Bula!

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BULA from Fiji! Bula is the Fijian word for hello, and given the friendly nature of the people hear we must have used this work at least 1000 times! After leaving San Francisco at 10pm on 10th November and flying for 11 hours, we landed in Fiji at 5am on the 12th November…The more we think about it the more confusing it gets but its basically something to do with the international date line and shit.

Anyway our ferry left for the resort at 10 am and after a choppy and rather wet 90 minute ride we arrived at octopus. The island was amazing and we were sang on to the island by the local tribe. After a day in the sun we then had to attend a welcome ceremony and got our first taste of kava, Fiji’s traditional drink. Kava is basically a mix between alcohol and a drug which makes you numb, and is apparently a bit like loopy juice. You have to down the bowl that’s given to you and then clap 3 times and introduce yourself. It tatsed strange at first but by the end of our stay, we became quite accustomed to the stuff.

After our dinner we settled down for the evenings entertainment…a crab race! After catching our own crabs we brought them forward to the “arena” to let battle commence, unfortunately due to the firey nature of my crab, I dropped him about 5 minutes prior to the race which led to him refusing to move once the race had started, either that or he was probably dead. Ryan’s crab made it to the semi finals before giving up and going to sleep.

The next few days pretty much consisted of sunbathing, swimming, snorkling and drinking Fiji gold. One night we stayed up late with some local guys drinking kava, but it appears 10 cups of the stuff is too much to handle so we stumbled into bed around midnight.

On the Sunday we woke up early and for the first time in about 10 years we went to church! Unfortunately the service was all in Fijian and after about 45mins Ryan had enough and got up to leave, I thought that was an excellent idea and quickly followed before looking back and seeing about 15 westerners do the same. However this is perfectly normal and ryan will not go to hell for leading the mass exodus. We felt holy for the rest of the day and relaxed before going to a beach bonfire and having a few drinks.

We left the island on Monday to head back to the mainland and the coral coast.

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