The Great Fiji Adventure

So the plan was, we'd get home from Fiji and have the weekend to relax, do the blog, get photos up and such. The hitch came when we both got really sick before we left Fiji and ended up spending the whole weekend in bed. This is a big blog but that's because it's full of photos, we hope you enjoy.

Let's go back a week. Two Saturdays past we drove down to Sydney with Andrew's parents, stopping at the big sheep on the way.

Back on the road with the sheep lurking behind us we soon arrived at Ikea, our main destination in Sydney. We spent an hour or two exploring the store since it's the closest we have to Canberra. From there we headed into the city centre so Andrew and I could check into the hostel we were staying in for the night, since we had an early flight Sunday morning it was cheaper and easier to get a hostel next to the train station for the night than try and get to Sydney in the morning. A relaxing lunch later and Andrew's parents headed back to Canberra and left Andrew and I to explore a bit more before crashing for the night. My big accomplishment was getting a small tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, the first I've had since leaving the states as Sydney is one of two cities that sell it in the country.

Sunday was an early morning to get to the airport, and since Andrew and I have had some bad moments with planes we wanted to make sure we were there early. One check in the V Australia staff kept asking me for a print out of my visa, which I kept telling them doesn't exist as an electronic visa, eventually the woman got a supervisor to look it up and print out the information. After that we were told at passport control where they informed us that immigration needed to talk to Andrew. We were a bit nervous but all they did was scan his passport and hand it back telling us to go on so we have no idea what it was all about but we were on our way so we didn't care.

The plane ride itself was relaxing, we sat back and watched movies the whole way and we were in Fiji before we knew it. We had a car take us from the airport the 2 hours to our resort.

Our bure

We stayed at Mango Bay Resort, a backpackers resort. The resort has 3 types of accomedations, dorm huts, safari huts for groups of 3-6 and beach huts for 2 which we had. Our hut was just a few hundred feet from the beach and right next to the pool and restaurant area.

View from our bure

The bure, as it is called, had a small porch with deck chairs, a queen bed with mosqueto net, which even looked amazing, our own bathroom and a shower in our private atrium out back. For a backpackers resort it delivers very well for couples.

our shower

We were pretty tired but decided to try out a few of the local spirits, Fiji Gold beer very tasty beer and Bounty rum was so good we brought a bottle home. After a poorly played, on my side, pool game and a few hands of cards we crashed a bit early since the traveling wore us down. We were woken up in the middle of the night from a group of drunk americans who arrived after us and decided to drink more and jump in the pool. Luckily we were tired enough we were able to fall asleep fairly quickly while they carried on.

Monday, our first full day in Fiji, we were awoken by the drums to let us know breakfast was ready, and promptly fell asleep for another 3 hours. We did manage to get up in time to go on a guided snorkeling tour where I managed to get two big cuts from the coral, it was pretty interesting though but the tide went out on us pretty quickly. From there the days start to blend together so I'll just tell you about what we did in no order.

Most of our evenings were spent having a cocktail at happy hour, playing cards and chatting with the canadians, germans or a few of the random american students we could handle being around (they were all doing study abroad in New Zealand, some from UC Denver, 2 from St, Mike's in Burlington which was weird, and a whole bunch of other places). Mom you would have been very impressed that we ate a lot of fish on this trip, yes, fish, and it wasn't fried.

Andrew in table tennis finals

Staff singing farewell song at dinner

Crazy crab dish I attemped to eat....it didn't end well, 

I just can't crack shells

One of the days we were taken to the local village, we walked there by the beach and were shown around by a local man who explained how the villages are set up, what vegetables were being grown, different rules/traditions such as you have to leave your door open during meals and if anyone wanders passed you invite them in to join your meal, not a bad idea :)

Andrew taking a picture of me taking a picture

Village middle from Community Centre

The villages are set up in such a great way, all the houses face in with a church and community hall in the middle, there are no roads through the village so everyone walks around, it's such a friendly place. Apparently when someone gets married or it is their birthday everyone in the village helps with the food and arrangements and everything, and if you're building your house everyone in the village will come and help you, you don't ask them to but they just do it. It's so great seeing a real community that sticks by each other and helps each other out.

Kava Ceremony

After being shown the village, including the school where people from 3 villages come to study and the Fiji rugby team practices (we saw them out there), we headed into the community centre for a kava ceromony with some cheif elders. It was all fine to the kava ceromony, we had one previous at the resort, the problem was there were only 9 of us including the village elders and the tide had come in so we had to wait for it to go out again before we could get back to the resort, this meant we drank lots of kava. It tastes a bit little dirty, kind of sour water, not really bad, just strange. It didn't effect Andrew much but for me after I'd drink my bowl my tounge would start going numb, which is apparently what happens to most people because it's a slight hallucinogenic, strange but I wouldn't do it again.





We also took a morning to go hike out to these waterfalls near a village close by. We were taken to the local village where we played with some cute puppies before hiking to the waterfalls, and by hike I mean we walked through some small rivers and such. It was a nice waterfall and a good walk through the woods.

While we were on our way to the waterfalls we stopped briefly at a store that said the name of an airport on it but looked very run down. Our guide pointed across the road where ruins were barely seen through the overgrowth and informed us that that was the first resort on the Coral Coast, it was a five star resort that attracted so many people the airport was built. Back in 1987 a cyclone hit and destroyed the resort, it was family owned so they did not have enough money to rebuilt and it has stayed that way ever since. With the closing of the resort the airport soon closed too. Since I have been looking, photographing and writing about ruins recently Andrew and I took a cab out there on the morning of our last dayto explore and photograph the ruins. 23 years of growth turned the resort into quiet a jungle, we had a hard time finding some things, we never found the pool, but after some wandering I managed to find the kitchen. The resort had a lovely bay with a great beach and it's a shame the resort is no more because it would have been the best in the Coral Coast. The photos will be on my photography blog soon, I will post the link as soon as I've gotten through the images.

Enjoying cocktails on our last evening watching the sunset

Thursday rained all day which was good because Andrews cold was running rampant at that point and he spent the whole day sleeping. I was still feeling healthy at that point but with the rain curled up quite happily with a book and spent the day reading. The sick saga began soon after, Friday I had just a bit of sore throat but it wasn't much. By the time our plane took off for Sydney a few hours later I had a fever so bad I couldn't stop shaking, I was popping panadol like candy and got a blanket from the stewardess. I was starting to feel better when a steward told me that because I was sick coming into the country they would have to tell customs. I was a bit worried because we only had 2 hours to get through customs, check in at the transfer desk and get to our gate for our flight home. Luckily most of the people getting off the plane in front of us were parents with small kids who had to wait for their prams so we flew down to passport control where we got through in lightening time without any stops so we made it to our next flight in plenty of time and home almost safe and sound, my fever took over again before we made it to Andrew's parents so I was a bit of a fright to see.

Last weekend was spent with Andrew and I sick and lying around, not a good weekend but this next week should be good.