Golf Terraces Denarau Island

Hello from Port Denarau! - What an absolutely perfect place!, we all had an awesome day, got up at 6am Fiji time (4am your time) had breakky, jumped on a big Catamaran, got to Port Denarau jumped onto a larger Catamaran and went to a lovely island called Beachcombers Island. We snorkled, had morning tea, more snorkling, lunch, more snorkling, drank beer, snorkled. Neaty wants me to correct this - Me, Aido, Dylsie ...

... waded out to the coral. The tide was pretty low, so when I started swimming I scratched my stomach over some coral, which I couldn't see due to the churned up water. It really hurt and now I have a strange row of scratches across my tummy. The snorkelling was good with lots of colourful fish different to the ones we saw in Asia, and David saw a stingray. Back on land my stomach looked horrific and was swollen due to the salt water ...

... showers. Kinda of a bummer, but it added spice to the adventure!

As we mentioned in our previous posting we had lot's of activities to keep us busy, either snorkling(looked into the scuba but decided to put that on hold cause of the cost and knowing we can get certified here in Australia when things settle down), fishing the bay, playing volleyball on the beach, shell combing, hiking to the top of the island ...

... not that busy either with limited people on the island.  I wonder if they will be able to keep all the ammenties open with such a small crowd of people.  The marina is uneventful, but we buy some clothing for our unexpected stay on this warm island.  Prices are cheap and I get Polo shirts for $10 and surfer dress shorts for $12.  The quality might be lower than real Polo brands, but they look good for now and will do the trick for the stay here.  
We decide ...

... that my guard is up with these people right away despite there genuine friendliness.  We have a couple heavy backpacks that we were pushing on a cart.  As we went through the airport, many people offered to get us transportation, but I ignore them acting is if I know exactly where I am going.  I remember my experience in Peru where I heard about a German that was scheduled to go on a tour.  He met at the location and when a local person asked him if he has meeting the tour of such and ...

... the dive have done night dives before. We go through the bits i'll need to know and get given our powerful dive torches. Straight out to the little rowing boat with an outboard and off onto the reef. They have timed it so the darkness after sunset just hits the water as we get out there and due to Fiji having very few electric lights its really dark and the little tremor of fear which is perfectly natural sitting over black water in the dark creeps up my spine. I know that the ...

... other guests to the nearby village - the only village on the island. It was a little weird strutting through someone elses home as they go about their daily chores. But as usual we were greeted with the boisterous Bula! Our guide, newphew of the chief, also the name of our favorite New Zealand beer, Tui, showed us the meeting house and the churches (catholic and ...

... could be passed again. Kris and I just missed all this, and the weather is better now. It's big news on Fiji though. Some tourists on the outer, smaller islands were stranded with no food or water or transport back to the main island. We heard stories of rich tourists offering "anything" for helicopter transport back to the main island, and they were still put off for four days because of the volume of stranded people, and liminted helicopters. By this part of the blog, my ...

... right in front of us and we snapped cliche palm tree/cocktail/sunset/paradise photos, before taking a long walk on the beach (not hand in hand unfortunately). It got dark, the resort lights came on, music turned up and people emerged as we found a cheap ride back to the airport to crash across the airport seats and grab some Zzz´s before our connecting flight at 11pm. Quite the pleasant transit.

... Nadi before my opinion of Fiji changed (for the worse), so got a taxi with a driver who was very found of my youthful cheeks and hung out in the hotel a while. By the evening, both myself and Bruce were itching to get going and so shared a bottle of wine to pass the time. After waiting for ages, there was suddenly a big rush to get to the airport on time, as the hotel didn't accept Bruce's credit ...