Fiji - Nadi, Bounty, Beachcomber, Mana, Nadi

We arrived in Nadi, the international airport on the Fijian main island really early in the morning and it was already about 20 degrees! Amazing!! We used the cash point in the airport and saw that Fiji money has a picture of the Queen on it, tgey must be part of our colony and none of us even realised!!

We got picked up by our hostel - Bamboo backpackers and taken to the little site which was right over tge road from a beach. Because wed gotten there to early, about secen am our rooms wernt ready so we dumped our stuff and went for a walk on the beach. The sand was like that black volcanic sand tgat stuck to your skin, i took my toms off and within seconds i looked like id got gorilla feet!! On the beach a cute local man started talking to us, he was about 65 and said his job was a tree climber and he picked the coconuts... Incredible at his age!! He chopped the tops off sone coconuts so we could all have a morning cocktail and it was delish! Normally i dont like coconut milk, i find it very watery and sour when you get the brown hairy coconuts from the fair... Here though the coconut still had its fleshy exteria and the milk was sweet and almost tasteless, very unoffensive!!

We got some toast breakfast from our hostel whilst we were still waiting for our beds and it came with homemade jams, one banana and one corgette! Both really good!! After we had a little nap because nobe of us had slept on the plane, it was a pretty rough 11h flight, with minimal leg room, films on loops that you cant start whenever you want and were we next door to the kitchen so lots of clattering and banging!

We used the hostel wifi, which was a little slow to check on the exchange rate as we thought it was 1:1 when we woke up for dome reason, which was making everything pretty expensive but it wasnt... 1:3 so toast and eggs wasnt actually £5 but about £1.80!! Amazing! We started talking to some of the other people in the hostel when they came down for breakfast and getting an idea of what to do in Fiji and the day trips and longer things available. We decided on doing some island hopping as that is where all the most beautiful beaches are and many of the Fijian islands are famous, theres the one where Stowaway was filmed, the Robinson Cruisoe island, Bounty, where Celebrity love island was filmed and one i cant remember the name of that Paris Hilton parties at! So we booked a trip to three of the islands closest to the mainland, Bounty, Beachcomber and Mana. And the more we talked to people the more excited we got!!

We started speaking to Adam, one of the Fijian guys that worked at the hostel and laughing about learning the lingo and next thing we know were all sat down round a blackboard doing pronouciation of vowels, incredible!! And so funny! Bula bula is hello, vinaka is thank you and turo the number three, thats all i remember!!

We were told by one girls at the hostel that the food was pretty cheap and tasty and what with all the banter going on between us English backpacker and all the blokes working in the hostel about the Fiji v England rugby match that night we decided to stay at Bamboo for dinner and chill with everyone before heading out at 3am to see the game.

Wal and I had a veggie meal, coconut pesto pasta which was just wrong on so many levels, i really tried to like it, but a) i actually hate spagetti, its all long and slimey in your throat so i had to chop it up into real small pieces for a start, b) it was desicrated coconut which although freshly grated tastes of nothing but watery nothingness, certainly not pesto! And c) because the lumps of garlic in the 'sauce' were bigger than my fists, bleurghh!!

After dinner we sat with some of the people from out Fijian lesson earlier and they were playing the Ring of Fire drinking game (its a bit like a card game nan!) so we joined in, sampling the local drink bounty which comes pre mixed with coke and tastes like s***ty cheap Malibu!! Bleurgh! I had a straw in my bottle though so was quite good at looking like i wa drinking lots but not really!! We had a long evening ahead of us if we were going to watch the whole rugby game in the very early morning, so i wanted to pace myself and i figured a 30 minute speedboat journey at 9am the next day wouldnt be too pleasant either on a mega hangover!

We got a free shuttle bus up the road to the ice bar which is apparently one of the infamous clubs on the west side of Fiji main land, so we had high hopes! We got inside and the boys whod been there before were amazed at how busy it was, a whole twelve people in it!!the DJ playlist was seriously like something straight from my ipod, really corny and old school!! It was fun though, we had a good boogie and chatted to a couple of people who had been to the other side of the mainland and some whod been to the island in the north and we were reassured that the beaches and weather improve a lot the further you get from Nadi (where we were staying!) The rugby started very late in the night and the ice bar club had completely emptied apart from our group of Englishys and some local Fijians! I had already stopped drinkig a while earlier so was already feeling really tierd before it even began! We decided wed watch until half time and then call it a night and crawl into bed... We got the doormen to call us a taxi and some of the boys from the hostel sorted us out a good price ($FJ 5 - about $1.80) for the ten minute drive back to the Bamboo hostel.

