Fiji Adventures & our destination!

Long story short:  We made it to Auckland! And had tons of fun along the way!

So when I left you, we were about to head to Visesei to go stay with Fi, the lady we'd planned to be couch surfing with. The whole thing had been a little crazy in the first place, we'd confirmed to stay with one lady, who then emailed us three days before we left LA telling us she'd just unexpectedly given birth?!?!?! So she referred us to her friend Fi, then I got sick and we cancelled with Fi, but she didn't get our message so we're at the airport and she's sent her taxi driver friend to collect us, so the taxi driver calls her and takes us to our hotel. right. anyway, it was already nuts, but we finally made it to Fi's house, stayed the night with her, played with her little daughter Ka, who was having her 4th birthday party that night. A bunch of the kids from the village came around and shared her Dora the Explorer cake.

Ka with her Dora The Explorer Cake!

So Cute!

Fi booked us a really fun trip to two of the islands west of Nadi. And for incredibly cheap. 2 nights on each of the two islands with 3 meals a day included, along with 3 boat rides to get from island to island, for BOTH of us ended up being ~$600 USD. I would recommend anyone going to Fiji to make sure they get off the main island, and go to backpacker places or resorts on the islands as early as possible. We enjoyed the islands we stayed on, Bounty and Mana, and I've heard up north in the Yasawas is also great if you can afford the boat trip. But the islands saved the trip for us. It was like night and day, the experiences we had on the mainland and on the islands. The other tourists, the locals, the scenery, everything.

Nadi Rugby Team training on the mainland as we waited for our boat

The first 2 nights we stayed on Bounty Island, an island with just the one resort on it, so small you can easily walk around the entire thing in 20-30 minutes. So so so incredibly beautiful there. And I got to snorkel for the first time. It's especially neat too after having a salt water fish tank, seeing all this life in it's natural habitat, larger and more healthy than you could ever find in a fish store.

OMG Snorkel time!

<3

Underwater camera!

We got incredibly sunburned the first day out snorkeling for 4 hours. And sitting in rope hammocks didn't help. The beautiful sea life we saw made it 100% worth it though.

Ouch!

Double Ouch!

Also the boat to the second island was a little late so I got to hold a sea turtle! They keep them and brush them twice daily to get the algae off. This little guy will grow to be 1 meter across! And probably weigh a lot more than me!



They sang us a goodbye song as we left Bounty.

The other island we stated at was Mana Island. The backpacker hostel we ended up at there was SO incredible. The island is a little bigger and has some nicer resorts, but the one we stayed at is the one with soul. The first night they had traditional dancing, as well as fire dancing, and they taught us the 'Bula' dance. Every night the locals came down to our hostel and just hung out. It was awesome. There were so many people we met with really awesome stories, advice on traveling, and good discussions about politics, religion, and the gambit. It was a good experience for me learning what kind of place I'd rather be at, cuz while Bounty was fun and I was waited on hand and foot, I got bored for sure.

Mana Island

The first day we got there we found a guy we'd met on the boat going to Mana, as well as a British couple that had been staying at the hostel for a month. Staying there for a month had made them pretty creative with their time, so they were making Christmas cards for their friends in creative ways, so the day's card was climbing up a mountain and putting water cans in the shape of their friends names. Mad is short for Maddy, one of the guy's girlfriends, if you look really close you can see it at the top.

The second day on Mana was Fiji Day, Fiji's independance day, so we went to the village school, watched the kids sing and perform a flag ceremony with midi polka music playing in the background. Seriously it was like the music they play at the Scandinavian Festival. Plus yay for child militarism! See the video.

There are lots of wild dogs running around almost everywhere we were. This guy hung out with Dar under the hammock all day long.

Dar relaxing in the hammock all day after getting sunburnt

Dar's feral dog friend

That night we had a kava ceremony. Kava is like coffee but opposite, it makes you relaxed and tired. Its the root of the kava plant, and they dry it and then pound it until it looks like ground up cardboard. Its then strained like tea into water in a large bowl until it looks like muddy water, then everyone sits in a circle and takes turns drinking mini bowls of it. And it's not sipping it, you just have to drink the whole thing at once, then everyone claps and says 'Bula!' The best part was having Backstreet Boys, NSync, Jingle Bells, and 'Rum and Redbull' as the background music as we performed this age-old traditional Fijian ceremony.

The last day on Mana was super relaxing. The workers sang us 'Visalay', a farewell song in Fijian. We took the boat back with some friends we'd met, went to Sitar (the Indian restaurant we're obsessed with) for the 3rd time, went downtown, and drank some beers together in the park. After they left for their plane, Dar and I slept in the Nadi airport.

So after a 4 hour flight, 2 hours in customs, and for reasons we cannot put our heads around, the New Zealand department of Foreign Affairs has deemed us crazy Americans fit to walk the streets of their country. All in all getting through customs was much easier than we'd expected. The guy took barely a glance at our visas, there was no check of the money requirement, the only hiccup was my boots had some sand on them, so the customs guy had to take my boots in the back and clean them off before I was allowed to come in with them. 

And this sign was a nice intro for me. I never knew they could be called anything other than 'moving sidewalks'

One thing that's been really crazy during my first few hours here is just how crazy clean things are here. The busses are way nicer than in the US, and the first bathroom I walk into in the NZ airport has a TV screen informing me to 'take extra care' as there was someone cleaning it.

So basically I get to NZ, and the first things that happen to me is I'm handed free candy, I use a bathroom with a TV in it, and they wash my shoes for me. Nice.