We've left new zealand and are again fully submerging ourselves in island life in fiji.........where they insist the're no longer cannables but still seem to mention it a bit too often. After leaving rotorua we spent a fairly uneventful day in auckland followed by a pretty fun night saying goodbye to some friends who were headed back to england the next day. Then the next day headed up to the northern part of nz to the bay of islands where the majority of stuff you can do involves kayaking or being taken on tours but it was nice and sunny and good to just relax and watch some dvd's in the hostel. On our second day we thought we should do something but none of the cruises etc exactly appealed but one pamphlet in the shop just jumped out at us............adventure world!!!. This was basically just a inflatable playground, there was an inflatable slide, rock climbing wall and it is the only place in the world where you can go on the trapeze without a harness. So we gave it a go after watching the girls working there do it with remarkable ease, the first time i did it was pretty good and i just swung back and forth a few times but the 'grips' were actually just sandpaper and so when i did swing off it cut my hands up pretty bad, (i showed the owner and was given a free ice lolly......so easily satisfied), but because of the cuts i thought i'd try again with some makeshift gloves, these just slipped leaving me to instantly fly facefirst into the mats.........the video's on facebook, going to send it in to you've been framed. Chris managed to swing from one swing to the next.

Then it was back to auckland where the hostel were having an all you can eat dominoes pizza night for about 4 pounds and honestly seeing over 60 hungry backpackers swarm around poor innocent pizza delivery men is scarily remeniscent of the wild plains of africa. I saved some for breakfast the next day.

So after waking up and eating my cold pizza we headed for the airport and fiji, and before even leaving nz i knew i would enjoy fiji, we walked onto the plane to see the stewards were wearing flowery hawain type shirts and there was chilled out beach music playing. But then touching down in nadi there was rain and our dreams of island paradise were hanging in the balance, within five minutes of being in the country we had been told to 'relax...your in fiji now' so we moved on and found the feejee experience office to book our tour (came cheap with kiwi experience) and were lucky enough to find out the busses only start 3 times a week luckily one was the next day. So we were picked up the next day (it was hot and sunny again) by the bus driver known as daddy and our guide Bola......one of the nicest and happiest people i have met on this trip and is definitly who made the feejee experience to be awsome as well as having some drinks with him and getting a real insight into the true fiji.

we started off the first day by going and just chilling out on a beach were we had a bbq and started just getting to know the others on our bus through the immortal tools of football and sunbathing. Up next was sandboarding which is awsome, it involves you climbing up a steep sanddune (really hard work) and then flying back down lying on a body board and just trying to stay on. After a few goes on my front me and another bloke tried to do a running jumping start off, after seeing Bola's example, we managed it but it was a feeble jump compared to his who absolutly flew down this dune. The same 3 of us then tried going down standing up, i only made it about a quarter of the way. That night was a time a few drinking games with our new friends off the bus and our first kava ceremony in the hostel/resort, Kava is the traditional drink of fiji where people just sit round and relax......kava basically tastes like muddy water and has novacane in it (what dentists use), thus leaving your toungue numb and if you drink lots you just want to sleep.

The next day we all went on a 3 hour trek through the rainforest which included 45 mins of walking in a stream, so we all got very muddy and wet but it was great fun and then just emerged out into an opening where we could see massive bamboo trees and a river, so we had lunch and then floated down the river to a waterfall, then jumped in and off the waterfall. That night we were in the capital of Suva which made us start to realise that fiji is actually pretty poor and pretty dangerous in the citys but we were with Bola so its all cool, we eat from a street bbq chilled for a bit and then went back to the hostle (via a pure ghetto with caged shopfronts to buy some beer) and where most of the bus went to sleep tired from the trek me, chris and 3 others had some drinks with bola learnt about fiji and his life very cool.

all this next part of the blog i tried to write 2 days ago but my comp busted and deleted it all so here i go again.

The next day we visited a rural school which gets visited once a week and the kids were so enthusiastic and happy about learning, they all swarm around you as you get off the bus eager to show you around. The school itself is fairly basic but really well kitted out with home made science posters etc. all round the walls. I ended up with 2 10 year old boys showing me around we ended up talking about everything from how long it took them to walk to skl to the earthquake in china to their favourite WWE wrestler. The school trip was one of my top highlights of my travels and has really spurred on my wish to teach english over seas for a year.

local village for a kava ceromony where after one bowl the girls went and learnt how to do weaving where the blokes just drank more and more kava and heard stories.

that night most people off the bus came out and with the barman/party host man/woman called 'sasha' leading the way with drunken games it was a great laugh all ending up at the end of the night around a fire on the beach.

The next day it was an irish lad's bday and while everyone was eating lunch we snuck off to buy a bday cake and some baloons to turn the fiji experience bus into even more of a party bus.....fun times. Next stop was some thermal pools and mud pools and with the bday boy leading the way (in the form of a flying bomb) we all jumped into the warm mud and got seriously dirty. And it was a great way to end what what was a great tour.

However that night we decided we all hadent quite had enough of each other and all met up for a few last drinks. The place most of us ended up stay was a very bizzare hostel run by the nicest woman in the world called mama who looks after everyone but then constantly floating around the place was her cokehead wifebeating a****** son, add to that some crazy dogs and cats (one that scratched me) and it was a surreal place, but just to make things wierder while sitting out side chilling out with some mates none other than david tross (an old school friend) walks up to us...creepy.

next up ws 3 nights on the islands which involed mostly just lying on the beach, playing vollyball and getting chased by more crazy dogs, plus a herbal medicine walk which im sure was just made up

will write you my next blog from aus