Hi all and welcome to our LAST BLOG OF OUR TRAVELS! We can't believe we've reached the end now, we've had such an amazing experience and it's been an awesome journey!

So, here's from where Em left off...

On Sunday the 18th July, after a fab cooked English breakfast in the resort restaurant at Voilvoli Beach Resort, a small group of us, me and Em, Ringo and Flea (the Kiwi Experience bus drivers) and Irina and Asko, a great Finish couple, decided to kayak across over the water to a nearby island to have an explore and climb the large hill that the island hosted. It was great to create our own adventure and get active, as you can only do so much laying around sunning yourselves on the beaches!

In order to climb the hill, however, we needed to gain permission from the inhabiting village Chief of the island by presenting him with a gift of some sort, so we ordered in some Kava root from the local town, as they couldn't refuse their favourite tipple! Once donned with our gift, lifejackets, sarongs and 2-man sea kayaks, we paddled over the waves on the half an hour journey across the sea to the island's shores. On reaching the beach, we could see the children from the village running down the beach to investigate the curious new foreigners who had ventured onto their land, as they don't often get visitors, living on this secluded island! We were a little apprehensive, feeling a little like explorers dsicovering a new land and waiting to meet the natives (!), but we were greeted by an 18 year old boy, Major, who thanked us for the gift and gave us permission. And without another word, he ran back to his hut to fetch a machete and crocs: he was going to lead the way as our guide up the hill! He led us around the shore and up the steep slope through the long grass to the very top, where we sat and ate alunch that we'd prepared. It was an awesome view, enabling us to see around the whole of this small island and look down upon the single village inhabiting it's approximate 800 people. We could see right out onto the mainland too, with the coral reefs dotting the dark blue ocean in turquoise patches.

The way down was a bit more of a stuggle with all of us in flip flops (and Em's borrowed crocs from Major as she didn't bring shoes at all!), but on reaching the bottom, he scrambled swiftly up a nearby palm tree and came down wth a coconut for each of us in his arms! Back at the beach. he used his machete to skillfully cut a hole into the top of them and we sat and drank the sweet milk to refresh us in the heat of the day - this was what Fiji was about! The children joined us, playing around in our kayaks and posing for all of our cameras, barely able to speak English but soo cute!

After a couple of hours we said goodbye and kayaked back to the mainland, a lot more of a struggle now that we were against the waves. (I later discovered that all the exposure from the walk and the kayaking led to some extremely burnt legs on my behalf! I had red legs for around 2 days...). It was such a good day and very satisfying :)

After a bit of snorkeling in the shallow water, we spent the evening eating dinner and chatting on the beach with our fellow "explorers", watching the sunset over the hill that we had just conquered.

The next day another Feejee Experience group arrived with around 25 more people: the biggest we'd had so far. After an evening of sily games and drinking Kava, we left the next morning to travel back to Nadi where we started this loop around the mainland. On the way we stopped at a small Indian community for a curry lunch, learning about the Indo-Fijian culture and history of when Indians were shipped out here to work, along with their sugar cane that is now a major industry here. Fiji has an Indian population of around 30% now, often labelled as "Little India".

We were shown how to make our own roti's a type of naan bread, by rolling the dough and placing it onto a hot stone above a wood-burning fire to cook it like a pancake. We were then all served a delicious curry feast beside the beach before heading off again to our next and final stop on the Feejee Experience bus: the mud pools. This s basically what it says on the tin: a large natural pool heated by a geothermal hot srping ad full of thick slimy brown mud! So, in good old Feejee Exp style, we all stripped off into our swimwear and slid in, smothering oursleves entirely with the sludge and sticking leaves in our hair!

