Early up and a 7.45am collection - along with another couple - for our trip around the islands and a visit to Malolo for the day. The bumpy road journey in early morning light saw us negotiating plenty of traffic, schoolchildren waiting for their bus, pedestrians in the road on their way to work and fires burning creating a smoky haze in the hot early morning humidity.

Good decision - the Yasawa Flyer catamaran took us to nearby islanders dropping off and collecting passengers, day trippers and supplies for the resorts. This gave us a good chance to check them out for future reference - who knows a trip back to Fiji might eventually be on the cards....

We sat on the middle sun deck of the boat enjoying the breeze in the hot humid sun, it was impossible not to smile and be totally content.

At 11am we reached Malolo, by which time there was only 5 day tourists remaining - us and three dyed red-haired delightfully high maintenance, noisy and exuberant elderly Italian women who were going to be keeping our courier on his toes! As we prepared to land a welcome party of 6 Fijians with guitar stood on the pier and sang us ashore, presenting us each with a shell necklace carefully placed around our necks as a gift. This same group - following the rallying call from a hollow tree drum - would sing us back aboard our boat when we left at 4pm. Very moving actually, and fortunately for us the islanders don't bear a grudge:

Malolo is a volcanic island located in the Mamanuca Group of islands off Fiji, it's an inhabited island, but focuses on tourism. In 1840 a group of US explorers visited the island and during the visit, two members of the party were killed by natives as they attempted to negotiate for food and sadly the explorers retaliated in time honoured fashion - destruction of homes and crops.

The resort looked amazing nestling along the bottom of tall green shrouded hills and was peaceful if busy so we wandered along the hot beach to a quieter spot and decided to have a snorkel whilst the tide was high. The sea was warm like a bath - the warmest sea that we've swum in. Plenty of coral - some healthy and some dead and it was hard to know if it's reviving or dying - and loads of amazing tropical fish; some of edible size, some very small and most were brightly or multi coloured. Dave did some 'practise snorkel dives' in prep for his scuba dive this Thursday whilst Shirl eyed the fish with suspicion half expecting a frenzied, poisonous attack! Luckily none was forthcoming!

Lunchtime saw us sitting in the restaurant enjoying the 'jungle' views and a light lunch and planning our afternoon. We were feeling quite 'crispy' in spite of sun screen so decided on an amble along the shady part of the beach as the tide had got too low over the coral for a comfortable swim.

It was into the shower to wash and change for out return journey and we settled for the air conditioned lounge this time. On our return we saw rain in the distance and realised it was raining on Viti Levu - and probably First Landing - and on South Sea island where our fellow guests had gone. Really reinforcing our decision to stay on the main island - in case of rain / cyclone and visit others isles as we wanted.

Dinner in the resort restaurant, more enjoyable entertainment and scrummy dinner and it was back to the bure for another 11hour sleep!

Interestingly, now might be the time to visit South Sea Island: our fellow guests said that baby sharks were being fed for tourist entertainment, entertaining now but not perhaps when they're fully grown man eaters! Shirl has previously read that last year's shark attacks in Egypt were the result of them being attracted to the area by the dumping of animal carcasses in the sea near to the beach.

Computer shop sign seen in Nadi: 'Helping I.T. Work!'