Feejeeeee Experience!!!!!!!

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Well this is gonna be beautiful i bet....along the lines of the Maldives but maybe not as nice. gonna see the two main islands and the capital and then find a nice chilled island with some hunky blokes on to soak up the sun for a good week......mmmmmmm perrrrrrrrrrrfect!!!

Well now i'm away i'm thinking about either doing the feejee exp here, island hopping and hopefully do my dive course yer mannn!!!!!!

Arrived in Fiji on Monday 19th Nov!!!! well certainly doesn't feel like cold, dark, wet November that i know from home, its really hot and humid here, sunny most of the time but it does rain a bit as well!!!! flew into Nadi so spent my first two nights in Fiji in Nadi (pronounced 'nandi') which is a pretty small town with not much in it or going on, i then started my feejee exp on the Wednesday which goes round the main island Viti Levu in 4 days so you see the culture, villages, farming, schools, scenery etc so all cool.

Fiji is quite different to other places i've been in ways but also similar, the people are made up of fijians and indofijians so they basically look a cross between, indian, chinese and malay sort of. It is quite a poor country not 3rd world but relatively poor especially compared to Australia and New Zealand where i have last been, but in some ways similar to asia as in the climate and the difference in economy etc.


I decided to do the feejee experience first so that i would see the real fiji and the main island and do the traveller bit before i went to the more relaxing fiji islands!!!!!!

The first day of the feejee experience we got on the bus and met the group and the tour guide and the two drivers, feejee exp very much like kiwi, the bus is exactly the same looking but on the feejee exp you have a seperate driver and tour guide which is cool, maybe they cant do two things at once so easily here!!! our tour guide was bola, like the word bula which is used every minute here which means hello, cheers, good day, how are you etc!!!!! so everyone is friendly and says bula all of the time!!!!! so bola was our tour guide he was way coool!!!!! so we met everyone and did introductory stuff and then the first place we stopped on the bus was at Natolda Beach, feejee exp is only 4 days long really you could spend longer if you want but generally people just do the minimum 4 days and it is just around the main island. Natolda beach was a nice beach but it was drizzling a bit when we were there but sunny as well, we all had a big bbq on the beach cooked by the drivers so this was a good start to the trip got to know everyone and have some grub!!!! im a dab hand at the tour thingys now, i know the ropes you meet everyone and get on and off the bus etc and do all the activites and stay in hostels etc....easy!!!!! so beach first and then we drove a bit more, the main island is cool, pretty green and hilly no mountains i dont think, mostly surrounded by coast all good, pretty and nice quite like the dominican repulic was. We secondly stopped at a local village, here we had to wear sarongs and t-shirts to be respectful, the village was basically in the middle of no where and most of the houses were tin or wooden shack like homes so this was quite different to what i have been seeing, we met a couple of the villagers and bola gave us a talk inside the village hall like house!!!! it was eye opening seeing a local village and the way that the fijian people live, it is not 3rd world so it is not too poor but it is also very different from a lot of places. from the village we went to a place where they have natural deserty sand dunes!!!!! here we went sand boarding!!! id been looking forward to this quite a bit as i wanted to do it in NZ but didn't, we arrived there and they told us what we'd have to do and then we had to climb up the sand dunes which i nearly had a heart attack doing as im so incredibly unfit now!!! got to the top and poooooo didnt realise how high it was!!! it didn't look so high from the ground so was pretty scarey lying down to fly down the dunes on a body board!!!! was really cool though we all had a couple of goes very good fun!!!! that night we stayed at mango bay resort which was a really nice hostel, really a hotel id say, stayed in the biggest dorm i've ever stayed in with about 12 bunk beds so slept about 24 people or maybe more!!! the hostel was lovely and modern and nice, had a pool and right on the beach, that night we all had dinner together in the restaurant/bar which was also nice, good group of people again, also bumped into two australian girls that i had met on auckland harbour bridge doing the bungy....small world hey!!!! meet on a bridge bungying and then in a different country in the same hotel!!!!! random hey!!!! only bad thing about the hostel was that there were about 5 million frogs hopping around everywhere!!! errrrr im not into things moving around my feet lol!!!!!!!we also had our first kava ceremony, in fiji they drink this alcoholic (??) well weird narcotic something weird discusting drink and they have ceremonies to drink it so we had a go at this, it basically tastes like muddy washing up liquid yum!!!!!played a trivia quiz and had a bonfire on the beach which was fun!!!!!

