I would spend the rest of my birthday in Fiji, I shared a taxi with an Canadian and a German who were in the same hostel, Bamboo hostel. The check-in took a while, they explained us that we were on Fiji time now. What is Fiji time? I will explain with the bus schedule they had. It stated all the bustimes and said "DON'T EXPECT THE BUSSES TO BE ON TIME, WE ARE NOT IN GERMANY BUT IN FIJI". I think I haven't seen one Fijian person stressed out in the whole week, which is definitely a good thing. I put my bags in the room and after that we signed up for the original Fijian lovo meal. this is a special meal that is cooked in the earth. Our meal contained potato, chicken, egg plant, fish and pumpkin and was actually pretty tasteful. After eating the kava ceremony started. Everybody
sat in a circle around a Fijian guy who had a big bowl of kava in front of him. The locals were playing guitar and singing and everyone was drinking the kava. The locals even sang a birthdaysong for me. The kava is a legal, narcotic drink that makes your muscles relax. It looks like mud, but the taste is actually not that bad. I didn't feel much of the effect, bit maybe that was because of the Fijian rum that we were drinking. At the airport we bought a bottle of Bounty rum, a Fijian rum that contains 58% of alcohol. It costs only 30 Fijian dollars for 1125 ml, which is equal to 13 euros. Real value for money after coming from the expensive places Australia and New Zealand where I drank 'goon' for 7 weeks. After the ceremony I went for a swim in the ocean and this felt like a bath. The ocean is 30 degrees warm!
The next morning I was supposed to go to Beachcomber island for 3 nights. I booked this trip 4 months ago already while I was stilll home. Since then they haven't sent me any pick-up details and thus I didn't know where and at what time the boat would leave. I even sent an e-mail to them again the week before to ask about the details again. I got no clear response and thus I asked the reception at 10 am to call Beachcomber. Apparently I missed
the ferry already and they couldn't let me go to the island anymore on that day. Everything was on Fiji time, so I had to make 10 phone calls, sent 3 e-mails before they finally told me that I could go to Vuda, where the boat was leaving at 1 am. So I took a taxi to Vuda and arrived there at 12.30. Suddenly the boat was not leaving anymore today and I started complaining a lot, since it was their fault and not mine and I paid for everything already, even the meals.
In the end I could go to the island later on the day and hang out at their pool first. It was a very nice location and I could easily spent my time there. At 6 I could go on the boat or stay there. I said that I would want a very nice room then, because I actually wanted to go to the island. Eventually they gave me a 4 persons room with two doubles, ocean view, tv, bath, fridge and a shower. On the island I would sleep in a 100+ bed dorm and thus I definitely made a good deal. In the evening I ate expensive shrimps (which I got for free because I paid for the disgusting buffet on the island already) with a retired Australian couple. After that I went in bath and probably had the best sleep of my whole trip.
The ferry to beachcomber took approximately 40 minutes and th island was beautiful. It was very small, you could walk around it in 5 minutes. The snorkeling was amazing there, I saw 5 stingrays and a lot of beautiful fishes, seastars and coral. They also had a activity, called turtle feeding. I was allowed to take a baby turtle in my hand there. The food was horrible on beachcomber and it wasn't the party island it was suggesting it was, but I still had a good time with the people who were there. I met Travis, a guy from California and he was going to Mana the day after. I was going to join him the day after that day, then we could do scuba diving together.
Thus, after 2 nights in beachcomber I was going to Mana island. We lived in the middle of the local village and the local school was just 1 minute away from our dorm. There were more backpackers here than in Beachcomber. I reunited with Travis and we planned the next scuba dive. I wanted to see some sharks and thus went for the dive spot 'the Supermarket', where you have the most chance to encounter a shark. In a fishing boat we drove to the diving spot and on the way we hit a log, the engine almost fell in the water. The diving instructors were swearing in Fijian and we continued our way to the dive spot. Travis and I looked to each other and we thought the same, 'I hope that boat is still working when we get back up'. When we were at the dive spot, there was not so much told to us, except for 'Go go', so we went under water and the other instructor left with his 2 Japanese students. We didn't know whether to follow him, so we waited some longer and he didn't pay attention to us, so we were right. Some what later our instructor dove in the water and we were supposed to follow him. He brought his spear and during the dive he would catch around 10 fishes with his spear. The blood of the fishes should lure the sharks to come to us. During the dive we saw a massive eel hiding in a hole, we continued our way and our instructor made the hand-sign for a shark. Two sharks were swimming there and one was just under me. One fled and the other one just circled around us for a while. It was a white tip reef shark and approximately 2 meters. At a couple of times the shark was just 1.5 meters away. This was not cage diving with sharks but real scuba diving. It was really cool to experience that. I was so excited by the shark that I didn't see the other 2 guys anymore, so I went up. The shark was already gone. The other 2 guys were still down and I saw them again from the surface, so I went in again, but it was already time to ascend. Without safety stop we went up and waited for the boat again. it took a while for the boat to get us, so the instructor went back in again to catch some more fish. When they finally picked us up, we drove back to the island. We had a calm night over there watching a firedance.
The next day Travis and I were supposed to do another dive in the afternoon and a night dive. Travis had some issues with breathing and he didn't really like the 'sketchy' side of the diving school, so he didn't dive anymore. I did another dive in the afternoon, which was beautiful, but I didn't see anything special. However, I skipped the nightdive, since a nightdive is a complete different type of sports and you want to have confidence in your diving school if you do that.
I would spend my last night in Bamboo hostel again, in Nadi. We had a good day of relaxing together with Travis, two Norwegians, Ingunn and Sofie, an Irish guy, Rayman and an English girl, Vicky. There was a beachparty at the hostel around the corner and believe it or not, but Vicky and I won the dance competition haha. Travis left the nex morning to New Zealand and I and the Norwegia girls were supposed to leave in the evening. We relaxed all day with the same group as the day before. It was time to go to the island O'ahu in Hawaii!! But before leaving i got picked for the extra security check. My ticket was filled with marks and I was checked for explosive substances. I was OK and now it was time to fly to Hawaii!!!