After some hilarious group shots and poses, we sipped into the adjacent hot pool to wash ourselves off in the heated water before travelling onwards to our respective hostels for the night in Nadi. Feejee Exp had been great fun and we loved the real off-the-beaten-track things we'd been getting up to, and tomorrow, Em and I were off to send 3 nights on Mantaray Island, part of the Yasawa group and one of the 300 or so surrounding the mainland, all different shapes and sizes :)

The next morning we took a 3 and a half hour boat ride on the Awesome Advntures ferry to our chosen island, passing many on the way to make drop-offs and pick-ups, some as small as to take only 2 minutes to walk the perimeter of! These were the image of what Fiji is know for: several thatched huts and hammocks scattered between a few palm trees and tropical vegetation, surrounded by a loop of sandy white beach - bring out the cocktails now! Mantaray Island is one of the bigger ones, taking around an hour to walk around, and upon reaching it, a small group of us were taken with our luggage to shore by a small "taxi" boat to be greeted ..0by several of the staff members with a traditional song.

It was pretty stunning with a bar on the beach, a volleyball court, an activity hut containing kayaks and dive equipment etc., and a large restaurant and bar nestled in the centre of the island and our dorms scattered around. Mantaray is pretty infamous for it's delicious 3 course meals which we were only too happy to pay the meal package price for!

After lunch we got to know some of the other people on the island, one of them Jo, another UK gappy, and Yentz, a German. We decided to check out the snorkelling around here so collected our free snorkelling euipment and ventured out onto the reef beond the beach. It was simply stunning what we saw in the amazingly clear water: bright purple starfish as big as a dinner plate, huge rainbow coloured fish, big stripey angel fish, blowfish, shoals of them all shimmering in various colours and patterns that you'd only see in a tropical fish tank at home! Luckily Yentz had an underwater camera with which he captured some great shots of these, which I'll put on soon.

Mantaray Island is not called that for no reason: it is well-known for it's close proximity to the hundreds of huge mantarays that swim up and down the stretch of water separating this island from the next. To siginify that they are active and have been spotted, a drum would be beaten on the beach to announce that a mantaray swim would be going ahead, sparking many of those eager to see them to get into the small fishing boat and be taking out. Whilst snorkelling, Yentz and I heard the drum and so raced over to sign up for it - it's not everyday that the swim goes ahead! Donned with our snorkelling gear and flippers, around 10 of us were taken out to the deep water on the opposite shore to await the sighting of one. And we were not to forget the one rule:

NEVER to touch the rays at all costs, else we'd be refused back onto the boat and left there to paddle around...

As soon as a mantaray wing crested the waves like a shark fin as they glided just below the surface, our boat guide would yell "GO" and we'd all dive into the water in every which way to get a sighting! And it was probably one of the best experiences I've had so far, up there with the skydive and bungy! After a short little wait for the mantaray to reach us, we would see a large black shape looming towards us from the blue, a huge 4m across mantaray gliding along gracefully using it's "wings" to propell itself smoothly up the strong current that was moving down the shore. Often it would glide just beneath us, close enough to reach out and touch, then move onwards whilst we made our best attempts to keep up behind it. They were so powerful and huge, and we could see the small fish that clung to it's bottom side to eat the plankton that it left in it's wake. Often myself and another guy, Josh, that I'd met on the boat, would find ourselves leaving the group behind as we followed it up stream as far as we could before we would have to stop and let ourselves be carried along with the current, exhausted. The boat would then come and pick us up to take us back upstream to start again, doing this around 5/6 times seeing around as many Mantarays. One man from another boat did manage to score himself a huge ass-kicking when he reached out and ran his hand along the top of one ray, obviously choosing to ignore the Rule!

I was so exhilerated at being able to swim with these magnificent creatures in their own habitat, whilst also swimming through huge shoals of fish moving along like highways around us! A particularly memorable moment was when one of the small boats threw out a rope tied to the back which a small group of us held onto as it pulled us along in the water, right beside a huge manta, allowing us to follow it with no effort at all. It was a totally magical experience and one I'd reccommend to anyone!

When we arrived back at the beach in the early evening, a group of us took a stroll over to the other side of the island to Sunset Beach to watch its namesake as the sun sank below the horizon, before heading up for showers and a scrummy dinner in the restaurant. Afterwards, whilst Em and others went to bed for an early night, I stayed out with Flea, Ringo, Josh and a few other guys we'd met (including a couple who own the hotel we stayed at in Nelson, NZ, on our first week there!) to join in with the evening entertainment: crab racing and limbo competitions! (Although we all tried our luck in the latter, a 6 year old girl won, probably helped by the fact that she was only about 2 feet tall...the free cocktail prize was sadly wasted!)

