Well the first week in Fiji has been superb and a hell of a place to spend you birthday!

Unfortunately New Zealand didn't end too well, found out that whoever took my mobile managed to make 830 pounds worth of calls in three days! Including one 300 pound call to Western Samoa! But not much i could do about it then, so decided to suck it up and look forward to my trip in Fiji.

The first day was amazing. Landed in Nadi at about 9am and then headed straight to my hostel on the beach, not the best beach but those were to come later in the week. That morning i decided to take a stroll along the beach and within minutes was talking to a local fella called Ravi. He invited me to come for a swim with his family and after talking in the sea for 45 minutes, I had been invited back to their family home. I had a superb curry made for me and spent a few hours out on the balcony drinking Kava with Ravi. Now Kava is an odd drink, it's made fromt he root of the Kava plant and then simply water added to it........a bit like tea. It comes in a massive pot and is drunk using coconut shells, it takes a few cups to get used to mainly becasue it tastes like muddy water and looks pretty similair too! It starts to make your mouth go numb and then puts you into a drowsy state of mind.........after a few cups of the stuff i ws hooked. Later in the afternoon, their son (Abhishek) came home from school and he was eager to find out everything about me and England. So we spent an hour all talking about things back home and how i was finding Fiji. They asked me why i was laughing and i had to apologise, needed to explain that i wasn't being rude but i didn't imagine that after 2 hours of being Fiji i'd be back at somone's home having lunch made for me, drinking Kava and generally being treated like i'd known the family for a long time. A great first day that ended with me being taken around the town and then to the shops. Oh and the next day wasn't too bad either, but mainly cos i got to watch the Mighties do over Barcelona! What a result and what a celebration from Bellamy!

There's really not much abotu Nadi that would make anyone want to stay for longer than a day or so, just a roasting hot humid town with the same feel as some of the towns in India. Everyone trying to coax you into their shops/restaurants/brothels. As for the restaurants, funny places, you walk past and the guy at the door will talk through the menu with and then hit you with a final incentive.......'Sir, we have chicken curry, all curry's, cold beer, wine, air conditioning.........smoke sir, would you like some weed?'.

On Friday (my birthday) i went on a island hopping trip up around the Yasawa and Mamanuca Group of islands, the trip was for 5 nights and 6 days. Paradise doesn't do the place justice! The first island i stayed at was called Tavewa and it was beautiful. Golden white sands, palms, clear clear blue water that's the temperature of a bath and surrounded by a huge reef. The only downside was the bloody mossy's, but being there far outweighed the bites i was getting every minute of the day. Just across the otherside of the island was the Blue Lagoon, one of the best palces to snorkel in Fiji. The amount of fish down there is amazing, all colours and all sizes that you can think of, over the two days i was on the isalnd i reckon i spend about 6 hours just out snorkeling about. The reef was beautiful, all colours of the rainbow, with little gulleys through the middle and at the end of it there was a massive drop off down to the sand below that was good to dive down and check out.

The evening of my birthday, everyone sang to me and i was give a lilly to put behind my ear (think they were taking the mick as its only ladies who wear this) and plenty of KAva and booze for the night. It was just a layed back birthday evening, with a crab race thwon in. Unfortunately my crab, Linford Christie, didn't even get started and just stayed in the middle whilst the others scattered off.

The next part of the trip was spent on a boat called the Wana Taki and the guys working on there are amazing lads, real good fun. There wasn't too much to do apart from snorkel around and launch in the sea from the top of the boat.......not that i'm complaining it was nice to just chill out in the sun. So that's how the two days were spent, snorkeling, launching into the sea fromm the boat and playing my new favourite game......chess. The evenings were spent in typical Fijian style, lounging around having a few drinks, chatting and drinking plenty of Kava, which for its really cheap price forces you to get over the taste of muddy water. One of the days, one of lads on board and myslef kyaked to a nearby island and decided we could walk around it in about an hour before lunch.........we were wrong. It took us about 3 hours of trekking over broken coral, roasting sand and swimming round bits we couldn't walk. A fun morning but exhausting in the heat. We also decided to have a jelly fish fight (they don't sting out here) which he found out when i place one onto his head when we were walking along.

The final part of my trip was spent on an Island called South Sea and this place is tiny. No joke, it's smaller than a football a pitch, you can be stood in the middle of it and see beach 5m on one side and beach 5m away on the other, it only takes 2.5 mintues to walk around. Again the snorkeling was superb and i saw my first reef shark which was an amazing site, along with hundreds of little 'Nemo' fish. The next day it was back to mainland.

Got back to the hostel and went to pick up my rucksack fromt he storage room to find it wasn't there. Ian's luck kicking into play again, my bag with my passport, flight tickets and all the other important gear in it had grown legs! I was going ape, the girl at the counter didn't know what had happened and was trying to tell me it wasn't their fault. One of local guys overheard it and asked me what my bag looked like........turns out 2 girls earlier had pointed to their bags that they wanted taking to the airport and he thought they meant mine too. He rang the airport and it turned out that mine had been put ionto baggage storage by the girls before the flew off. So off we went to pick it up, what a relief and a crazy hectic end to what had been the most relaxed week ever.

I know it doesn't sound like i've done much and i havn't really. The islands are tiny with not much to do apart from lounge around and snorkel but i'm not complaining. The place is great to come to for a couple of weeks, soak up the sun and just relax. This next week, i'm off to the other side of the main island to go on a trek thorugh some rainforest and see somewhere else and something different that Fiji has to offer. So i'll let you know how it went when i get back.

Wherever you are, hope you're enjoying it but it can't be like the paradise that is Fiji!