The second day we got on the bus at 8.45am and drove a bit until we reached the place where we were going to go on a 3 hour trek in the rainforest!!!!! how cool!!!! turned out it was raining anyway!!!! we had to wear our bikinis and clothes that could get wed and muddy as we were going to get wet and muddy and go rafting down a river at the end!!! well this day turned out to be briliinat!!!!! we also had to wear trainers to do the trek and the only trainers i had with me were my brand new ones that id bought in NZ!!! so i had to wear them :-( the trek was awesome soooo cool, quite hard at first up hills and stuff through the forest, only 10 out of 14 of us chose to do it, we ended up getting pretty muddy and dirty quickly, it was raining and slippy and we kept falling over etc but it was still really humid!!! was very good!!! we reached a part of the forest/now rain forest where we had to walk through a creek in water for about an hour!!! this was cool and different and wet and slimey and bit scarey not knowing what was in the water but cool!!! i've never seen anything like it before, hiked on glaciers, been in caves and now trekking in the rain forest in the rain........i love it!!!!! once we finally got out of the rain forest 3 hours later we came out by a nice massive murky river where the others had come up in a boat to meet us, we all had lunch in the pouring rain just standing beside the river and in between the rain forest was an amazing place!!!! then we tubed down the river in black tubes with yellow life jackets on, all muddy wearing our leaf made hats lol!!!!! was soo much fun, once we had tubed down part of the murky brown river we stopped and all got into the tiny little low down boat which was going to take us all the way back down the river and alongside the rain forest back to where we had started and left the bus!!!!! This was amusing as well as we were all so muddy and dirty and tired and had the bright yellow life jackets on and leaf head gear!!!!! very much fun!!!! once we got back to the bus we were allowed to get changed in one of the locals house's, how sweet, plus the track for the trek had been especially made by the locals for the feejee experience so we cud see the rain forest...how cool!!!!! So this was a brilliant day, we then drove on round the island round to the east side where Suva the capital is!!!! We had a quick sight seeing tour around the capital in the bus, cor it is still quite poor and run down considering it is the capital of this country, old buses and vehicles everywhere, oldish buildings and markets and people everywhere. They took us to the palace gates where we had our pics taken with the guard lol!!!! and we spotted a local rugby team training in the field opposite and got a picture taken with them so this was fun!!!!! This night we stayed at Raintree lodge in Suva, this hostel wasn't as nice as the first one but the dorm was massive again and had an upstairs!!!!! Think this is a first for a hostel!!!!! That night we all went out into Suva to a restaurant called the Mad Dog Cafe and mainly all had very unfeejian food like burgers and pizzas and then went to the club next door and did some pole dancing lol!!!!!!!

The next morning we headed on around the island, this part of the island doesn't really have a main road, not that the main road has been very main, but now we were down to a bumpy track so slow driving. The first place we stopped was at a local school!!!! I thought maybe this was going to be a bit weird and not nice to see but the children were all so friendly, they showed us around themselves and basically most lessons were very laid back and hardly taking place, we saw the babies/children in the nursery and then the older children performed like a warrior dance for us, we got provided with fruit and drinks and then we all made a donation to the school computer lab that is being set up for looking after us. It was a really nice experience, cool to see the school is so laid back and the main thing they were focusing on was singing and dancing but i'm sure they have to learn academic stuff as well, the kids were all very friends and i'm still amazed at how good English they all speak!!!! After this we carried on around the bumpy track to the next village where we were going to have another proper kava ceremony with the chief of the village and his wife!!!! This was very proper this time, no messing around all serious and had to do the ceremony properly which was cool, the chief seemed a bit scarey but later on we go to talk to him and he was pretty normal!!!! While the men got to drink more kava us women had to practice or attempt weaving!!!!! In fiji a woman is good to marry if she can cook and weave well!!!!! So we all weaved a bracelet each and got to buy weaved bracelets and rings which was sweet!!!!! After this we had the oppurtunity to go bamboo rafting in the river and have a race back up but i decided this time along with about 5 others that we didn't want to get wet and muddy yet again so we took pics for others!!!!! Too many wet and muddy clothes already plus there were mad cows right next to the river so could have picked up anything after this we continued the drive round to Volley Volley beach which is on the north east of the main island where we were spending our third night. Volley Volley hostel was again very nice, big and spacious and modern and more like a hotel than hostel!!!! Only thing is freezing showers which you get in most of fiji!!!! That night we all had dinner at the bar together and then started playing drinking games lol!!!! Wheel barrow races, number games using sexual positions etc all very much drunken fun...and more kava!!!! ha ha was a really good night we all got very drunk, dancing on the tables and ended up on the beach with a bonfire, we tried to stay up until sunrise but gave up about 2am lol!!!!! so wicked night mucho funo!!!!!!

On our last morning we were allowed a bit of a lye in but we were all up early hung over and out on the beach sunbathing at about 7am!!!!! sweet topping up my tan from australia finally!!! yer so we laid on the beach, swam, had breakfast and then packed and checked out to leave at 12. We headed on further round the main island which we have nearly been right around now, we stopped in an indian town to have curry for lunch!!!!! yum yum!!!! And then the last activity and stop we made on the trip was just before we got back to Nadi centre we went to the mud baths!!!!! This was totally wicked!!!! we drove down a bumpy track to basically what was a field and in it there were natural hot spring baths and a mud pool!!!! This basically looked like a dirty pond!!!! We clambered in slowly and discustedly!!!!! Once in the bottom was all slimey and muddy and squidgy and you just had no idea what you were standing in!!!! How gross!!!!! So we all just about managed to get in and delved in down to the bottom to get the good mud and cover ourselves!!! lol!!!!!! all covered in mud and slimey we got out and took funny pics indeed, then to wash we got in the natural hot springs that were so boiling you could hardly get in and we girls only stayed in until we screamed and saw a crab on one of the other girls and all ran out lol!!!! So this was an awesome experience!!!!!

We were then dropped back off at our original hostel in Nadi!!! So it was over quite quick compare to Kiwi exp, but very good, compact experience!!! lots of free activites well all free or included in pass price and then just paid for accomodation and food on top so all good!!!! was weird being back in Nadi but we were just here for one night to sort ourselves out before we cud go to beach comber island........!!!!!!!! Bola came ot the hostel for drinks with us that evening and it turned out the fiji rugby players were staying in the hotel before they flew out of fiji so we got to meet them!!!!!

BULE BULA BULA VINAKA!!!!!!

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Comments

[Nurse Eleanore!!]

that was us down the raod 3 yrs ago!
down the road from the maldives, what an amazing holiday that was we had 3 years ago. That will be such a wonderful place sooooo want go to these islands now we have been to the maldives, just gonna tick off sri lanka next year first, let me know what the weather is like, bet it will be a lot hooter than here!!!dont send to many pics of this place am gonna be sooo jealous!!