WAYA ISLAND - FIJI

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Saturday 23rd October

Flight time 10 hours 30 minutes - Distance 5530 miles

Friday passed us on the way somewhere as we left on thursday 11pm and arrived in Nadi, Fiji at 5am on the Saturday.
That'll be the international date line we passed no doubt!

We are stuck in Nadi (pop 45,000) for about 3 hours until our shuttle bus comes and picks us up but all is not lost as the sun is already out and is blazing hot even at 6.30 in the morning.
We just sit and wait basking in the warm sun until our bus arrives to tak us to our marina to catch the Octopus flyer which will take us out to the Ocotpus Resort, Waya Island, in the southern part of the Yasawa Islands. The Yasawa cluster of islands are found to the North West of the main Island of Fiji.
Areas of the Yasawas were the locales for the 1980 filming of the romance adventure film The Blue Lagoon.

So after much delay we finally embark on our 1 hour boat ride across the beautiful blue sea. 25 of us are crammed into the boat and its pretty hairy as we going quite fast and the inflatable hull seems to be far too flat for the weight on board. The captain orders one of the crew to start foot pumping the air back into one side!! Nice!!

We pass many beachcomber islands and then we are treated to some lovely large rocky islands until we turn round a bay and we can see a dotted line of wooden huts in the distance. With the boat slowing down considerably we knew we had arrived and we have dropped anchor about 200 metres from shore. Theres no pier or jetty. The underwater of the whole bay is covered in soft coral so they send a smaller boat out to pick us up through the gaps in the corals. We are getting on the smaller boat and sitting down when all of sudden you can hear Fijian guitars and women singing a lovely welcoming song on the beach!! cool!! Theres about 20 of the staff, men and women all singing and swinging along with each other until we finally hit sand.
What a great welcome and we are greeted with handshakes, hellos (bula,bula) and big broad smiles which really made the last 16 hours travel all but a distant memory.

We are instantly treated to a free lunch as an apology for the lateness of the boat and then taken to our rooms.

The room we have booked is called a bure. These bures are located in beautiful tropical gardens and are just a few short steps to the ocean. Each bure has its own private bathroom featuring a environmentally friendly solar powered hot water system, electricity, mozzy nets and ceiling fans. Its borderline Mexican Cabana to us and we're a bit iffy to be totally honest..Lets see how we get through the 1st night!!

We are by now out of our heavy clothes, showered and beside the pool with a ice cold drink before you could say 'coconuts and palm tree's'!!!

Jill and I are pinching ourselves for about a hour to make sure this isn't a dream as its very, very nice indeed.
The photo's speak for themselves. White sand, blue water and hot sunshine!
The evening came quickly and we got to bed at around 8pm and missed dinner because we have battered ourselves by traveling so much over the last few weeks so it made sense to get a good 10/12 hour sleep and take this Island full on in the morning!!

Sunday 24th October

We are still pinching ourselves at the beauty of this place and the weather is still very hot so we dont waste anytime and get by the poolside and soak up some rays.
We walk ten metres out our Bure door and land on the beach, take a right and the resort is about another 25 metres along the beach. We're in heaven!!
Its getting too hot for me as usual so I take cover and read my book by the volleyball court hoping there would be some people up for a game later. Sure enough a few folk start bopping the ball about and its not long before im right in about and enjoying a bit of beach volleyball.
We stop for lunch and Jill and I watched as another boat full of people arrived to the sound of people singing the Fijian welcome song along with guitars on the beach.
Its not surprise that the time like seems like a standstill as it feels like late afternoon but its only coming up for one o'clock.
I took the time to read up on the weekly activities that they hold each day and night and alot of it is hill treks and village visits along with some Paddi and snorkel dives. I definately want to do some fishing of some sort whether its deep sea or handline fishing.

Tea time finally arrives and we got freshened up and made our way to the restaurant and had dinner
and got to know some of the other guests staying here.
Its not long before its nearing bedtime so we walk off through the torch lit pathways to our bure for the night.

Monday 25th October

Its scorching hot today, about 36oC. I didnt last long in the sun so retreated to the shade after about 20 minutes.
As usual Jill read most of the day in the sun and I just lazed about, every so so often having a game of volleyball with the locals and guests which is getting sore now as both my forearms are bruised.

