Fiji islands, wow, no other description but paradise. White sand, clear waters and lovely lovely locals.

We started off with one night on Bounty island which was gorgeous, exactly what we expected it to be and more !! We had to jump off the speed boat a little way from shore and walk through the sea. I felt like I was on (the tv programme) Shipwrecked. We were greeted by the locals singing their welcome song, strumming their guitars with flowers in their hair. It was beautiful. We got placed in a 20 people mixed dorm. The hostel is the only thing on the island so it was really peaceful and secluded. Our meals are included in the package but sadly for a veggie that consists of rice and salad, which does not cure a hangover. We rented kayaks and went for a paddle which was nice to do something active, because the sun drains your energy so quickly. We also went snorkelling over the coral reef, I was terrified and couldn't use the snorkel, after swallowing several mouthfuls of extremely salty sea water, I gave up and just used the googles, we saw loads of blue starfish which apparently is what the Fiji reef is known for. Apparently it is also known to have lots of reef sharks, they were described to us as 'puppies of the sea' but we wasn't so convinced. After another dinner of carbs and veg, we went and laid in hammocks outside our room, listening to the waves lapping in, we were so relaxed we ended up just going to bed!!!

Second island, Beechcomber for 2 nights, again a lovely island but not as clean and pure, being the party island it shows in small ways, we just had a chilled day of swimming in the sea and sun bathing. This time we was in a dorm of 120 people but it wasn't full so we could spread out a bit. Met a nice mixture of people that night (Ozzies, Kiwi's, Germans, English), after dinner there were a few bar games and competitions etc but we was mainly interested in the jägerbombs, although we did have several rounds of a drink called Grenades (?), its like a jägerbomb but they equally balance a shot of jäger and a shot of tequila at the top of the red bull, you shot the tequila which drops the jäger into the glass and you chase that. Blerghhh!! The tan is coming along now, I don't feel like we stand out so much against all the other golden people. Bit burnt but p20 is doing its job. On the second day we had a very fuzzy head from the night before, slow morning but we went out on a boat to go snorkelling, Livy jumped straight in, Kate got in and out in fear, I sat at the end of the boat, put my head in, scared for my life I latched my legs onto the side of the boat, palpitating, shouting for help (I'm sure some of you can imagine how that went). Liv has the winning photo of that. It was also Divali (Dee-pa-vali in Fijian), which is the Indian festival of light. The island turnt off the lights in the bar and had a firework display for us, then we awatched the fireworks going off on the mainland.

Third and final island, Mana, there was a storm coming in so the waters were rocky, a lot of us holding our stomachs on the journey, the petrol smell from the engine wasn't helping. There were clouds but we all managed to burn without realising... so lunch was interesting, we got given a plate of food, then Liv and I explained for the 2nd time that we was Vegetarians so they went out back and brought back a plate of the same stuff without the meat, we ate most of it, although questionable... soon after, mine came back to greet me, ended up being a slow couple of days on the food front. After lunch we went to the local school where they put on a singing and dancing performance for us, it was beautiful but really hard to watch when they explained the meaning behind their songs, hit the heart strings and showed how much they value what they have. People brought them supplies for their classes and the smiles on their faces were priceless, we felt awful being unprepared but promised we would take stuff to schools when were in south east Asia. Afterwards we took a wonder round the island because we read in a 'lonely planet ' book that there was two sides to the island, the backpacker side and the posh fancy side, we found another hostel (realised it was a lot nicer and cleaner then ours) then crossed through the fence, stumbled across the nicest resort, with an infinity pool, three restaurants, a spa and a convenience store. We enquired about how much a room was, at $320 a night; we soon moseyed on our way. When we were back at our hostel, we got talking to a group that had been staying there for a few nights, they started telling us horror stories of the spiders and how they have a pretty guy splattered on their bedroom wall, we all started to freak, went back to the room to check it out, it was starting to get dark but they only have the electricity on from 6pm to 6am. We quickly realised it was not going to work us sleeping here, we requested mosquito nets as my one net between 3 of us wasn't going to work. After a lot of us whinging and asking several times, they tried to fix the net to the ceiling but following a few fails they moved us to another room in the main building, it was a double bed with a net so we said we would make it work. We decided to have another night on Fiji's famous Bounty rum, which the named Mana mix, we thought 48% alcohol can only help us sleep. Tonight was crab racing night, we each picked a shell crab from a bucket and nicknamed, Kate's was David Weir, Liv was Johnny Peacock, I was Usian Bolt. After several implementation rounds, Kate's crab was the winner! They said we could use the Kayaks for free but with the storms here at the moment, wasn't the best idea. We started on the Cava (the Fijian version), to many bowls and bounty rums later we decided to make our way to the 3 in a bed. Day two was back to the 35+ degree heat, a group of us went on a walk around the island with two of the hostel workers, what was a walk soon turned into a trek over the rocks around the coastline, for 2 hours at the hottest part of the day. The evening was a routine of rum and meeting people. The next morning we were packing up and the water had run out, another insight to the islands normal lifestyle.

Back to the main land now, leave tomorrow for the lovely land of Australia.