Fiji part 2

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The sad thing is that I am actually writing my blog now from home, having returned last Tuesday (15th July), as when I logged onto my blog page to update it for the last time it went down (typical eh?!) but thankfully it's up again and working! So I am writing this this in (relative) comfort, not living out of my backpack anymore (yey!) and have had a decent shower but I have to finish what I started, so here goes for the remainder of Fiji...

Having decided that I would make the most of my Bula Pass, but not to the extent that I would be travelling around every day, I ended up spending 2 days on most of the islands that I visited, which was just enough time to do most of the activities that I wanted (sunbathing, snorkelling, lying in a hammock and reading, generally chilling etc.) without getting too bored!

My next stop after Waya Lailai was the resort of White Sandy Beach on the island of Naviti, further north of where I had been so far, and had been recommended to me by some people I met on the previous islands. I spent most of my time playing volleyball and relaxing in a hammock during the day, and our first night was full of more Fijian dancing, audience participation (we had to play the 'stick game' where you are paired off, dance around in a circle passing a stick between you and when the music stops the couple holding the stick are out) and a raffle fundraiser. I didn't actually take part in the raffle as I had got confused after my second beer (yes, lying in the sun all day really does make you a lightweight!), but the general gist of it was that there were several prizes in the middle such as deodorant, perfume and even chickens (!) which apparently if you won one, you could have for lunch the next day (we were rather excited about the prospect of this as most of the portions of food we had had recently were lacking in the meat department, or the chicken which we had had was mostly skin and bones). The idea was that you bought a playing card from the pack, and each round that you entered you paid $1, so one of the girls was thrilled when she won a chicken after only 3 rounds, and couldn't stop talking about it (by this time we were all negotiating things to swap for bits of chicken the next day!) However, lunch came the next day; we all had rice with chicken and sauce, and the girls were waiting for their chicken to come out, but it never came. When they asked about it, it turned out that the chicken had been put in everyone's lunch, and they had ended up paying money for it - they didn't find this fact very amusing (but we had a good laugh after they left, after all - the money was for charity and it only ended up being 1 pound!)

That afternoon we decided to wander around to a different beach on the other side of the island, which one of the boys had visited earlier and said that it was quite nice, so after a bit of a scramble over some very slippery rocks and catching sight of some very large crabs, we made it. It was gorgeous (I know I keep using words like that, but honestly if you'd seen it...), peaceful and totally deserted apart from the five of us, and was surrounded by lush green palm trees and foliage. Of course the boys being boys decided they wanted coconuts, and attempted to 1) shimmy up the tree to try and reach some, and when this didn't work, they tried to 2) throw one of the old fallen coconuts up at the tree to try and knock some more out of the tree. Needless to say, their attempts were not fruitful, and for the best part of an hour, we then all sat and watched the sun go down, and took some cool pictures (well I did anyway!) We then started to make our way back, which involved more scrambling over rocks, and this time as the tide had come in since sunset, we ended up wading through fairly deep water, which was actually a little scary (bearing in mind it was rather dark by now) - and I did encounter a hairy moment when I slipped and dropped my camera very briefly in the water, but it was only a dip, and it seemed OK on my return. That evening we decided a few beers were in order, and we sat and celebrated my roommate Zen's last night in Fiji; however, our resort ran out of beers so we wandered down to the next resort along the beach and sat there drinking for a bit, and then we decided to go for a midnight swim - the water was actually quite warm! My visit to White Sandy Beach ended the following day with one of the Fijian guys showing us properly how to scale a palm tree, and cut down about 8 coconuts with his machete for us (he was also telling us that he'd fallen out of a tree once because there was a snake up there that scared him, which we did find rather funny!)

