Eventually said goodbye to the Beachouse, spent the night at Horizon backpackers in Nadi (basic but ok as you could use all of Smugglers cove facilities and it was a lot nicer) and hit picked up bright and early by Awesome Adventures to take us to Port Denaru to go to the islands. We had met a girl Anghard on Leleuvia and we bumped into her again here, Fiji is soo small, so we sat with her on the big yellow boat. (Yasawa Flyer.) We saw soo many beautiful islands through the Mamanucas, (south sea island you can walk around in 3 minutes! And Beachcomber((the party island)) had been recently hit by a cyclone so it wasn't open until the end of October) then onto the Yasawas for more beautiful islands. The different little clusters of islands all have something to offer. On the way we passed Octopus and Mantaray which have been highly recommended along with Blue Lagoon, so maybe that's where we'll visit next time. So beside Mantaray (well across the water a little) we have Barefoot Lodge, where we hopped off for 3 days. From the boat, we saw Sunrise beach on Barefoot and thought, that looks gorgeous; lucky us!! We were welcomed by the staff with a song and the guitar being played, soo cute. Then taken to our beachfront bure, which we shared with 1 or 2 others. Really beautiful. So we got out to explore and saw that the resort had 3 beaches, so we could take out pick depending on wind, tide, sun and shade :) The reason I wanted to come here was because it was one of the places you could swim with Mantarays, so I had my fingers crossed from day one. They told us they hadn't seen them in the last week, and being near the end of the season, they might not be back. But I was secretly hopeful. So the first day, we just took it easy. Sunbathed, attempted to snorkel (you had to pay to rent snorkels, and kayaks which was a bit mean) and when I say attempted; we had two masks and one snorkel, so I tried to snorkel without a snorkel, I was out of breath in about 5 mins so we had to go back in. But we just refuse to pay when we're half way there. Lay on Sunrise beach, then round to Mantaray beach, then round to Sunset beach. Kenny joined in the volleyball too. The night consisted of a 3 course dinner, which was lovely, and we found out the staff are just great here as well. We ended the night swigging our bounty rum and coke from our water bottles, strong stuff at 58% which I was to learn the hard way. We had a talk on the history of Fiji, good to be learning again.

The next day we literally sunbathed from 8.30am to 5.30pm. Starting on Mantaray beach and only moving when the tide came in to touch my toes. Kenny spotted a shark too, right up near the shore, crazy! The weather was absolutely amazing, so hot, the best weather we've had yet. Had some fun messing around in the water, Kenny finding out a can give as good as it gets when he ends up with a mouthful of water. Did a wee but more snorkelling, but decided to come in when I saw something that looked like an eyeball in the water! Yuk. Spent the evening having another three course meal, could get used to that too easy! A few more bounty rums, and playing a quiz, and winning!! Free beer for us!!Me Kenny and Lauren were Team Awesome. Day 2 of 3 on Barefoot and still no Mantarays, but I had a theory;
If we paid do a snorkel safari, the mantarays will come and we'll have to pay twice. But if we don't do a snorkel safari, we will leave seeing neither amazing coral and fish, nor Mantarays.

So we left the snorkel safari until the last day, and went out at 9am. It really was amazing. When we'd snorkelled previously, it had been in quite shallow water, but seeing the HUGE coral, the amount of different coral, soo many colourful and strange fish including Nemo, buffalo parrot fish (which can grow the size of a small car!) and swordfish, and having someone there to tell you all about what you were seeing (including the eyeball) was really great. I managed to get a really good snorkel too, finally one that didn't have me swallowing water every two minutes. Also dived down a little bit deeper to get a closer look, sometimes ending up in the middle of a sholes of beautiful coloured fish :) really loved it.
Got back and spent another day chilling at the beach in the beautiful weather again, chatting to one of the dive guys,
"Any Mantarays yet?"
"Hold on I'll just text them," he says.
Well at 4pm we hear the batter of drums: MANTARAYS!!! Ahhhh!!!
Everyone ran for the dive shop, nearly every guest at the island and we get sorted with a snorkel, mask and flippers and out we go on the boat, jumping into the channel as soon as the boat is stopped. It was like a group of thirty people all chasing the winning lottery ticket!! But it was AMAZING!!! We saw two of them; a black and white one. They just summer-salted in the water, (that's how they clean themselves) at times coming straight up towards me like they were gona eat me (panic stations!!) , but the next minute we were chasing them again. It's like they just kept putting on a little show for us. And bonus to this, there were in an area I hasn't been snorkelling yet so got to snorkel as well, amongst a group of zebra stripped fish and mackerel. But the Mantarays really are just huge beautiful creatures and just caused a complete adrenaline rush for anyone chasing them. I got a few great pictures too which I was soo happy about; the underwater camera held out for when I needed it!! So we had 45 mins with just Barefoot people chasing them, then the people from the other island came too. Then you just started getting feet in the face, so it was time to go. But this just put the icing on the cake reinforcing what I already know; I LOVE FIJI!!

The next day we really only had the morning before we moved onto the next island. So we went for a hike to the top of the island: saw pineapples, papaya and bananas growing, also lots of tiny lizards and brown crabs. Having saw a tarpe on top of one of the bures last night, I'd wandered what it was for. We got talking to a few others and found out it was BED BUGS!! Not good at all!! Just glad we were leaving today, and our hut hadn't been infected. I know it can happen anywhere, but it just makes me feel itchy.
On leaving Barefoot to get our transfer,
we were sang out with a Fijian goodbye song, and treated to seeing more Mantarays (just from the boat this time.) Then onto a South Sea Cruises boat to Nabua