Tonight they will be hosting a crab race in which we can enter a crab to race. The entry fee per crab goes to the local childred on the island for scholarship funds. Because of the isolation, the children must attend a boarding school away from the village this means that the cost of educating each child properly is very high, around $800 per child per year.

After dinner we are told to head onto the beach area to pick our crabs. Down on the beach they have a large pile of hermit crabs all scurrying about so i looked for a couple of decent pedigree crabs for us both. I grabbed a largish one for Jill and a smaller White shelled one for myself and went to register them at the bar!! Numbers 42 and 43 were drawn on the shells with a marker pen and put into a large metal bucket along with another 50 or 60 crabs all with their own numbers.
I've named my crab crusty. 😊 Ive got a good feeling about my crab as he's already trying to clamber
up the side of the bucket to escape!!

Just before the race we met another coupld from Scotland called John and Kat who are from Glasgow and The Western Isle's and its not long before we are all summonded down to the racecourse!

So we are all standing around the volleyball court on the beach and they have raked a 2 metre circle in the sand with a smaller 30cm circle in the center. There are also 4 bowls of water sunk into the sand and little sand sand walls in various places to give the crabs some obstacles.
The object of the race is for the crabs to be dumped in the centre of the circle where they must make their way to the outer circle to be crowned the winner. There will be three races as since there are over 60 crabs we are to have a first round in which the first 20 crabs over the line will advance to the next round.

A girl who won the race with her crab last week carries the bucket to the centre circle and turns the whole bucket upside down onto the soil so the crabs are trapped still. 3,2,1..the bucket is lifted and all hell breaks loose on the sidelines as it bcomes a very competitive contest as everyone is shouting on their crabs.
Some crabs are sluggish and some are even not bothering to move whereas the ones that do take of quickly soon sucumbe to the water traps and sand walls.
Its quite hard to tell which crab is which due to the amount of crabs and most of the crabs are covered in sand but i can see Crusty having a stonking race around the water trap and he reminds me of Redrum jumping Beachers Brook at the Grand National!!!

As soon as the first twenty cross the line they halt the race and the ones that haven't made it are named and shamed!! Jills didnt make it past the first round whereas Crusty had breezed through.

Its Semi final time and things are hotting up!! Only the first ten over the line will advance to the grand final. Once again the crabs are placed in the center spot of the circle and are released. The crowd goes wild and its not long before Crusty is out in front!! But as soon as he's 1 inch from the line he decides to have a wee sleep in his shell...oh for gods sake!! A few crabs make it past the finish line and Crustys still having a read of his Crab Times while smoking a Cigar!! Come on you little s....and he's off...he crosses in about 4th or 5th and qualifies. I'll be having words with him in the crab paddock before the final. 😊

Its Final time and Crustys informs me the going is good to soft and its in the bag! 3,2,1....And the bucket is raised and Crusty is soon in a 2 way crab race with number 12 and they are at it hammer and tongs past the water trap! They both stopped at the next sand wall and have a little chat about the weather when another crab passes them by which makes Crusty and number 12 angry and they step it up a gear, as the crowd, especially his owner, screams encouragement!
Crusty kicks for home and is the first past the line by about 3 lengths!
You'd think we'd won the lottery the way we were celebrating!!

The presentation begins and third place wins $10 and does a lap of honour with the owner holding the crab aloft to much applause. 2nd place gets $20 and proceeds to do the lap of honour. And the winner of the $30 bar tab is crab number 43 otherwise known as Crusty. I go and collect my crab and winnings where i kissed Crusty on the shell and punch the air in delight!! I run around the circle like a man posessed holding Crusty aloft.
The manager does a mock interveiw with me for a few seconds and its alll a good laugh. Ive still got Crusty on my table and he's frantically trying to run away as lots of people are coming up to congratulate us and give him a pat on the shell.
Its time to part with crusty and i gently throw him out to sea. 😊
After the winnings have been drunk I find myself looking out into the bay wondering if Crusty has found a nice wee hole to rest in, found a mate for the night or has he been eaten by a predator on his way back inshore!!
Ah well, thats life!!

