Wayalailai Eco Haven Resort

I had a s*** nights sleep, the bed I was on had a crap mattress and dipped in the middle so bloody thin that I felt every pole of the bunk bed, as if my back wasn’t aching enough!

We didn’t have long on the island this morning for breakfast and a a quick stroll around the island before we got speed-boated to the ferry for our next island which was about an hour and a half away I think. We were both a little sleepy, I think we have completely zoned out from being on the go all the time in New Zealand to slowing down to an almost hault.

The speedboat to the island resort was lovely, it’s so green and there’s mountains on this island! With crystal blue waters again, the locals were playing their guitar and singing the Bula song for us as we arrived and once they stopped we had to shout ‘bula’ back at them. Such a lovey culture, very warming!

We got briefed, free upgrade to a 4 bed house rather than a 16 bed dorm hut. There was a sense of community here as they were all from the island and family members of one another which was lovely.
Ellie had a snooze in the hammock on the beach whilst I attempted to snorkel but the coral was in fact almost completely dead so there was no hope in seeing anything big and decent in the water. Some of the fish were pretty but after half hour or so I gave up and we went up for a fish and vegetable lunch with bread fruit which is a sort of dry potato that can only be eaten after it’s cooked.

Then we had our go at making a shell bracelet and anklet with Debra and Tina, I’m not very artsy but I had a go. Ellie’s still looked better than mine!

After lunch we food coma’d into the sunbeds on the beach and enjoyed the sun before a dip in the sea. Ellie still doesn’t know how she gets sand in her costume. I keep telling her it’s because she rolls around in it and wobbles her bum into the sand, this time around she not only had sand everywhere but bits of seaweed stuck down her costume haha!

It started to get a little cloudy and we were both very salty and oily from the sun lotion so it was indeed time for a shower and for us it was in the dark or prop the door open a little because the electric goes off between 2-6pm for the water tanks to refill to power the electric for the evening. (Very eco friendly!)

Dinner was delicious, we had chicken and fish to choose from lots of veg and part boiled/part bbq’d potatoes.

After dinner the Fijian Enrique Iglesias was singing on the guitar, he was super good! They all seem to know how to sing and take to music so easily here and are in tune with one another. I suppose that’s all that they do on the islands is sing and drink that awful Kava drink. Which they pulled out after dinner and you feel sort of obliged to sit around with them and take the sacred drink. We had to drink two small (low tide not tsunami) coconut shells of the muddy water before we made a quick escape to bed with the excuse of we have to be up very early in the morning for the sunrise hike.
Not that it wasn’t lovely sitting around with them but we could refuse any of the kava drink and we couldn’t face drinking any more of the awful drink.