Our first island in Fiji was octopus resort, we had a really long journey to get there including a 2.5 hour ferry ride so by the time we got to the island we were very ready to lie on a sun lounger all day! It literally felt like we arrived in paradise, even our dorm room was really lovely. Everyone was really friendly and the food was fantastic, we were expecting very basic Fijian food but there was loads of choice, including lots of lovely fresh fish. On the second day we paid to be taken into the Fijian village which was on the same island as the resort and where most of the workers live. It was really interesting to see their homes and the little children kept popping out the houses to say Bula (hello) which was so cute! On the way back to our resort we were passing all the bigger kids coming back from school, they have a 'school boat' rather than a school bus!! In the evening all the workers did a traditional Fijian dance for us and we had to drink this stuff called Cava (not the fizzy wine kind as Odette thought!!!) it tastes revolting, looks like dirty dish water and makes your mouth go numb!! I didn't enjoy it but it's their welcome drink so I felt obliged to try some!!
We caught the ferry to our second island, Mantaray Resort in the morning. The dorm rooms there had 30 beds, so we opted for a 2 bed beach front bure instead (flash packers!) it was nice to have our own space again. At 7:00am the next morning a loud drum started which is to let you know that the Mantaray fish are nearby so everyone jumped out of bed and ran to get on a boat to go and see them! We went snorkelling with them which was scary but amazing, they are sooo huge (about 4 metres wide!) and they swim right beneath you! Unfortunately the rest of the day was pretty cloudy so we couldn't do any sunbathing so had to entertain ourselves with card games and reading in a hammock! When we left Mantaray we got told to put our bags by the bar then board the boat, when we got to the big ferry we noticed that our bags had been left behind!! The ferry had to wait for us so we got a VIP speed boat trip back to collect our bags which was quite funny!
Our third and final island in Fiji was blue lagoon resort which was like arriving in paradise again! The water was so amazingly blue and thankfully the sun decided to put its hat back on so we got to sunbathe -yay! We did a guided snorkelling trip which was really good, except my snorkel had a hole in it so I kept swallowing water and on the way back to the island the boat broke down so we had 10 minutes of being stranded at sea! We spent the rest of our time at blue lagoon sunbathing, swimming in the beautiful clear blue sea and eating lots of delicious food!
We had one final night in Fiji on the mainland in Nadi - we arrived in the evening after a 5 hour ferry journey and our hostel was disgusting!!!! It smelt, was boiling hot and had a really grotty bathroom!!! So our sleeping bag liners got their first use! During the night I kept being woken up by the sound of someone doing extremely loud farts!!! It's funny now I think about it, but at the time I was getting so annoyed! It sounded like someone was playing with a whoopie cushion!! Thankfully it was only for one night but definitely don't want to be staying somewhere like that again, yuck!!!