The next morning we set off for Bounty, our first island hop. It was about a 35 minute speedboat drive away and oh my god was it beautiful!! Absolutely incredible!! It has picture perfect, photocard worthy beaches, white sand thats so fine and soft and clear blue sea with loads of coral and fish... The people at the resort are so so lovely, theres only one place to stay in Bounty and one resturant, but you can pick between doom rooms (about twenty bunkbeds in each) or more expensive bures which are like little private huts on the beach, gorgeous! Within the price all meals are included which is excellent and the food seriously yummy, theyve a really lush island and an overflowing vegetable patch! And for our lunch the kitchen bent over backwards to make vegetarian meals for Al and i!

We walked all the way round the island in about 45 minutes, so it was relatively big but most of the middle was thick forest with big trees and plants sprawling everywhere, and we wernt quite brave enough to walk through it! Too many creepy crawlies!!

Bounty had lovely white sand and turquoise sea and a little bit if coral near the beach. We borrowed snorkles from the dive shop and went to have a look, although the girls didnt really like it at first and the masks leaked which doesnt make for such a pleasant experience! We snorkles around for a little while though, i said we needed to practise for the Great Barrier Reef coming up! Feeling really active after lunch we borrowed kayaks next from the dive shop and had races up and down the shore which was really funny and i was absolutely usless! Ive got not strength in my upper body at all to propel myself!! We were so tierd by the end of the day what with all out activities and no sleep the night before and jetlag we decided to turn in super early to bed, ready for our boat to the next island the following day.

We arrived at Beachcomber island to all the staff singing welcone songs to us and showing us around the tiny party island! The dorm was absolutely huge, about fifty bunkbeds crammed into each the girls and boys dorms which were seperated by a paper thin divider and at either end of the thatched dorm cabin was a mezzanine floor with even more beds!! Our bunk numbers were 98, 99 and 101 to give you a sense of scale! Not all of the beds were full though, Fijis wet season actually starts in late October so there wasnt anywhere near as many peopke on the tiny island as there could have been which was nice!!

We walked round the whole island in ten minutes easily and found it wasnt quite as beautiful as Bounty and there were definately signs of it once being a party island, litter, cigarette butts, a 24h takeaway shop! But we were still excited and spent the day sunbathing and eating carb heavy buffet style meals!

We met lots of lovely girls on the island and hung out with them at dinner, we were doing the reverse trips so we all swapped notes on where to go! Two were from london, really friendly and about the same age as us and the third was Ozzie so she gave us lots of tips on how to get busses to the Daintree forest and which network provider simcard to get! The sand bar on the island had a happy hour so we all took advantage of this and got some slush-puppie cocktails, sex on the beach, magheritas, invasions...guess which i had!

Later in the evening a big yaht docked a little way out to sea and our island speedboat went to pick up a big group from the yaght and brought them over to the bar, a couple of young guys and some dads but they were all fun and brought us all some drinks and chips and stuff throughout the night which was great!! They also promised us breakfast on their boat the following morning, but at 8am so none of us were awake at that time obviously, even with the promise of real bacon!!

After a super lazy morning we all got up and chatted and sunbathed and generally embraced Fiji time (which is doing everything at about 2 miles an hour!) we went on a little boat trip over to the other side of the coral reef surrounding the island and did some more snorkling... Under the water lots of fishes and starfish were electric blue but most of the coral looked like it had been damaged or was dead because it was a bit grey and broken! Parts were quite nice and others like a graveyard under the sea!! When we got off the boat we had to get out into quite deep water so i had to take a deep breath and go for it as the first one to jump in! Noone else followed though, i think the girls had been scared by too many tales of reef sharks!! So the boat drove to closer to the shore and we went out with a guide who dived down and picked up a sea cucumber which had the most disgusting texture, like a toads willy, all bumpy and slimey and long )yes i slso screamed this to the guide to gave it me as well!) and we also held some starfish which were really weird because i thought they would feel quite spongey but instead they were hard shelled and pretty heavy...with a kind of like chalky feel to them!