Tuesday 22nd we awoke early to a fab breakfast feast before we all went down to the beach to catch some rays. A few of us joined in with a small game of volleyball, which was pretty useless but hilarious! Em and I loved the fact that the ball was labelled "Wilson" after it's brand, reminiscent of Tom Hank's beloved "friend" in the film Castaway, for all who've seen it! Yentz, Em, Jo and I went for a little snorkel in the water to show them what we'd seen yesterday and allow Em to get the hang of a snorkel before the mantaray swim she was hoping to do today. And before we knew it, the drum was beaten: the next Mantaray boat was ready.

We all jumped on board, myself for the 2nd time, with a much larger group of around 25. The water was a little more choppy this time but once again it was pretty awesome: at one point there were 3 manta's below, all barrel-rolling and twisting over and over, revealing their white underbellies and long mouths, before diving down into the deep blue. Every now and again a few of us would hold our breaths and dive below the surface to follow them as far as we could, equalising every couple of metres to de-pop our ears due to the pressure. Occasionally I'd get a bit too excited at seeing them and start breathing in water! Em struggled a little getting the hang of the snorkel and the deep water, and did have to get rescued by a fellow diver at one point, but she still managed to get a few glimpses of the rays which was all she wanted!

After a delicious and well-needed meal that night, we were ready to head to bed (swimming with the mantas is pretty tiring!) until I was roped into another game of limbo, which I won - I am now officially Limbo Queen! Free cocktail for moi :) (And no, the 6 year old wasn't involved in this one). This was then followed by a pretty hilarious and messy game of "stick and ball", a race involving a stick being passed from between one pair of legs to your partners, along with a ball under the chin, without the use of hands. My partner, Ash, and I came in at an impressive second! I stayed out for a while afterwards with a few other UK gappy's I'd met before heading to bed after a few bevvies...

Our last day on the island was once again hot and sunny in typical Fiji fashion, Em and I got bracelets made for us out of coconuts by one of the island staff, carving out a bangle and sanding it down with wet sand on a rock to make it smooth and hair-free. Em and I then took a stroll along the beach with the intention of making the hours walk around the whole island, however decided against it as it was just too hot. Ash came with us and we chatted whilst exploring the rock pools and rocks along the shore.

Ash and I then decided to go for a little kayak across the narrow channel to the beach on the nearby island opposite our shore, spending a good couple of hours exploring our own private beach and creating shapes in the untouched sand before we heard the drum being beaten across the water to announce lunch. At 2pm, our small taxi boat arrived to take us to the waiting ferry. Before we all left, however, we were given a short farewell song by the island staff after which we all lined up for a handshake and hug - a nice little personal touch! This was followed by a tug-of-war between the leaving guests and the staff, which consequently ended with us in a sandy heap on the floor as the staff members all let go. Cheers.

After saying goodbye to Ringo and Flea whom were were to be joined with in our resort the next day, we were taken to the ferry and back to the mainland to Nadi where we began our trip in Fiji 3 weeks ago. We were surprised to meet a group of lads on the boat that we'd met in NZ on one of our Kiwi Experience buses about 2 months ago, so it was good to catch up! On arrival at our Nadi Bay Resort, we were nicely given a 2-bed dorm for the price of a dorm as this was our 3rd stay in this hotel.

Our last few days in Fiji were pretty chilled, topping up the tan as much as I could and finishing our books and journals by the pool, whilst befriending a few of the other guests. In the evenings we ate our meals outside the restaurant and watched the huge fruit bats flying in and out of the palms above us. At 10pm we caught our flight from Nadi International Airport for the 25 hour journey home via LA.

These past 3 months have been some of the most amazing of our lives, having so many once in a lifetime experiences and learning so much along the way. We're so glad we managed to make this possible and have had such an awesome time!

Bring on the next time!!

The Bright Travellers xxxxxxxx