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Published: December 28th 2009
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10 O'clock and the first beer of the day was going down nicely!HAPPY BIRTHDAY to US!!!
It is Nath’s birthday today and we had started the morning when we had left Manta Ray with an early morning beer and I had spelt out happy birthday with shells I’d collected form the beach. However my enthusiasm was waning as the Mick Jagger lips I had developed from snorkelling, hadn’t healed and in fact had turned into 3 very sore blistered scabs which is all I could think about. So I wasn’t very happy but didn’t want to ruin the day for Nath.
The boat ride to our birthday island was a lot longer as we were spending our last few nights in the upper islands of the Yasawa. 3 hours later we arrived at an area called the Blue Lagoon, due to the film from the seventies, but to be honest it could have easily been named after the water. I know I keep saying it was sooo blue but this was even bluer if that’s possible, it was like every tropical image you’ve ever seen. We hung around for quite a while waiting for our little boat to come and get us, but everyone else seemed to be leaving the boat
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Its a hard life with weather and views like this at the Mantaray resort and I was worried we’d be left behind. In the end we finally got on our little boat and were transferred across the crystal clear water to Otto and Fanny’s. We were in a boat with only one other couple so were guessing it wouldn’t be too busy on this island.
We arrived on the island and saw a little wooden sign leant up against a palm tree saying welcome to aunty fanny’s tea house with a list of cakes and prices underneath - already this was looking good! We walked down a little sandy path with our wet feet (we’d got quite used to wearing our flip flops everywhere and taking them off to get out of the small boats that moored at each beach) and were taken into a little office. It was very hot that day and I couldn’t wait to see what our room would be like. There were only 6 bures at this resort and it was the tiniest we’d been to. There were no free kayaks etc although you could as always hire a snorkel and nothing else really to do activity wise. However the sea view bure we had was great -
it had a bathroom inside (yipppeee) and even a shower outside in case we felt like it!!! Another bed with mosquito net on it and a little lounge area with free rain water (mmmm yummy) it looked a little like something out of a hillbilly town with its porch and chair, all that was missing was a shot gun!
Bar the couple we had arrived with we were the only people on the whole resort, it was like our own little piece of paradise. I was extra pleased because they had a puppy called Odi who liked to follow you round and was very friendly. The dinning area was a small wooden hut with open sides and a long table and benches down the middle, enough for about 12 people. I was thinking that our birthday celebrations I had re ordered were gonna be a little quiet.
We went for our tea and cake in the little dining area and met Fanny (she and everyone we had met were so genuinely friendly) we also got bitten loads by mosquitoes flying around the dinner area. I know I said I put spray on all the time and I did,
but it turns out they had figured this out and had now tried my forehead. So the number of lumps on my face was up to four!!! After this we went to explore the area and walked up the beach. I say beach, the water was so far up the shore we had to wade through the deepening water to get back. We passed a load of old bures which used to be another resort and that was about it so we really were the only people on the island.
Walking back along the beach I felt a lump on the underside of my foot. Stopping to investigate I found what looked to be a leach stuck to the ball of my foot, it was about an inch and a half in diameter, firm and brown and black in colour. However on closer inspection it turned out to be a huge flap of loose skin on my foot which had filled with sand!!! (nice!)
We got back to the bure and got ready for our evening meal which was due to be a birthday celebration. As with all of the islands, the traditional way to call people to dinner
was to bang on a large log, so on hearing this we starting getting our bits together. Within a few minutes though one of the staff had come to find us as they were waiting to celebrate and we had been a little slow - whoops! Fiji time! hehehe
At the table we were given flower lays which I was really pleased about, having wanted one since we arrived. They’d made a huge birthday cake with our names on and the dinner was all lined up ready to be dished up. We sung happy birthday and then tucked into our dinner which was properly home made, chicken and potatoes etc and was divine. We were meant to be having a kava celebration and dance by the local tribe but being a Sunday (when nothing happens) the young men were all out at church or sleeping. I didn’t mind at all as I could bare another night of kava!! We got chatting with the couple who had arrived with us, they were a Netherlands couple so you can guess what his name was……yes that right Barry!!! I’m not kidding it was Barry Von something. Half way through the evening I
noticed a huge spider hanging from the eves of the roof but luckily it was dead, didn’t stop me keeping an eye on it all evening though. We had also heard what we thought were birds cheeping in the night, but it turned out to be Geckos!!! One of which, a tiny one, jumped onto Nath’s arm - it was so cute. Odi also hung around a lot at dinner, she was very cute and after chatting to Fanny it turned out they’d found her as a stray pup when she was only a few weeks old - lucky for her!!
We returned to our little hut so pleased we could get a decent night sleep without having to find the loo in the middle of the night - we did however have to share the bathroom with a bunch of cockroaches, god knows where they had got into from!! We slept with all of the windows open as it was really hot under the mosquito net and fell asleep listening to the ocean - at one point it sounded like it was pouring with rain but it was just the wind rustling the palm tee leaves - nice!!!
The next day, my birthday, we were going over to the blue lagoon beach but unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy the day much as the pain in my lips was worse and they looked disgusting and didn’t seem to be getting any better. We headed over on a little boat with only one snorkel for Nath, as there was no way I was passing on my face rabies to a another set of snorkels!!! The beach was a long one and very empty, we found a nice spot and laid our picnic down (which Fanny had prepared for us) and Nath headed off to the resort that was based there to find out about hiring the kayaks, which I was really looking forward to as I could snorkel. However the resort was a very posh one and the kayaks and indeed all the furniture was not to be used by anyone other than patrons!!! Not even if we paid to use them - miserable buggars, I could understand if the resort was full but there was no one there. So I wasn’t in the best of moods….. (some things never change ay!)
The weather was really hot that day
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The Birthday boy and after a good few hours our little bit of shade disappeared, so we hunted for a tiny bit of palm tree and tried to hide under it. I can see how people die in the heat and it did feel a little bit like a desert island as we had the beach to ourselves. Nath did some snorkelling and I just sunbathed and tried to ignore my lips. About 8 hours later they picked us up and took us back to Otto and Fanny’s for another night of great food. Nath had guessed that the sunset was gonna be great and suggested we find the way to the top of the hill on the island to watch it. I however, as much as I wanted to go, was not feeling very well and my lips were still so sore I couldn’t concentrate. In the end Nath ran to the other side of the island rather than trek up the hill to watch it and I stayed behind. And to my detriment, the sunset was amazing from the colours I could see form the bure and the shots that Nath got were brilliant. I had tried to follow Nath at
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Having a snack of crackers and chocolate spread! yummy! one point but had walked down a path we had tried the day before and got covered in ants so whimped out and ran back.
So distracted by the sunset Nath was a little late for dinner (again) and came running back to the resort through the jungle looking like the scene at the end of Ace Ventura 2. We didn’t have flowers lays this evening but the food was lovely and we had a bottle of wine to share. We were beginning to run out of conversation with the couple from the Netherlands as they were the only other people at the dinner table and so we were quite glad to be moving on the next day. We returned back to our little hillbilly bure whilst checking out the millions of stars above us. There were no cockroaches in the bathroom this time - that shampoo bottle I’d left over the plug hole must had worked!!!
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