Fiji - Caqalai

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We got a bus to the capital, Suva, and then another bus to a little harbour where we travelled to Caqalai (pronounced 'Thung-gulie') which is a teeny tiny coral island in the Lomaviti group. It took 10 mins to walk round the entire island!

A couple that we made friends with at the Beach House were there too, and about 6 other guests. It was a real tropical paradise island. We stayed in a nice little hut with no electricity.

On our first morning the locals took us accross on the boat to a bigger island (with 20 inhabitants!) and went to church. It was really nice, the people were fantastic singers and loved having us there! We spent the rest of the days lazing around and snorkelling. There was excellent snorkelling around Caqalai but a lot of sharks so I was a bit too scared to go too far out.

On our last night we had a Kava ceremony. We all drank Kava and some of the locals played guitars and sang non-stop all evening. Kava sends you to sleep if you drink too much so a lot of them started to drift off by about 10. We also played a few games of 'widge widge', a game they made. It was good fun.

We had gooorgeous weather for our 3 days on the island and didn't really want to leave!

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Photos

Fijian sunset
Absolute beauty!

Hangin' around
The middle of the day was so hot that you couldn't do much else than laze in a shady hammock. Though life, eh?

Top snorkeling
Testing out the waterproofness of the camera. It doesn't do justice to how beautiful the fish and corals looked.

Tiny Caqalai
It only took 10 minutes to walk around the island.

Room with a view
Our traditional fijian thatched bure overlooked the sea.

Sunday = church
A friendly family outside their church.

The taste of paradise
After taking a while to get into it, it was especially satisfying to eat the coconut on the beach under the shade of a palm tree.

Fjian rave up II
The band played for 4 hours straight, pausing only for another round of Kava.