The last few islands I visited seemed to pass in a blur - I stayed at Coral View resort on Tavewa (the furthest north that I went) where I ran into a girl I had met in Magnetic Island in Australia and her sister, so spent some time catching up with her, and also a girl that I had met in New Zealand who wouldn't stop talking! However, it was nice to see some friendly faces...I also took a boat out from here to do some snorkelling in the Blue Lagoon which is where a Brooke Shields movie was apparently filmed, but it was nothing spectacular. Following Coral View, I then stayed at Long Beach on Matacawalevu, which was a lovely little homely place with just one eight-bed dorm and some bures (Fijian huts) and it was pretty self-explanatory as the beach was extremely long and curved round slightly so that we were in a sort of bay. We were also situated opposite another island (I'm not quite sure which one) which you could walk across to at low tide since it was so shallow (I actually waded out about 20 metres into the sea and was still standing only waist-deep - amazing!) One of my friends who had stayed there before told me to check out afternoon tea at the village down the beach, so never one to pass up an opportunity for a cuppa and a slice of cake, I wandered down there on my first day to find some of the women from the village sitting around with jewellery to sell and a yummy chocolate cake and cup of tea. It was $4 (about £1.30) for tea, but a small price to pay for as much cake as I wanted, and the chance to look at some more jewellery (yes I know I'm easily tempted!) The following day when I walked down there, there was a tiny ginger kitten that jumped onto my lap and wouldn't stop purring at me (but it was also trying to get at my chocolate cake!) but I made a fuss of it until one of the young Fijian girls (she must have been about 3) pulled it off the bench by its tail! I don't think they like cats very much in Fiji! The following day I stopped off at Manta Ray resort just for one night, where I enjoyed some more beach volleyball until it got too competitive, had amazing food (by far the best food I had out there - just like home-cooked food!) and watched some more Fijian dancing.

My last island stop was South Sea island, the closest to the mainland and one of the smallest (there is a picture of it on my previous blog). My stay there did not get off to a very good start, when we were given our bed numbers to sleep in, I plonked my stuff on my bed to pop to the toilet, and when I got back some guy had taken my bed as he had been told that was his bed too, apparently (although if he had been gentlemanly, he should have let me have it regardless!) Anyway, I then had to traipse around and try to find another spare bed (since there was only one dorm there and 32 beds you would think that this wouldn't be a problem, and the staff also assured me that they had only booked 31 people in to stay that night, so there should be my bed PLUS a spare one) but it didn't seem to be that simple. Finally, after asking everyone about 3 times as to whether there was a spare bed anywhere I convinced the manager that there DEFINITELY wasn't a spare bed, and he told me he'd see to it (not quite sure what that meant but I left him to it). I sat down to have a beer, trying to relax and not worry about where I was going to sleep that night, and about 10 minutes later we all burst into laughter as we saw 3 Fijian staff carrying a bed past us, up the stairs to the dorm (by this time everyone knew that I was the one without a bed), cue more laughter and jokes. At least I wasn't sleeping on the beach! That evening, after 'taking part' in some crab racing and dancing with balloons, we ended up playing some fairly hilarious drinking games that were initiated by the dive instructor Joe - namely 'flip the cup' and various others, where we ended up having to do various forfeits, the last one of which was to swap clothes with a person of the opposite sex on our team. I luckily happened to be sitting next to someone of roughly the same size as me, and after swapping, I think he actually looked better in my clothes than I did! However, one guy on our team ended up swapping clothes with a tiny Paris-Hilton lookalike blonde girl who was wearing a short strapless summer dress - verrry funny as he couldn't get it over his shoulders and he didn't have pants on either, so he had to stand behind a table the whole time! On my last full day I decided to go for a dive, and was thrilled to finally see a cleaning station where fish get cleaned by other fish (which I had managed to miss every time on the Great Barrier Reef) but I had nobody to tell who wouldn't think I was crazy! Then spent the rest of the time snorkelling until my boat left for the mainland, and I have to say I was rather sad to leave Fiji too, as I had made some good friends and really enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere, where Fiji-time (like rubber-time) and Bula! are the way of life for the people there.

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Photos

Ducky in a hammock
Ah yes, bet you all though I'd forgotten about him, eh?!