Tuesday 26th

Its a little overcasst today as there was storms through the night which hasnt quite cleared up yet but we are thankful for it as we've been cooking the last few days. I hired a snorkel for the day and went to look at the soft corals which 20 metres from the beach.
The water is fine and warm and the marine life under here is amazing. Lots of colourful fish can be seen and dont seem to be bothered when you swim close to them. More interesting are the corals themselves and the array of colours are fantastic, i just wish id invested in an underwater camera.
Back ashore and i join up with John on the volleyball court where we played with other residents for a good hour or so as tonight there is a Fiji V the rest of the world competition.
Its a shots for shots game which basically means if u miss the ball, have a bad shot or even just happen to be near the shots tray you will recieve a free alcoholic shot mixed with fruit juice.
We were treated to a curry night for dinner and it was really fine. Once finished i got changed back into my shorts for the volleyball tourney, this is getting serious! 😊
Well it was 6 Fijians against 26 Rest of the worlders and it seemed a bit one sided but dont be fooled as the Fijians have only lost 9 times in 7 years against the rest of the world.
The game kicks off and the Fijians won th first set without breaking sweat and it was not looking good for the ROTW. The shots are being dished out and its not long before some of the Fijians are flapping a bit!
It was a great comeback from us as we won the second set and then we took it to a tiebreak in the third and somehow we managed to win the match and get treated to qa round of shots.

There was a bit of a drama after the dust settled on the volleyball court as we had a total blackout of power and we were plunged into darkness. 20 minutes later and power was restored and that was my cue to hit the sack.
We were in bed sleeping when i woke up to the noise of the Aircon switching off and realised that the power had cut off again. I was sure they'll have it fixed by the morning so i dozed off to sleep again.

Wednesday 27th October

We woke up and still no power. It turns out that the back up generator has packed in aswell as its not been used in a while and hasn't been serviced regularly. The mind boggles at the thought of these things as you would think they'd be, excuse the pun, a bit more switched on than this!
Anyway who needs power when you have lots of sun and your stuck on a desert island!!
Another good thing was that they have a little generator for the kitchen fridges which is just aswell for the sake of fresh food and meat stuff.
We had a really fine dinner which was advocado stuffed chicken and potatoes followed by pineapple cheesecake.
Its a lovely night as theres no clouds and we can see all the stars and the milky way is the best ive seen it!!

We like to think we are a little clued up on our stars now after our education on stars in San Fran so we debate amoungst ourselves which star is which and we could see clearly mars and saturn blinking
away.
There's a party on the beach with a bonfire blazing brightly but no sooner had we arrvied it started to rain and that was that.

Thursday 28th October

Still no power and its amazing the resort is still being run normally although we had limited mene to choose lunch from.
John and I have booked ourselves on a handline fishing trip at 4 o'clock so we sipped a couple of beers while the girls sunbathed in the glorious sun. Our fishing boat was fully booked so we are laid on a local boat from the village which we waited for as the first boat headed out to sea.
We board our village boat with 4 other hotel guests and 2 villagers and headed out around the bay and out to sea. Some tuna's were diving in and out of the water along side the boat which was really cool and we also saw a turtle although it didnt surface long. Then we saw the flash of flying fish jumping in and out of the water.
We had the two fishing rod's cast out early as we needed to catch our bait before we could start fishing with the hand reels. We took it in turns to hold the Fishing rod and still nothing was taking. We changed location and then the Australian girl on the boat reeeled in a large grouper fish about 5lb in weight.
Its not long before one of the two villagers thats on our boat is chopping up the fish and handing out everyone a little piece to put on the hooks and throw overboard. 1 hour later and still no one catches anything but we all have had plenty of bites. We are told to raise our hooks so we could move to another area nearer the coast. We arrived at our next stop and bumped into the other fishing boat that left before us with 12 people on board and they too had caught nothing!

I tried a technique my grandad showed me with worms and made my bait smaller and wrapped it around the whole hook and part of the line. The reason for this is if a fish wants to eat the whole lot he's have to swallow the hook right pasts the join with the line making it more likely to hook into its mouth.
Well it worked a treat as within 5 minutes i had a massive pull on my hand and i countered it with my own strong pull and i waws now wrestling with a decent fish. I pulled and pulled the line in until i could see the silver belly of a yellow Snapper coming to the surface.
I yanked him aboard and he had swallowed everything right into his gut!!
He weighed about 3 to 4 pounds and im buzzing unlike the rest of the passengers onb this boat and the
other one who are gutted. I hold my catch aloft and give it a loud whoop whoop and sit down in silence having
a wee giggle to myself with John cursing a fine scottish twang!!
We watched a glorious sunset before sailing home in the dark and just made it to Octopus beach resort in time for
dinner which consisted of a seafood BBQ which was quite nice.

