And so the adventure ends...Fiji

We've reached our final destination and we can't believe it. Since we left the cold wintery January in England seems like a life time ago but at the same time we can't believe how quickly the last 5 months have passed. Final stop, Fiji and what a place to end, it's absolute paradise here. The islands are beautiful, people are super friendly and the weather is gorgeous (can't say we're missing the New Zealand rain at all!).

We spent two nights in Nadi on the main land before starting our island hopping tour mainly just lazing about by the hotel pool bringing the tan back to life. The one time we did venture out of the hotel was a bit of a experience, we boarded the public bus - a big and very aincient looking window-less bus absoluately jam packed and there wasn't another tourist or white face in sight. Luckily, we knew exactly where to get off. Actaully, I lie. We had no bloody clue but we've rocked up to every single county on this trip without any bloody clue and that's always panned out ok so we used all our worldly knowledge and guessed at where to get off. Thankfully, we correctly guessed at Nadi town, needent have bothered though there was nothing there.

On the Sunday we started our Ultimate Lei Island hopping which stopped at five islands, Coral View Resort on Tavewa Island, Korovou Eco-resort of Naviti Island, Wayalailai Eco-haven resort on Waya Lailai Island, Beachcomber Island and finally Southsea Island. Arriving at the islands is all you would expect of a tropical paradise, you are picked up from the ferry by a little boat and as you approach the shore all the island staff gather on the beach to sing a welcome song - the Bula song. Bula means hello and from what we have gathered, just about anything else they want it to mean. There's the Bula song, Bula dance, bula bar, Bula time...you get my drift. As you walk ashore all the staff greet you personally, a tropical flower is placed behind your ear and you are presented with a welcome drink. A lot of the resorts are very basic, showers are just a drip of cold water, the dorms are in thatched bures (a fancy name for a shed) and there is only electricity for a few hours a day (or none at all in one of the resorts) while others were a bit more civilised but it didn't matter either way - what we have learnt on this trip is that we can deal with cold showers, dorm without doors, beds with matresses so thin you'd be forgiven for thinking you were sleeping directly on the metal frame and no electricity. Give us a gorgeous beach on a tiny little island, plenty of sun, a book and an i-pod and we'll be happy for days!!

Perhaps our only complaint is the lack of feeding. We'd been told by a couple of girls we met in New Zealand that you literally eat all day..perfect we thought, we fully intended to make up for living off the small portions of free and more often than not, disgusting hostel food in New Zealand for three weeks however the girls' concept of lots of food differed greatly to ours. For the first couple of days I thought maybe we'd accidentally booked into a tropical fat camp, not helped by my selective eating habits which meant I was left with some rice and a bit of lettuce on the first night. Never have I been so excited to be woken up by a banging drunk at 7am for breakfast. Maybe it was a good thing to counteract five months of pure indulgence otherwise BA might try and charge me for excess baggage on the way home...and I don't mean my backpack. I joke (I hope). The food has been a mixture of lovely, strange and sometimes disgusting but we've learnt to stock up on cake during afternoon tea and on the rare occasion dessert is on offer, always trick the waiter into giving you two. Not that we plan our day around meals you understand, well maybe a bit. The sound of the drum to indicate meal times is definately one of our favourite times of day. Maybe not so much the one at 7am indicating breakfast though, the Fijians just love an early morning. it does mean we're on the beach by 7:30am each day to make the most of the sunshine. We've been going to bed early too, all of the islands are pretty quiet and most nights we were in bed by 10 apart from Beachcomber Island where I went to bed at about 1am and Lodge...4am.

We've been detoxing (well, bar Beachcomber) after all of New Zealands festivities so its all water and beauty sleep for us. We even went for a run in Korovou, I say went..what I actually mean is we seriously thought about it and even set our alarm at 6:30am but it went off, we snoozed and then the drum sounded so we went for breakfast instead. At least the though was there. We have done a lot of dancing though, with most evenings entertainment involving the staff doing traditional Fijian dances and songs and then dragging everyone else up to do the Bula dance (probably not one we'll be teaching to people in nightclubs) plus I entered (and technically came joint first in) a limbo contest. There's always activites going on in the day too from weaving to fish feeding, we've learnt how to tye a sarong 550 ways (Lodge was the model for this class and I'm pretty sure she enjoyed the big fat Fijian man touching her up) and how to karate chop a coconut. We also went on a cave trip to the Blue Lagoon caves where we swam in the pool inside the cave, went on a sailing trip and a visit to a Fijian school and village but unfortunately our reef snorkelling with sharks trip was cancelled due to the rough sea.

