One Night on Bounty Island

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Hey Everyone,

So we arrived in Fiji Jan. 30th at 5:00am. Great flight with Air Pacific, would definitely recommend a flight with them. When we got into the airport, we were escorted up the stairs with a women who was going to help us book some resorts on the island. The original plan was to go to Nacula Island for 3 nights. The ferry is very expensive here, to get to the tip of the islands is $100 FJ one way per person. Crazy! But we are now realizing that everything is expensive here, no matter what you do. The only reason these original plans did not work out is because we missed the ferry (not our fault). But it may have been a blessing is one way, we have been talking to other people who ended up not enjoying the resort we were going to stay in there.

What we ended up doing, was taking a shuttle bus to the Nadi Bay Hotel, where we booked our packages there.

Let recap. Its about 30 C here. Lets just say, you can pretty much get by with only a thong on, haha. Not that I've worn mine that much. The people here are great, they don't seem to mind living in a tropical environment. While heading out for the ferry, we picked up some water at 2.50 FJ a bottle. Good to know that coke-a-cola is still cheaper at $1.50. Oh, and you'll have to ask Julie how much coke is at the resort.

So, we headed to Bounty Island, everyone we see always greets us with "BULA". The island resort was pretty nice. We ended up with a "bure" right on the beach. Julie's loving the idea of having a hammock under a palm-type tree about 10 ft from the water. Our island was the site of "celebrity island"; we kayaked around and found all the buildings where they did the shooting, etc. It's actually not peak season right now, even though its really hot, and there were only about 25 other people on the island with us.

Today (feb 2) as part of our tour package we took part in a booze cruise. For those of us who have seen "Castaway," we sailed out to that island and swam ashore. Big surprise, it looks exactly like it does in the film, haha. Except that there are several islands all around it. We also sailed to a a traditional Fijian village. The people there were entirely self sufficient with respect to food, living resources, ect. As chief of our sailing tribe, I was entitled to having tea with the chief. Haha, it sounds good, as long as you don't mind drinking what appears to be muddy water and participating in an interesting ritual. But they're anglicans, so its all good haha. Ok, I'll let julie get back to the keyboard and fix up my spelling mistakes. By the way, I captured it all on video tape. Except for the times I kept the camera on the beautiful children sitting in on the ceremony.

Yvonne and Karen, you can look forward to a small gift I bought from the village. I didn't mind spending money there!

Time to get back to the pool at the resort 😊 After we have dinner of course here in downtown Nadi!

Tomorrow we are heading down the coral coast and doing some river eco adventure and Fijian Culture Experience.

It will be hard to get up after a full day in the sun and after our "booze cruise"

Bye for now!

Keith and Julie

P.S. Hope it's snowing there!

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