After snorkling the weather turned, the mainland clouds came over and stole the sun and the wind picked up quite a lot so we all retreated to the dorm to snooze/shower/read/chat! I borrowed a needle from the laundry room here and sew on my Fiji flag to my backpack so Billy backpack now has three flags in him from my travels...Sri Lanka, the USA and Fiji :) it looks really cool!! And then had a beautiful nap in a hammock, listening to the sea! Although we had a quiet evening, we sat and watched millions and millions of fireworks from the island going of on the mainland as a celebration of diwali, the indian festival of light. We literally couldnt have planned it better to have wen on the island watching the gorgeous fireworks going iff across the water in the sky! Incredible!

The next day we transferred to Mana island for another two nights, we got on a flat bottomed boat from Beachcombet about 200m out to sea and then pulled up next to a slightly larger speed boat and were all told to hop over... On the uberly choppy sea because the weather was still turned, with all our bags, seriously a health and safety person would have had a fit!! We made it though with our bags only getting a little bit wet and then full throttle ahead in the speedboat to Mana.

Someone had said Mana was a party island and another how beautiful it was so we were quite excited and it didnt cross our minds to take any amenities with us, like toilet roll or muffins from breakfast which we realised almost immediately upon arriving on the new shore was a mistake!!

The speedboat journey was god aweful, very very choppy and it felt like the driver was seriously enjoying chucking us all around! Water was splashing on the deck and us and even i felt very sea sick...i tasted breakfast in my mouth at least three times, lovely! To make matters worse and the health and safety man would really have a heart attack at this, the boat wngine was kicking out an incredible amount of petrol fumes it was unreal, the smell was soo bad we all had to take it in turns to stand up and breath near the front of the boat and during the rest of the time i held my top over my mouth to breath through, not a pleasant experience!

Arriving on the island was interesting, the backpacker bit is in and amongst the local village which id have thought to be an incredible experience if i was ready for it, but blimey wed been spolit at the last two island hostels in comparison... The dorms looked like they were falling down, full of bugs and whatnot and i was to terrified to even look at the ceiling an risk seeing a spiders web...

Sat on the beach, following a disasterous lunch (more on that later) we were all considering our options on how to get back to the mainland quicker than we had booked...not wanting to sleep in a dorm that two girls had said no less than twenty minutes previously theyd caught two tarantulas, one on her bed and another in the others backpack...bleaughhhh - you can inagine my aracnophobia reaction and neither Kate not Wals was much better!! Great!! Oh and Wal was pretty poorley following our 'vegetarian' meal which was dished up with suspicious looking meat on the plate and then just wiped off for us and bread shoved on instead... Loving life at Mana Lagoon resort we were! Wait, the meat was bat as well! Lovely! I think we all silently agreed it was to be a fairly long day and two nights and that there most certainly was not going to be any kind of wifi or soy milk available to us!

At dinner time, the food was slightly better... It didnt taste like it was swimming in meat juice like lunch had! And weird though it was, i enjoyed the pineapple slice with mashed potato much more than id have thought! And our luck was in, we cause such a diva fuss (which i am now really embarrassed about) on being so terrfied of the spiders and them crawling into our mouths at night an laying eggs under our skin that the Mana Lagoon hostel guys upgraded us to a room with a double bed in the main building, rather than the dorm which had no lightbulbs, electricity and was much further into the greenery...spiderland. We slept three in a bed huddled underneath a mosquito net someone from the little village had dug out and lent us... Following lots of Mana mix...sort of homebrew malibu and coke and the girls having a little bit of traditional cava - a natural relaxant made from squishing tree roots - we all slept pretty soundly through to six am when the electricity cuts out and the fan stopped working... I for one was then very hot and stickey as the sausage in te middle of the bed!!

Mana island is divided into two halves... The backpacker hostel in amongst the local village and then a big swanky hobeymoon resort on the otherside. We managed to sneak past the security at the big resort, they are renouned for being incredibly inwelcoming to backpackers overthere, i suppose something to do with our hobo attire and the $350 and upwards room charges. But wow was it beautiful, gorgously clean and clear sea, the softest of soft white sand and really comfy looking loungers on the beach with umbrella shades. They had a free laundry room, pingpong centre, tennis courts, swimming pools the lot! Naice! We had a wander round and a little dip in the sea before coming back to our side of the island, which when the sun was out and although basic did really look like paradise too!! Dont want to go back to the main land, but very excited about Australia next!!

Happy travels and sending lots of love back home to everyone, missing you all x xx x x