Mango Bay

---

Mango bay resort is situated on the south west of mainland Fiji, on what is called the coral coast and when we arrived at mango bay we were not disappointed. Mango bay looked like heaven, cute wooden and straw huts set on lush green landscape. Mango bay is equipped with a large resturant over looking the crystal clear sea, a white sandy bay, free snoorkling and kayaking gear, pool, sun loungers, mini ice cream parlour, volley ball court (obviously not for our use but may be useful for perving on cute guys!), palm trees littered everywhere and a wide selection on the menu!Also, I got to introduce Anna and Bean to Toni and Amy (the girls I met at travellers beach resort, see Pea's grand adventure for mre details).

We arrived at mid day, so were just in time for lunch, then had an explore of the resort and a stroll on the beach, collecting any pretty shells we found. Bean collected about hundred, billion shells and popped them in her bag. Two days later, when Bean was sorting out shells into keepers and non-keepers, one shell start to toddle ofall by itself. we watched in amazment as this oe, tiny shell walked away from the rest of Bean's pile, as we watched we realised it must still have a hermit crab inside! Yuk! Bean helped the little fellow find its way back to the shore, that one was not going to be a keeper. Anyway, just chilled out first day and decided to have an early night. Yawn. However, before we could go to bed we had to run the-try-not-to-squash-a-slimy-toad-on-your-flipflop-gauntlet as Fiji is infultriated with toad at night from cute baby ones to not so cute daddy ones.

Day two: Today, we set our sighs on making some funky, Fijian style, coconut jewllery. Yet, we did not realise just how tough the good old coconut is and it is very tough. After about an hour of sawing, sanding, plucking and drilling we gave up on the jewellery and decided to eat them! We drilled holes in the top and stuck a straw in to get to that sweet, sweet cocunut juice, then hacked the coconut apart with a saw to get to the flesh. It was very sweet and creamy, it tasted all the better after all our hard work too! Next, one of the Fijian guys gave us a demostration of how to get a cocont down from the palm tree. In a blink of an eye, he was at the top of the tree and shaking it, as fresh coconuts tumbled to the ground.

Later that day, Anna and Bean got their first taste of Kava, at a kava ceremony. I had already tried it as had been in Fiji an extra week, so was alreadly a pro at drinking kava. Kava is the root from a kava tree, when the root is mixed with through a small sock like thing it makes a herby, muddy drink that is alcoholic. The older the kava root, the more alcolholic the kava is. Kava is Fiji's tradational drink and made differently in different villages across Fiji. For the kava ceremony we all sit around in a circle and the cheif passes around the kava to the group. When it is your turn to drink you must clap once and say 'Bula'(hello) and the group says 'Bula' back. Then you drink the kava, everyone claps three times together and the kava moves on to the next person. After two cups of kava our mouths tasted like we had licked the bottom of a mud pool so we decided to head over to the resturant for tea.

Day three: Today Bean got her bag back!! Whoo! And it meant that she could stop borrowing anna's knickers! ha ha. We spent the day at the beach, swimming, reading, eating ice cream and borrowed three kayaks and had a paddle around the coastline. That eveing it was 'bad taste' night, pretty self explanatory but you just had to wear tacky, trashy clothes. Anna was mortified at the idea of dressing up but I managed to convice her to come out for at least one Baileys! We all looked very random, Anna looked like a pirate and Bean and I looked colourful, by that I mean we looked as if we had got dressed in the dark and that all our clothes were fom the YMCA. Anna heard the words 'ladies on your left and gentlemen to your right of the dancefloor' and fearing some sort of dance off, she made her way to the nearest exit faster than the speed of light. Bean and I carried on dancing for a while longer, shaking our bums to 'Don't blame it on the sunshine' by Jackson Five and teaching everyone the moves to 'Saturday night'. Then, we followed in Anna's footsteps and headed home.

Day four: The sun is out in full force, so I wake at the crack of dawn (well, 8 o'clock is the crack of dawn to me when your traveling) and slip into my smallest bikini before even Bean is stirring. Bean and Anna soon wake up too, also eager to get on the beach and turn a darker shade of white! After, we polish off five rounds of toast each, fruit, cereal, tea and coffee we get to the beach to get the only thing that is going to be free this trip; a tan. After a hard day of sun worshipping, we settle down to a good film in the evening, 'Bend it like Beckham'. the film was pretty chessey but left me with a warm fuzzing feeling as I went to bed, knowing that Keira Knightley sometimes has her off day too.

Day five; Time to head back to Nadi. We said a sad farewell to Toni and Amy and wished them well on the rest off their adventures. We made our way to the bus stop, playing the now infamous 'Top four' game, where we report our top four faveorite items on any given suject, although it usual mean foods. Previous popular subjects have been fave meal, hot drink, cold drink, ice creams, sweet, chocolate bars, cereals, puddings, starters etc.

Thanks for reading.

Lots of love, Sooty. x

---