his hand signals that we must be going the wrong way and eventually we found the beach! Which was nice....but I have been on a few beaches during my travels and so I like to think that I know my beaches. This one was lovely but not the seventh most beautiful one that I have ever seen. But we did have the beach to ourselves apart from the local people who wanted us to ride on their horses...which we politely declined!

We had a TV in our room and by now we were beginning to realise that this flu thing could be quite serious. Our ticket was meant to take us from Fiji back to Auckland and then onto LA where we were buying cheap flights to Mexico! So suddenly we had a bit of a decision to be making! Making matters worse was the fact that we had no internet and calling airlines was not easy. But we soon decided that as the FCO were advising against all but essential travel to Mexico we had best have a re think!

Over the next few days poor Jamie had to listen as we went over all of the options...and there were many! Stay around here for longer and do Tonga, just do honduras and Belize and skip Mexico etc etc
We waved Jamie off when he went back to Australia and we still had not been able to sort anything out. So we came to Nadi where we were closer to the internet and finally we sorted it out. Tonight we are flying back to Auckland and jumping straight onto another flight to LA. We get there before we left which is a little odd!

We are spending a week in LA and going to Disneyland etc. I am very excited about this! Then next friday we fly from LA to London. We arrive on saturday 16th May and will have seven hours before our next flight which takes us back to Thailand. We have been offered work there and so plan to spend the last two months of our travels there...before we finally head home for good. We were originally due to be home on 28th July but we are now finishing a week earlier as we have loads to organise when we get back!

With only seven hours in London I am afraid that we won't get to see many of you. I am in two minds about seeing anyone because then I will have to say goodbye again. But if any of you are around and fancy doing lunch in the Heathrow area then let me know.

With all of the sorting out that had to be done and changes to the round the world ticket I feel as though I did not really get to enjoy Fiji very much. But at least the last part of our travels is now sorted and we are going back to the very place that we began our travels...many months ago!!

I intend to relax and enjoy the sun because it really is not long now before we arrive back in London for good...but before that I have another 52 hours worth of flights to do!!

Love to you all, stay in touch and enjoy the sunshine,

Wendy
xxxx

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