Mana Island

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June 13th 2006

Published: July 1st 2006

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Emma Sean

a hot Fijian night

We are waiting outside our hotel as we have been told we are being picked up at 0830 for our transfer over to Mana Island. There are about 30 other people here too but they are all waiting for either the Feejee experience or the awesome adventures buses.
By 8.45 we are still here and everyone else has gone. Sean & Sar go inside to ring them, apparently we are now being picked up at 9am and our boat is now at 11am (it was suppose to be at 9.30). We are abit mad as we are now going to lose half our day travelling!
At 9.20 an Indian lady comes running up to us saying how sorry she is and that we have to go quickly as our boat leaves in 10mins (i guess the 9.30 is back on again then).

The lady chats away in the car and is very friendly and we make it to the boat in plenty of time. Two big men come over and grab are bags and chuck them onto a tiny little wooden boat. There are 2 other girls on the boat and turn out to be English too but they hardly

Sean & Daryl

speak.
We pass many of Fiji's other beautiful Islands on our way to Mana. Our first inpressions of Mana aren't good, the tide is out which makes the beach look very scruffy but we're keeping an open mind.
We check in and are taken to our 'family bure'. On our way we pass through the local village, there are small children running around, smiling at us and shouting 'Bula Bula'. This means hello in Fijian.
Our Bure turns out to be VERY traditional and although it is completely clean we were hoping for something a little nicer. After an hour of convincing ourselves we can live with it for 8 nights we notice some rooms behind ours that are really modern. We rush down to reception and ask as politely as possible if we can change rooms..it turns out that the more modern rooms are actually cheaper so it was fine.
As we moved our stuff into our new room it was actually a relief..this room was much better and had a little balcony with chairs and hammocks..very cute!

On our first full day there we take a walk of the island in search of the best beach, this

Sean on the paradise 'sunset beach'

only takes 2hrs and eventually we come across thick white sand and crystal clear, calm waters..this was called sunset beach..it was beautiful. We set up our stuff on the beach and spend the rest of the day there and most of the next 8 days too!!!

On one of the days we decide to take an Island hopping trip. We stopped at Castaway Island (not actually the island where they filmed the film with Tom Hanks but where he stayed). After that it was over to the beautiful Plantation Island, which was definitly my favourite. It was so beautiful and had a massive luxury resort there and jettys with lots of very expensive looking boats. We spend a couple of hours there relaxing and enjoying our BBQ lunch before we head over to Honeymoon Island for some snorkelling. The water is so clear and the sun shining on the coral brings out all its beautiful colours with so many different fish weaving amongst it.

In the eveving we decided to check out the entertainment, and over the 8 days there we get to see many different colourful dance performances and make some great friends too!

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