I arrived at Nadi at about 06:00am and Daniel was waiting at the airport for me to take me back to the hotel. He tells me that I only have a couple of hours until the car will be arriving to take us to the boat to the Mamanucas. I have just enough time to repack my big rucksack into something smaller, get changed out of my smelly airplane clothes and get some breakfast down me before the little Fijian shouts out "Mana Island!" We grab our bags and all the duty free vodka and cigarettes I was allowed to import and head off to the boat. The boat was harboured on a beach, only 5 minutes away, which was a good thing because the driver drove the distance with the trunk flying open, giggling away to herself when she noticed. Fortunately, all bags were still present. The boat was a small single engined speed boat! After bumping along for about 1.5 hours, and picking up some other from Beachcomber Island, we finally arrive at Mana Island being welcomed off the boat by local Fijians to the 'Welcome song' which would become so familiar to me over the coming days. They all helped us off the boat and showed us to our rooms. The island was small, and would have taken only about an hour to walk around it. There were two (rival) backpacker resorts next door to each other, but everyone from each appeared to mix quite well, although nobody could really understand why they were separate resorts. Just down the beach was a luxury resort, inhabited by Japanese people. Backpackers were 'banned' from visiting this report and we were told this at the welcome meeting, however some people did sneak in from time to time and there were no problems. On our first day we bumped into Kat and Verena, getting slowly drunk on the beach on the litre bottles of beer they were drinking. Instantly we warmed to them (given the mammoth beers in their hands, I knew that we would get on famously), as did one of the resort dogs who proceeded to urinate all over Verena as she was lazing on the beach!! The dog did not make the same mistake twice!! We were there for 6 nights in total, and much of it was spent with Verena and Kat. Verena was from Germany, but had been living in New Zealand and Kat was from New Zealand, but had been livinig in England - get it? Together, we went island hopping and visited the Castaway Island, Honeymoon Island, Mololo and Molololailai (Plantation Island). All were lovely. We had a BBQ on one of the islands for luch and then did some snorkling later in the afternoon. Towards the end of the day, we landed on a large sandbank in the middle of nowhere and did some sunbathing. It was truly spectacular. Other activities on the island included Kyaking (now that I'm a pro from Key Largo), crab racing, coconut croquet, Fijian dancing (a bit like the macarena) and loads of other stuff I can't even remember. All the food on the island was included in the price and we got 3 meals each day and the quality was fairly reasonable (even though I was bursting for a cheeseburger!!) The beer came in litre bottles, which means less trips to the bar, and I also had my first experience of Tim Tams - a chocolate biscuit kind of similar to a Penguin but much nicer, which means it must be bad for me!! Anyway, the time had to come to an end at some point and after saying all the tearful goodbyes to Verena (Kat had already left) Daniel and I headed back to the mainland. I am spending a couple of days at Nadi Bay to catch up on emails and to let you all know that I'm still alive before I head off to the Yasawas for 15 nights. This time I'll be travelling alone and spending lots more time on each of the islands so i hope to have some stories to tell you. I'll update you all when I get back from there then. Soooo excited!! Much love, Stephen xxx