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Published: April 10th 2007
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After a four hour flight to Fiji, we were warmly welcomed to the airport by some traditional music; this included four men singing in skirts and beach shirts-very much to my amusement! Strangely, neither Liza or I felt as though we had just arrived in Fiji and we weren't exactly excited about being there, which was even more odd. We put this down to being so excited about reaching South America, but I still couldn't help but feel very ungrateful!
When we arrived at our hostel we were 'treated' to some Cava, which was this nation's favourite drink, despite tasting distinctly like mud. We downed it anyway and said our thank yous and joined the staff later on for a few games of cards.
After breakfast we got the first boat over to Mana Island where we had booked some dorm beds, and lying in our dorm we found a friendly guy from England, about our age, who was with a couple of his mates, who would also be sharing our dorm.
The next day, after getting on pretty well, we clubbed together and went for a three hour long snorkel and I was very grateful for the encouragement from
one of these guys at getting me to dive down-as some of you might know, I don't like deep water that much... We had some dinner, did some 'paper dancing' and watched a couple of the guys, Ian and Adam, shave their hair off, as they'd made a drunken pact and being boys they had actually stuck to it...
We did very little the following day, which is the only real thing that one seems to be able to do in Fiji, but we did mustre up the energy to watch 'Pirates of the Carribean II' that evening which was pretty boring so I went to bed.
After saying goodbye to the boys who were heading on that morning, we spent most of the day on the beach and then had an absolutely massive buffet dinner! The night was a flowing cava fest which we found out is made from ground-up tree roots and water; All I can say is that it made me feel very strange after a few cups of it... Traditionally you have to clap once before you drink and say 'bula', meaning 'goodwill'. Then once you have had your drink, you have to clap twice.
Later
on that night I started talking to a bunch of Irish girls, when Leez was bed-bound. One of these girls managed to break us all into absolute hysterics as she described a haircut she had received whilst being in Sydney; The hairdresser had cut the top of her hair to within an inch of it's life, realised that she had massively screwed up, so began curling her back bits of hair right up to her ears. To top it off she then decided to phone her ex-boyfriend back in Ireland and proceeded to cry down the phone at him. Good craic as they say!
I swung in the hammock until lunchtime, when a Norweigan couple who I had met on the Whitsunday Islands sailing trip came up and asked if Leez and I would like to join them on a boat trip to 'Honeymoon Island', where you could do a bit of snorkelling, so that was the afternoon's activities sorted! On the way back from this trip, the same couple said that they spotted in the region of ten sharks, which we had somehow missed...much to Liza's disappointment, but to my pure delight! That evening Leez had just a little
trouble trying to call home, because it was her Mum's birthday. It looked as though she had just run a 26 mile marathon after all the hassle she had gone through.
The next day we had a ferry booked to go back to the mainland and once we had arrived, we nearly broke into a run as we headed to an internet cafe, after not having talked to anyone for nearly a week! It was here that I found out that my FATHER had somehow managed to join facebook! You see, facebook is a safe haven away from the parentals, so I was a little shocked and worried, but at least he had access to some more of my photos...as most of them are on this site-it being far faster to upload photos onto there than onto travelblog and as I'm not that patient and all...
Then, after enduring hunger for long enough and discovering that we needed to spend the rest of our fijian dollars, we went to a Chinese restaurant and pretty much ordered everything on the menu. However I am ashamed to say that even we couldn't finish it all.
There was one more night in Fiji
before we would be on our way to New Zealand, so we thought we better had start reading about it...
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