Fiji

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Just to confuse you all, this blog for Fiji should have been entered before New Zealand, but I got a bit distracted by New Zealand’s beauty.
This is where we were for a week in November.

We left from L.A. for Fiji, after a brief delay to swap planes due to a problem with our scheduled aircraft, we got something towed from its slumber that had panels missing and seemed old for a Jumbo.
The flight was a bit long, but as it was dark we got a bit of sleep.

We landed in Nadi and were transferred to our hotel with ease, after being given a very friendly Fiji welcome, juice and a shell necklace.
The hotel in Nadi was good, with good food and a good bar.
The following morning we arose early for the ‘Big Yellow Bus’ to take us to the port for our trip to the top of the Yasawa Islands.
The ferry trip was ok as the weather was fab, we dropped people off and picked people up as we travelled. We noticed that some people had a special pass that allowed free movement between the resorts, just hop on and off after checking with the desk on the boat for availability at the resorts.
We passed many islands and resorts that looked really good, white/golden sandy beaches and rooms just looking out to sea.
We got to our first stop over, that just happened to be the last island on the ferry trip, another greeting with juice and some singing.
The accommodation was very good as were the meals.
We took part in some singing and dancing while we were here and also some boat trips, one that showed us where ‘Blue Lagoon’ was filmed.
We stayed here for 2 nights then moved to our next resort for the next night only. Here we got some beans on toast which was nice, there’s a limit to the amount of fruit and vegetation that one can eat.
We had a big storm here while we were snorkelling, so I suggested that we retired for a while, I don’t want to be electrocuted.
We came across our first sea snakes in the water, that made us a bit wary, but these ones have small mouths and are deemed quite harmless. They also have external gills, so they breath and stay underwater.
We were disappointed to only have had one night here, this resort was very nice.
We moved on to Waya Lailai, this resort is owned and run by Fijians.
They run diving trips from here, which was useful as our last dives were over a year ago, so we had refresher courses here, and I opted for some more diving afterwards.
There are 18 sites if my memory is correct, and the guy in charge is called Mick. He is very helpful and the diving was cheap and good, corals, sand, fish, all you could ask for really.
We got up really early in the morning, it was still dark, and climbed to the top of the hillside behind the resort, the views were stunning.
Later we went out to a reef and fed some sharks, I found 2 reasonable sized octopus just away from the crowd, they blended in so well with the surrounding, they were quite hard to see on occasions.
Next day, up early, more diving then the ferry picked us up to go to our last Island, Bounty.
From here we took a trip in a big yacht and sailed around looking at the Islands. Here we anchored off the Island where Tom Hanks filmed ‘Castaway’ and he met Wilson.
More top snorkelling and some more photo’s.
After all this, we were picked up by the ferry for our last night in Nadi before flying onto New Zealand.
The Islands were all fantastic and we agreed that we would like to return one day.
Enjoy the photo’s.

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