Fiji

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The word paradise gets thrown around alittle to much in my opinion, unless that persons talking about the Fijian islands that is..

Arriving in nadi airport you are greeted by a small group of guys dressed in Hawaiian shirts playing mini guitars and singing a welcoming song and this friendliness is prominent through out the whole of Fiji and the surrounding islands (of which there are 333) we spent one night in nadi town in a very SE asian style hostel, ie basic and falling apart alittle..
but from there we booked all our boats and things and decided unlike the other multitudes of tourists island hopping up and down we would hit two places and just chill out.
The first island we chose was Mana island quite a big island compared to alot of others there which range from just a bit of sand poking out the sea (some with a palm tree on) up to the main land which seems huge in comparison,
sailing to the island was amazing just 8 or 9 of us on a little speed boat jetting through all these tiny islands, around an hour later we came to mana and pulled up onto the beach and took 10 steps up the beach to our hostel.. winner

For the next few days we didnt do that much really got up for breakfast sat on the beach untill lunch then walked to another beach to sunbathe on untill dinnner.. its a hard life i know.
to be fair we did do some other things we walked around the outside of the island which took about 3 hours or so and took in all the different beaches of which there were afew..
we also did some snorkelling in the absolutely crystal clear water, now i never actually thought you could get sea water as clear as this, it was amazing you could walk out up to your chest and clearly see everything on the sand.
from mana we again took the little speedboat to Bounty island (same place they filmed celebrity love island)
where we had booked in for 3 days now this is the sort of island people mean when they say paradise island.. it took 20 minuites to walk around the outside of the island which is all palm fringed beach ...
There is only the one resort on bounty island which is rather predictably called bounty island resort.. never the less its a really nice place, air con dorm (big plus) amazing food especially the deserts (i'll add a pic) free kayaks snorkel gear and all that stuff.
Again there isnt that much i can write we sat and topped up the tan most of the time in between making jewellery from coconuts and checking out the resorts pet baby turtles..
Oh one very random thing happened when we were on bounty island, just as we arrived it was lunch time and sitting right in front of us as we got off the boat was Sam and Mike the couple we origanly met on the overnight train in china.. (last pic in the china gallery) and again randomly in bangkok.. all very strange.

I cant properly describe how nice Fiji is to anyone whos not been it is a true paradise, the islands are amazing as are the people.. the only thing i can think of which lets it down is that you have to fly for more than 25 odd hours to get here..


From fiji we flew to LAX for our connection to NY where instead of wasting money booking into a hostel we decided to spend the time at the airport... on reflection maybe 20 hours is a bit of a long time to spend sat in an airport, especially when were used to the tropical heat of fiji.. with the clothes to match.

Anyhow we managed eventually to get to.. NEW YORK ! and damn is it cold.. first stop jumper shopping.

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Photos

the desserts !
after every single meal...