Gary+Jess:Its a Mini Adventure
 Fiji and the laziness that ensued... Its an effort to type this entry, we`ve got so used to doing nothing. Guess it needs to be done though, so here goes. We arrived at Nadi (pronounced Nandi), late afternoon to be welcomed by our travel agent who presented us each with a lei and got us on a bus to our hostel for the night. As it was late and we had to get the bus to the marina at 7.15 the following morning we had dinner and headed to bed. An early start the next morning to catch the bus to the marina. The bus, being fijian, had no windows! Having sorted our boarding passes we noted that we appeared to have been given first class tickets. So being honest and upstanding citizens we kept quiet and made our way to the first class lounge to enjoy the free food and drink on the way to our island! We arrived at Nacula (pro: Nathula) after about 4 hours and got checked into our bure (booray) before getting a start on our week of laziness before dinner was served. Then we squeezed in a bit of a lounge about in the bar before bed. Its a hard life, it really is. The following day we decided to go on the cave trip. This involved a half hour boat ride out to the Sawilau caves which are flooded. The locals guide you around and you can dive through a tunnel to get to another cave, which was amazing...if a bit sea-licey! After all that activity we had to recouperate on the beach for the remainder of the day! That night was international night, with each nationality doing a song. There were lots of germans, kiwis, australians and americans. As the only british people we decided to hide. One of the german ladies said she was going to tell the queen! I hope we`re not in trouble when we get home! Thursday was a bit wet...in fact it chucked it down! We spent the day reading books and watching the rain. It was very refreshing and the rivers which formed on the sand down to the sea where pretty impressive too! That evenings entertainment was the hermit crab race. We got a crab each and both did quite well early on. My crab won the first race and we both qualified for the quarter finals. Unfortunately my crab had a good start in the second race, but then stopped and had a fight with another crab. All hopes on Jess jnr who was in the semis! It was not to be however, as he didn`t make it to the start line. We suspect foul play. The following day we visited the local village in the morning which featured one of the oldest buildings in Fiji, in the form of the Catholic church built from coral by monks. We had a look in the meeting house as well as the school and market. Later that evening the staff at Oarsmans Bay Lodge put on a meke or concert featuring traditional dancing and singing. Audience participation is compulsory! This was together with the traditional lovo meal we had that evening. The food is steamed in the ground like at a maori hangi...delicious! Saturday was mainly spent snorkelling on the magnificent coral just of the beach. We saw puffer fish, clown fish, parrot fish, octopi and millions of assorted spangly fish. As you can imagine, it was awful. Later that day we had a coconut demonstration, showing us all the uses of the fruit, milk, husk, leaves etc. After that we walked up the hill behind the resort. Amazing view were had by all. We spent the next 2 days diving with the local diver operator n some amazing reefs. Including one with lots of chasms and tunnels to swim through. We saw a few big things like Eagle rays, but missed the shark because I ran out of air and had to surface! Tueday we left for Nadi again, having spent the best part of a week doing nothing but lazing in the sun. Torture! We spent our day in Nadi having a look around the town and getting our souvenir shopping out of the way...1 fijian war club - check! The indian influence was quite strong, was almost like being back in Delhi, though a smaller and a lot less crowded! Having got back to the hosel we had one more night on Fiji and then its off the LA for a day before we get home. Home already?!
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Diary Photos
| 23rd Aug 2006 | |
| Sunset at Oarsmans | |
| The sunset over the Pacific Ocean from the beach at Oarsmans. |
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