After a miserable, wet two days in Nadi we were told a boat was sailing for the Yasawa Islands the next day. We were sceptical...the weather forecasted indefinite storms but the company we had booked our package with were uncontactable and rumours were rife that no refunds were being given and that people were told they had to take the boat back out regardless...

We headed out to our first destination, the island of Waya Lailai and to our amazement the sun came out...and stayed out for the next 10 days! The cyclones were gone - hooray!

One highlight was reef snorkelling on Waya Lailai with a guide and 5 local teenagers. Our guide attracted sharks by waving a dead fish about and the sharks proceeded to go into a feeding frenzy. Despite knowing reef sharks are not dangerous we were slightly concerned when all the local girls started screaming and trying to get on the boat! Mark was also slightly freaked out when feeding a nice friendly group of angel fish to find a 2 meter shark diving in for the fish and snatching it out of his hand! Scary but quite an experience!

Together with another couple, Rachel and Matt and a Norwegian we call Skol (as we don't know his real name) we experienced kava, the Fijian drink that tastes of dirty water and is a mild narcotic. The Fijians love it but the only effect we noticed was that it makes your tongue go numb and Kim had freaky dreams the night afterwards.

Mark braved a 5am start to walk to the summit of Waya Lailai island (Kim stayed in bed) and we had a great day trip on Seaspray, a sailing ship which took us to a Fijian village and to the island where Tom Hanks filmed 'Castaway'. Unfortunately we couldn't find Wilson!

Interestingly most of the tourists seemed to have cancelled and many of the resorts we stayed in had only 5 or 6 guests. Indeed for one night we were the only guest on Sunrise Resort! This was slightly disconcerting as it meant we spent mealtimes being watched by our host Deborah who was lovely but we never did work out whether Deborah was male or female. We were quite grateful for the arrival of an Uno-enthusaist German and 3 Swedish lads who were all a great laugh!

We spent a lovely morning at Sunrise Resort fishing. Mark caught a large Snapper for our dinner and Kim caught 5 smaller fish! Not bad for our first attempt at fishing!

One of the islands we stayed on (Nanuya Lailai) was where the iconic (and slightly controversial) 80's film Blue Lagoon was filmed. We swam in the lagoon and visited the caves where one of the scenes was filmed. Kim sat on the very rock Brooke Shields sat and we had to swim through an underwater tunnel to reach a creepy dark cave, home to an ancient eel.

We spent one night on the cruise boat Wanna Taki. We kayaked to a nearby beach and snorkelled, seeing purple starfish, sea cucumbers and squid! Mark proved his bravery by jumping off the top of the boat...yes we have the photo to prove it!

All in all, after a bad start Fiji indeed did turn out to be a lovely destination with fantastic sunsets and very friendly people.