Well how's it going???? I have managed to spend 5 great days in Fiji.
Did you know that Fiji is made up of over 600 islands - most of which are not inhabited. If you look at a map the international date line is a strange shape. This is to ensure all the islands of Fiji - it also helped to ensure the Fiji was first to ring in the millennium....
Anyway back to my trip..... My flight landed at 5.15am, and it was at that stage - you knew you were in a tropical climate the minute you got off the plane - especially when the walkway has no windows. At this point Fiji had received only 1 day of rain in the previous 6 weeks....
Through customs and immigration, and even though I had marked that I had been on a farm in the past 10 days was not asked 1 question about it. We had to wait in the airport for a little while and there were some pushy tour operators there, however booked my ticket for the ferry and we walked out of the airport to the bus stop (this wasn't like Dublin Airport), got picked up by the ferry and off to the terminal. The queuing process was... interesting and well my bag disappeared. I found it having been taken off the bus and thrown into the trolley to bring it to the boat.... handy....once I had found it.
On the ferry I met some interesting people, very many Irish too and I was rather impressed that Factor 30 sunscreen was being applied. Ferry left and with 30 min I was at my destination.... kinda. My stop was called and well the boat doesn't drop you to the island. I had to get out of the ferry into a little boat... and nearly freaked when I found out I had the change boats again..... I was an experience
Onto land and I had my bag carried to my dorm and was soon on the beach. There was a market on at the resort but I was just too tired to look at the stuff. Eventually found a hammock and well asleep in it. Woke for lunch ate and went back to the hammock. While at the main centre though I looked at the extensive map of the island. It was so big it took at least 15 minutes to walk around it.... At least double the size of the South Sea Island. Anyway back to the map and well there was this hut at the far side of the island called 'Celebraty Love Island' .... An enquiry later and well I found out that this was indeed where the Celebraty Love Island that Fran won was filmed... So I went for a look..... for Bridies sake so I could send her a few photos... The place was falling apart as it was in the process of being moved and everything had been moved out of it - including some of the walls.... but you could get the idea of it and man they had luxury.
After dinner that night were was a pool and table tennis tournament going on and well a lot of drinking too. Met a lot of people that night and we had some good fun.
Sunrise the following day was 5.30am.... too early... At Breakfast I met Tanya who said she was bringing a couple of Fiji girls out snorkeling if I wanted to join them, so I did. The tide was so low at 10am that the coral was actually above the water and we walked among it first so we could get a better idea of what we were seeing. When we went snorkeling we went a little further out an it was just amazing. The coral was just fab and the fish amazing.
After lunch I had some Kava, a traditional Fiji drink. After which I went snorkeling again. This time around I got to see Finding Nemo though!!!
That night I was so wrecked after my very busy day that I was in bed shortly after 9pm
The next day I was moving Islands. Manta Ray had been recommended to me so off I went. The journey up was a little hairy but once again I went from a small boat to the big boat and back to the small boat again.
Manta Ray was fab, a different type of fab to Bounty. The resort was quite different to Bounty. The dorm room was on stilts and boy did we have a fab view out over the sea. I spent most of the first day there reading my book in a hammock on the beach.
Breakfast was 8am and I had gone over to the shower block the heavens opened. The running water was off but the ran was so heavy that if I had stood in the open air part I would have got a pretty good shower. The rain continued for over and hour and I really felt the 4 who had gone over to the village in the boat. They got absolutely saturated. Clare had been diving and had enjoyed it - she didn't get the see the rain. She did try to convince me to go too but I still had a cold and not too enthusiastic about diving... the coral was fab there though.
The afternoon brought a large crowd and after a quite afternoon on the beach with my New Zealand book, we headed to the bar for Happy Hour - it started at 5pm. There were a number of Irish had arrived that day and we had some fun that night.
Wednesday came and well I was leaving today but not til the afternoon. Went snorking that morning and it started to rain again. The tropical storms are always interesting to watch. It rains and rains and after it stops and the sun comes out, within 10 minutes its like it hadn't been raining at all....
Got the boat back to the mainland that afternoon and met one of the girls who had been on the boat on the first day. She had been on a very rustic island. Stayed in a place near enough to the airport that night...interesting place. I was on a plane at 8.45 the following morning. It was 31C on the ground as the plane took off.
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