I arrived at the Coral Coast pretty horrifically hung over. But I felt instantly better when I looked at the location of the hostel, called Beachouse. It is directly on the beach which has white sand and crystal clear, turquiose waters. There are hammocks hanging off every tree and a swing that goes over the sea. It is pretty much paradise! To make matters even better there are GORGEOUS dogs there. Two of my favourites were Lucy who is a massive shaggy white dog, known as the polar bear in paradise, her son was a giant black dog (strange!), named diesel. Diesel was a big attention seeker and if you stopped stroking him he would pat you with his massive paw normally ending in a big scratch, but he was quickly forgiven with one look at his big puppy dog eyes.

The hostel had free kayaks for the use of guests which was a great touch as i have my own snorkelling gear so i went out on the kayaks, tied them to a bouy and did some snorkelling, which was fun.

I met some English girls there and we all decided to sign up for a shark snorkel. This meant tempting over some reef sharks with dead fish and hoping they didnt take a bite out of you! Sounded like fun! It was a pretty dodgey experience as the guide forgot his snorkel and fins, I counted three leaks in the boat, which was like a tin can and the guide also got lost! There is no health and safety regs in Fiji so there were no cages or anything to stop the sharks eating us, but i trusted that they weren't interested in us, just the fish. The guide took a spear gun which he caught a fish with and within minutes there were around 5 white tip reef sharks swimming around us, they were very cautious and jumpy but after circling a few times one of them grabbed the fish and the others chased after it. They were only small and i didn't feel scared of them, i was more in awe of them, they are really graceful and beautiful creatures. It was certainly an experience and afterwards our guide took us to his village and we had tea and muffins with his wife and children. It was quite an eye opener as their house was just a shack made out of corregated iron, but they seemed happy. It was interesting to see that although the houses in the village were the bare minimum the village church was an enormous brick building complete with stained glass windows (the houses didnt have windows at all, just gaps and a curtain) and a stereo system blasting out hyms all day. They are definitely very religious people and religion takes a priotrity in their culture. We also got to have a look in the kindergarten which was really cute but very small, we got to see the children's art work and spoke to the teacher, the children were not there as school had finished. The kindergarten had recently been made over by a charity from Suva, the capitol of Fiji. There was a bookcase and some new books and water bottles as well as a new paint job, it was still very basic and i found it a bit wierd that the teacher was sat using an ipad!! I'm assuming that was given to her by the charity but i would have thought some chairs and tables may have benefited them more!

I was meant to move to a different hostel after 2 days at Beachouse but i was having a great time and had met some awesome people so i decided to cancel my booking and stay at Beachouse for the whole time i was in the coral coast. I spent the rest of my time there relaxing. I read a book in 2 days! Every day at 15.30 they had free scones and jam which was a very welcome touch and we pretty much planned our days around this!

I had a great few days relaxing, sunbathing and meeting new people as well as some great nights at the cute beach bar they have at Beachouse. One of the girls i had met, Paris, deicded last minute (the evening before) to come with me to Taveuni which was my next spot, as there is a lot of great dive spots and she is also a diver. So the next morning we got in a minivan and headed to the captiol, Suva, to board a 23 hour ferry! I wasn't looking forward to it much but hoped Taveuni would be worth it!