I think it's fair to say we've fully embraced the Fijian way of life. We haven't worn shoues all week, eaten with our hands and partaken in a traditional kava ceremony. This involved a prayer by the chief while we all sat on the floor and then the distribution of little bowls of kava which is made from ground up pepper plant root. you clap once before you receive it, say Bula (obviously) and then down the drink before clapping three times. It is meant to make your mouth go numb and have an effect similar to alcohol. I can't say it felt like this for me, more like downing a bowl of water that had been mixed with soil. Yummy.

We met people on each island often bumping into them again as we travelled around but in particular we made friends with a couple of girls - Keri (who coincidentally was on our Kiwi bus although we didn't really know her) and Hayley and spent most of the week with them. We also by chance had a couple of days in Waya Lailai with Jo and Jordanna, our friends from New Zealand who's trip coincided with ours. It was nice to see them again. We left them on Friday afternoon bound for Beachcomber island having to endure a very rough ferry ride to get there. The wind had picked up over the previous couple of days and we'd been having huge storms each night. We watched the Waya Lailai staff loading our luggage into the little speed boat, each carrying a few backpacks and suitacases whilst battling the waves to get to the boat which was steadily filling with water. After seeing half my backpack and entire travel pillow hanging off the bag get submerged into the sea (sorry Mum) it didn't come as much of a surprise to find upon arrival in Beachcomber that half my clothes were soaking wet. We were just thankful to get there without capsizing or being sick after a particuarly hairy ride on the ferry.

We topped off our time in Fiji with a brilliant sailing trip aboard Seaspray on our last day in the islands. it was a case of third time lucky with this trip after on our first attempt to do the trip it was cancelled, the next day we managed to miss the boat as we were sitting on the beach sunbathing with our ipods in when the put out the boarding call but third time we made it and had a fabulous day. We visited the island where Castaway was filmed and had a BBQ lunch on the boat, we visited a Fijian village and school, went to a Kava ceremony and a shell market and took full advantage of the free champagne and beer. As with everywhere we've been, the Fijian crew were so friendly and entertained us with songs all day which everyone enjoyed until Lodge joined in - that will teach them for giving her free beer. On our last night on the islands we had a couple of surprise visitors turn up, we'd said goodbye to them in Waya Lailai two days previous not expecting to see them again but who should turn up on the evening boat to Southsea Island...Jo and Jordanna, who since we'd left them had had a nightmare with bedbugs so abandoned the rest of their trip and headed back to Southsea where they knew there were no bugs. I thionk Southsea was probably my favourite island we went to, it was absolutely tiny, you could walk the entire way around in about three minutes. The staff were so friendly and knew everyone by name, the food lovely and there was just 11 of us staying each night. On Sunday we did crab racing which Lodge's crab - aptly named Partner - raced to victory winning a bottle of wine which the four of us shared while reminicing over our funny times in New Zealand before heading off for our second to last sleep until home time.

We headed back to the mainland on Monday evening ready for our flight home on Tuesday. It's all getting a bit emotional as the adventure comes to an end and what an adventure it has been. We've had mroe fun than I ever thought possible, laughed until it hurt, drunk until it hurt the next morning and done so many once in a lifetime things. In the last 18 weeks we've ridden an elephant, been to temples, drank from buckets and learnt to Scubadive (sort of) in Thailand; got lost in Kualar Lumpa, had a romantic valentines day with a man with no thumbs and ridden rollercoasters in Malaysia; had cocktails at Raffles, lived in the red light district, been on a night safari, fallen in love with Changi Airport and generally spent a fortune in Singapore; had a massage on a restaurant table, taught an entire nightclub a dance and had a night of luxury (and our only bath in the entire 5 months) in Bali; cycled the island, had daily cocktails and endemame beans on the beach, celebrated Lodge's 24th, experienced outdoor bathrooms, fallen in love with the Tir Na Nog staff, had some of the funniest nights and become locals on the Gili Islands; leant to surf, sailed the Whitsundays, snorkelled in the great barrier reef, off-roaded around Fraser Island, won big at the casino, drank far too much goon, sang kareoke and loved every minute with Dolly as we drove 5000km in Australia; seen plenty of lakes, loads of waterfalls, hated the cold, loved the parties, dressed as turtles, made brilliant friends and fallen out of a plane in New Zealand and Bula danced, limboed, explored caves, drank Kava, eaten with our hands and learnt how to karate chop a coconut in Fiji.

