Surprisingly not so hungover this morning but still know that I’ve had a drink and feeling a little squiffy! I woke early so just jumped in the shower, Ellie had a lot to do before she was ready, the repacking of her rucksack commenced once again haha. Then she lost her phone under the pile of clothes and the whole purpose of this repack was to put her thermals and coat at the bottom - she only remembered this once she was three quarters of the way through the pack. I was absolutely hysterical with laughter over this, she almost wanted to cry haha.

We left around 9.30am and Ash took us to the airport, Amy was still in bed and Sally was at church so we got out of everyone’s hair. It was only a 30 minute drive to the airport, fairly quiet on the roads. A little strange that we were leaving New Zealand, six weeks have gone so fast and now we have to get on a plane again! It’s more of a strange feeling I think because New Zealand is so similar to home so even though we have been travelling it’s been easy and relaxed and so different to travelling Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

But it’s Fiji time, pretty pissed that they don’t do passport stamps for New Zealand anymore and they force you through the electronic gates instead. I’m a stamp collector... this isn’t ideal what so ever!

We chilled on the sofas for a while, some guy next to me was up there with one of the loudest snorers I have ever heard. We put our headphones in to drown it out; our flight wasn’t boarding until 12.20pm, once we seen the gate was open we headed up to the gate but first a toilet stop (always for a nervous pee). Then all of a sudden we head over the tannoy “flight FJ410 to Nadi, please make your way to Gate 10, this is your final call”. Thought I heard it wrong because the board said boarding not final call, but then we heard it again and then we panicked so we ran... low and behold we were two out of 6/7 people last to board the plane. We asked the stewardess and she just said oh the plane is ready so the crew have asked everyone to board. A little bit naughty I think but at least we were on board and looking for an early take off?

Nope... the plane wasn’t ready, they hadn’t even loaded the bags and then we had to wait for the paperwork and fuelling so we actually took off 20 minutes later than scheduled! What was all that rush and all those lies about being ready!?

The flight wasn’t so bad, only 2 hours 40 minutes with a few rumbles of turbulence. We didn’t have televisions so we watched our Netflix downloads. The flight wasn’t long but it felt like forever that we were on there and then the airport wasn’t ready for us when we arrived, the tunnel was insecure so we had to wait for a ladder.

It got made all better though when we got out of that plane and felt the heat hit us and as we arrived at boarder control and there were two Fijians singing, swaying and playing little guitars with flowers behind their ear. Ellie was certainly happy and me especially when I heard that big stamp punching the passport pages - woohoo! Fiji baby....

This place isn’t what I thought, I was sort of expecting okay-ish roads but with no pavements just sand on the sides a bit like Bali. With buildings all tattered and not much going on. I was surprisingly wrong, The roads were really good, they even had traffic lights! Big pavements everywhere and it was all so clean! Buildings weren’t run down and they had banks, fast food chains and local shops. The houses dotted throughout the place weren’t built so bad either. I suppose this place is like Spain for Brits (without the riffraff and overcrowding, tac and rubbish everywhere) its only 3 hours from Auckland so it’s a perfect retirement island or quick (yet probably expensive flights) holiday for people.

Our hotel, smugglers cove was only 8km from the airport. It was a resort but we were in the 32 bed dorm, was more pleasant than I thought it was going to be because every four beds were sort of blocked off from the others, it was clean and the beds seemed comfy and not all the beds were taken either. We headed straight to the spa on site, dying for a deep tissue massage and she didn’t have any space, neither did the Ramada next door. Bloody great! We had been psyching ourselves up for that all blinking week and now we have to wait to find somewhere else.

Nothing else to do we grabbed some more suntan lotion from the shop, showered and went for a drink and food at the pool/beach bar. It was pretty pleasant with the live band who were actually really good! The sunset was incredible, the colours on the sky were gorgeous!

We stopped there for a while and watched the Polynesian dancers and fire show before hitting the hay. Barely keeping our eyes open passed 9pm! Early pick up in the morning for the awesome adventures seaspray tour.