Jak proposed! He got down on one knee as we were walking along the beach in Fiji and pulled out a ring. I said yes of course (actually I said 'are you serious? really?? you're proposing?? are you serious?' etc for about 5 minutes first but ultimately I said yes once I got over the surprise). We celebrated that evening with a delicious meal and some overpriced wine.

The last couple of days we spent island-hopping went by incredibly fast. Our final stop, Bounty Island, was so small it took just 20 minutes to walk around or about an hour to kayak around - and we had done both within half a day of being on the island. The lack of distractions and things to do meant that we didn't even feel guilty about lazing around sunning ourselves and reading for the remainder of the time there.

That is, we didn't feel bad about being lazy until we finally got round to snorkelling on our last day and realised how fricking amazing it is!!!! We should have done it every day! Dense coral surrounds the island, starting just a few metres from the shoreline, and multicoloured fish casually swim through it and past your nose with what seems like no fear whatsoever. Sadly we didn't find Nemo but we did find electric blue Dorys, and parrot fish (they make a funny crunching noise as they eat the coral), and some beautiful bright yellow fish. My personal favourite was a transparent fish with a long blue bottle nose. I freaked out a little when I saw a sea snake resting at the bottom but thankfully it seemed utterly uninterested in us. Neither of us had seen fish like that in the wild before so we were pretty amazed.

Yesterday we jumped on a boat back to the mainland. Two of the English guys from Mana Island were on it and somehow already knew about our engagement! News travels fast in the Fijian islands, possibly because so many backpackers criss cross through them. We grabbed a Macdonalds (heaven after 11 days of buffets) and did some shoppping in Nadi before dining on crisps, cookies and apples back at our hotel and playing card games.

This morning we flew to Auckland. We will be travelling round New Zealand by Magic Bus for the next month or so, stopping a few nights here and there in YHA hostels. It's cloudy here and they have the Queen's head on their money - we feel right at home already!