We've slept in sheds, tents, garages, on boats, in prison cells (not literally), up mountains, in swamps, on trains and in Dolly plus a couple of luxury hotels and a gorgeous apartment. There's been a missed flight, missed bus, broken down boat and one very stressful and very lost day in a campervan plus a cyclone, foods, tornado and an earthquake along the way but all in all we've done pretty well I'd say. We've met some brilliant people, bumped into people who live literally down the road from us and have so many memories we'll never forget.

I know more about Lodge than I think I ever wanted to know and visa versa. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do without her. I'm going to miss waking up next to her every morning and hearing about her bizzare dreams (I really think the girl would benefit from therapy), I'm going to miss our frequent conversations about made up nonesense and our hungover hysterical laughing sessions about the most stupid things. I probably wont miss knowing the workings of her bowel in more detail than really is necessary mind you. To sum up, there is no word to describe the last 136 days...actually maybe undescribable does it. I can't believe it's all over, going back to the real world is going to be tough.

We hope as you are reading this (Mums and Dads) you are glueing the final sequins to our welcome home banner and Craig - we hope you're warming up your vocal chords ready for a rendition of 'Summer Wind' as we walk through arrivals. If we don't get the reception we're expecting we will emigrate to Australia (Dad - you've been warned).

After five months of bullying, maybe it's time I gave Lodge her say. So to finish off the final blog I'll hand over to her...

A footnote from Lodge

Seeing as the subtext of Sarah's blog for the past four months has been to take the piss out of me, I thought I'd take this opportunity to defend myself. Except I can't. I actually was that scared, I actually did all of those silly things and we actually did laugh that much and have that much fun.

Although we're starting our journey home in debt to various organisations (Halifax, Natwest, Mr & Mrs Hollands and Mr & Mrs Simpson) we have had the time of our lives and have memories that will never fail to being a smile to our faces, some of my favourite being: Sas falling off her bike in Gili T, me demanding to see the manager in McDonalds at 4am, our Take-That and Westlife-athons in Dolly, drinking from buckets and teapots, SKYDIVING, riding elephants, learning to surf, etc etc...

They say travelling is about learning things about yourself and eachother - I've learnt that we are a pait of silly tarts that know how to have a good time and that if you live with someone for this long, you can recognise the smell of their farts when they sneak one out in a shop thinking no one will notice (Sarah).

We've picked up eachother's habits, Sarah has taken to shouting the last few words of her sentences when she's annoyed/excited like I do ie "I'm so hungry I could EAT THIS MENU" and she now thinks everything stinks like I do. I've picked up a few of hers too like not wearing the straps of my pj top any more (although I'm not convinced she didn't have an alterior motive for this - lezzer) but there are many I didn't adopt for example - sitting at the lagoon munching on a whole carrot, making strange badger type noises (a mix between a hiccup and a scream) in public and sometimes, in people's faces, taking forEVER to get ready and making a mess along the way, getting so much enjoyment from cleaning under her toenails with a pair of tweezers and tilting her head to the side and hunching her shoulders when she looks in the mirror.

There are stories that made it to the blog and there are many that didn't, there are photos that made it to facebook and there are many that didn't. Even if we are sick of the sight of eachother when the trip is over (which is unlikely, it was nice to be in a relationship for four months, we spoon, bicker, laugh and finish eachother's sentences like any other couple) we will have to stay friends now, she knows too muh. And so do I. As they say, what goes on tour, stays on tour...