So Pete being the lovely, caring, older brother he is, caught the bus with me to the airport - took hours, can understand why he opts for taxis! - and then waited for me in possibly the largest check in queue I've ever seen! It seemed there was only a problem with my flight, the rest of the airport was pretty much deserted. The flight was fine, but frustrating, as after not getting round to watching "the dark knight" for months and refusing to watch it on planes I gave in, and watched it on the worst flight I could possibly have chosen! Every time they made an announcement they forgot to pause it so I missed bits, and at the end, when I wanted to watch Heath Ledger's name on the credits - out of respect - they turned off the screen before I got the chance!! not to mention the man next to me having a broken screen so I had to be removed from my seat while they tried to fix it - mid-film!

Enough ranting. I arrived in Fiji to stifling heat and got through customs pretty smoothly, after declaring my chocolate money in my hand luggage just in case they were as picky as Australia and after telling them about my visit to a goat ranch less than 30 days ago - they didn't seem to care! I was supposed to be being met by someone from my hostel so I wandered about aimlessly until a friendly fijian man shouted "Bula!" (hello) at me and waved me to a sofa to wait. Mike, the hostel owner turned up shortly after but we had to wait for 3 others on my flight. After everyone from my flight had come out and there was still no sign, we decided to leave and not wait for the passengers from Port Moresby to emerge. He had a 4WD - for good reason as the many potholes in the road would make a normal car pretty uncomfortable. After navigating these and the stray horses wandering in the road we arrived. I was really looking forward to the hostel as it had perfect reviews online and I'd had to ring up from Sydney as it appeared booked up at first glance. I wasn't disapointed. As I arrived the lovely Joe (also highly regarded by reviews online!) came to take my bag and show me to my room. The hostel was beautifully decorated, and had lots of Christmas decorations up. I had dinner (AMAZING food cooked by Mike's wife Fiona) on the terrace with an English couple, then went to bed to enjoy the air-con and escape the millions of mossies! - not soon enough though!

The other welcome news on arrival was that although I'd been told they had no space for Arwa and I the following night, they actually did, so not only did I not need to move, they would collect her from the airport at 5.30 in the morning! something I'd been worrying about! So when I woke up the following morning, she was there, fresh and jet-lagged from the UK! We organised with Fiona to spend the following 5 days on 2 of the islands in the Yasawa group to the north-west of Nadi. We chose the two most expensive on the basis they weren't, and I'd heard bad things about the cheaper ones! After this we caught a hilarious bus into the town, with no windows and bike bells to signal when you want it to stop! I didn't like Nadi at all. There were loads of pushy salesmen and within 5 minutes we found ourselves being dragged into the one place Fiona had told us to avoid and being given a traditional Kava ceremony. This involves lots of clapping, saying Bula and drinking kava - a muddy water tasting liquid that is very popular here. They also showed us newspaper articles of the Queen drinking Kava (the picture was Princess Anne) and the medical uses of kava - apparently it cures two types of cancer. I wasn't convinced! We escaped with as few purchases as we could and headed for the proper handicraft market which was much nicer. There seemed to be one 10 year old boy who was working on all the stalls and had obviously learnt at an early age how to work the tourists... We stopped for lunch at a fish restaurant and had some amazing unidentified fish before heading back to the hostel. We ate Fiona's food again as we were unlikely to find anywhere as good! this time I had the beef slices cooked in a green papaya and whisky sauce. Amazing!

We set out early to catch the Awesome Adventures catamaran to Oarsman's Bay lodge, up on Nacula island, pretty much the furthest one away. The cat took four and half hours and once we arrived we were transferred to a small tin fish and taken to shore. As the boat neared the beach, the staff all gathered and sang to us and when they finished we had to shoud "Bula!". The resort was idyllic, beautiful, clean, sandy beaches, lined with palm trees and hammocks swung between them. We were all given a welcome drink and shown to our dorm which was above the dining area. It had 15 single beds, no bunks, each with its own mossie net and a beautiful balcony overlooking the sea at the front. When we'd settled in they fed us - something we hadn't expected at 2pm so we'd eaten on the boat! Afterwards we relaxed on the beach and in hammocks for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening they laid on a full three course dinner during which they sang to us and after that we did more relaxing on the terrace until bedtime (or until I realsied i could no longer join in a conversation about whether Saudi-arabian oil should stop being traded in the US dollar!)

On the second day I decided to go for the cave visit. I'd been really keen until I realised in involved swimming in the cave and through an underwater tunnel to get to the second one. I was not keen on this at all - in fact i was petrified, but I decided to go go anyway and would swim in the first one and decide the rest when I got there. So George and Lauren (a South African/Swiss couple living in Sydney) and I jumped in the tin fish and headed out for 40 mins round the coast through some massive waves that were breaking on the reefs and arrived at a small island where the caves were. We had to go up some stairs and enter the cave from above and then we dropped down into the water and swam around this huge cavernous space while small-ish fijian boys climbed up to a ridiculous height to jump in. Because the tide was high the swim to the second cave was deeper than I'd expected so I decided not to do it, despite George making me practice and therefore prove I was capable of going twice as deep and twice as far! When the guide went through with the torch however and George followed first and I went underwater to watch. This made me realise how safe it was so I followed and Lauren came through after. The inner cave was fascinating. Sooo dark and there were tunnels and other caves to go into too. It smelt really earthy, but apparently this was the limestone. The guide and young boy with him were bashing the water making loud echoes and strange eery noises. After exploring all the caves and seeing the really deep bit -they aren't sure how deep! - which no one has been into yet, we returned to the first cave. This was much easier as with the natural light it was easier to see how far to swim. I felt really smug to have managed it, if a bit stupid for being so scared before... In the afternoon, Arwa went on a fishing trip with Dave and Kristen and George - only Dave caught anything of decent, which he was promised for lunch the next day. The others caught coral or bait fish which were promptly returned to the sea on a line. I filled my time attempting to snorkel, a pointless activity, given the amount of sand being thrown up by the waves and more so since on my way back I swam into some coral and grazed my knee and hand! I decided I'd had enough excitement so found a reasonable hammock - my hammock of choice already being occupied!- and settled down to read. When Arwa returned we decided to climb to the top of the hill. One of the staff told us to cover up and wear proper shoes - which I took to mean put a top on and wear walking sandals. I hindsight trousers and trainers would have been better due to the long grass and many, many spiders and grasshoppers! We were trying to complete the walk before sunset - for obvious reasons - so had to go at a fair pace and even then didn't quite make the summit, but still got fantastic views down over the Yasawas. We just about made it back for dinner and after another 3 course feast, we had to join in with "international night" and embarrass ourselves singing English christmas carols whilst the fijians obviously stole the show with their mix of traditional songs. They then made us join in the "snake" dance - basically the conga with different hand actions - and the "stick" dance - a version of musical chairs, except if you are holding the stick when the music stops you are out!

For our last day at Oarsmans, Arwa and I borrowed kayaks and paddled down to the rocks at the end of the beach and back and then after lunch boarded the tin fish back to the catamaran, with the staff singing to us as we left. We were very sad to go!