Tonights event was a quiz night and the teams were the same tables we had dinner at so the four of us are in the same team along with two aussies. There is a talent competition after 4 rounds of questions and then a last round of
individual events to decide the winning team out of the 8 teams competing. We have the smallest team with 6, everyone else has teams of 8 or 10 and have a good age mix whereas we are all around the 30 year old mark.

Our team name 'the dodgy generators' didnt go down too well with management but its all a good laugh and its not long before we romped the first question round and won two bottles of champagne!
We came about 6th in the next round and 2nd in the third and were doing well and came joint first in the 4th music round so shared a bottle each of champagne with the joint winning team. Spirits are high and we are struggling for ideas for our talent round. Muggins here suggested doing a bit of breakdancing and wished i hadnt as it stuck as we had no other ideas and if we'd at least done something we get points as we were in the running to win the $150 bar tab!
I quickly teach the team the little side step breakdance moves to back me up as there's no way im going up to the stage
to make a tit of myself alone!!

We were the 6th team in line to do our talent round and the teams before us had done a range of stuff from singing,
playing guitars, monologs and even yoga! Its our turn so i instruct the bar staff to get some hip hop on and
I gather my troops up and its not long before they are in semi circle around me doing the wee dance I taught with
me thinking im 21 again doing my routine. Well it went better than i expected as the champagne made me a bit braver
than normal and we got a good applause and 60 well needed points for the team which meant we made it into the final with two other teams!! Result!!

The last round consisted of a mental, physical and conundrum. We won the conundrum as it was Dangermouse and John spotted it straught off. I did the mental game which turned out to be a three way playoff of paper, scissors and stone I was the first one out as i stupidly diecided to stick with stone on every round!! Its not a game for when your drunk thats for sure.
The australian guy from our team did the physical challenge and we needed to win to be outright champs. Press ups was the order of the day and our guy fell just one before the winner which was a shame as the winner wasnt even doing full press ups but we werent caring by now as we're all having a great time and shambles was only around the corner!!
So we came second overall which is just aswell in some respect as a $150 bar tab would've been potatoes over the side for us!!

John, Kat and the both of us stayed up very late drinking and in true scots form we were the last people left in the
beach bar. The two bar staff didnt mind us being there as they were intrigued at some of the stories we were telling to each other and mustve struggled to keep up. We toyed with the idea of staying up for the sunrise but called it a night, or morning in this case, as Jill and I have to check out at 11 and board our boat at 12. Oh we dont do any thing by halves!!

Friday 29th Ocotber

We are both surprised we got up in time for breakfast and are greeted to some comments on our talent routine on the way to the buffet which embarrasess me a little especially because i was limping my way around the breakfast buffet. My hip and knee willl need replaced at some stage as ive fairly given myself a right dunt plus ive just noticed that something has had a right feast on my leg through the night as its itchy as hell!

We check out and wait for the boat to depart which is signalled by a drum roll on a traditonal Fijian Drum.
We arrange to meet up with John and Kat in Oz and exchange emails and its not long before we hear the drums beating so we made our way onto the beach to jump on our little boat that would take us out to the bigger Ocotopus boat.
We are waved off the island by John and Kat and the staff, most of whom are singing a Fijian farewell song whilst playing guitars and its all Fijian indeed!!
We keep on waving until the beach is out of sight and we board the next boat about a half mile out to sea.
The hour crossing takes no time at all and we arrived back on the mainland to a shuttle bus that has been laid on to take us to our airport hotel for the night.
Since there is only one boat to and from Octopus resort a day it wasnt going to get us to the mainland in time for our early flight tomorrow so we have to stay at a hotel called Raffles which is a 5 minutes walk from international departures.
Raffles is nice and a welcome stay as its quiet and just what we need after a week of shenanigans so its not long before we are snoring like babies after our dinner which we had room serviced just to be extra lazy.
We are looking forward to New Zealand tomorrow as Fiji and Usa has been great but felt like a holiday and we've drunk and eaten far too and its time to get back to the backpacking regime good and proper.

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Photos

Departing Mainland
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Comments

[Ang Pang]

Wow
Loving reading your blog totally amazing so well written can just see yous! Fab stories, the crab one & the break dancing well funny! Typical you two last in the bar. What an experience! Missing yous! Take care xxx