Fiji

Well its been a while since i got chance to write one of these so lets see how much i can remember...

We arrived in Fiji at Nadi (pronounced Nandi) airport at about 3pm and got our free transfer to the hostel we had booked. The room was ok, nice and cheap though compared with the sister hostel next door charging double our rate. Plus we got free use of all their facilities!! it was pretty weird being in a room again after living in camper vans for 3months! We pretty much headed straight over to the sister hotel (smugglers cove) to use the highly rated travel information to try and get an idea of which of the many islands we wanted to go to. the lady there was really nice, like all Fijians they're so friendly and always smiling, and we decided that Robinson Crusoe island was the one for us. Since we only had a short 5day stop over there we booked to head out to the island the next morning. For the rest of the night we chilled out in smugglers.
The next morning we checked out of the hostel and got a transfer through nadi town and mainland villages to the river jetty where our boat was waiting to take us up the river to the sea and the island.
The island is one of the biggest of the fijian islands we were told so we asked if we walked round how long would it take? about 30mins we were told! haha it was tiny. We arrived to a typical fijian welcome of guitars and island songs and flowers in the hair.
After we checked in we sat down to our buffet lunch (all meals were included) and watched the polynesian dance show and some of the guys walking on the white hot rocks from the earth oven .
The island has a 2 dorm rooms and a few private Bures (buraays) we splashed out and went for the bure haha. They also do day tours and evening tours, the day tour was there when we arrived so when it left at 4 we could see who was staying on the island. We got talking to three lads from Northern Ireland of all places...where abouts i asked, Lisburn, i told them i knew a couple of lads from there (Phil my housemate for 3 years and his mate eddy who was originally supposed to move in to Jo's room in our house) well it turns out that these three lads were best mates from home with phil and eddy! Small world! mark and ryan and then gary with sophie who arrived on the same boat as us
The atmosphere on the island was so relaxed, the staff lived with you and organised activities doing things like making coconut jewelry, beach rugby, fishing, mangrove kayaking with a mangrove mud fight! and other things like topping up your tan which Jo and two girls from norwich, kim and rachael, were big fans of.Bola was our main activity guy and he loved showing off climbing the trees for the coconuts we tried and bottled it about 6ft up! nice to drink though. When you first arrive on the island or anywhere in Fiji you have to partake in a welcome ceremony where you drink the traditional drink- Kava. Kava is a dried root that is pounded in powder and then soaked in water. It contains some kind of drug that causes a numbness in your mouth on your first cup (half a coconut shell) then numbness of your head and full body numbness if you drink enough. Its quite a bitter taste, kind of like bitter mud, haha but i quite like it!! Jo wasn't a fan though along with most of the others. Its very traditional though so to refuse the cup or spit it out as one girl did is a huge insult! the Fijians drink the stuff ALL DAY long... on a daily basis its a very social thing just sat around the Kava bowl. we usually joined them after dark to chill out and have a laugh the only problem at night was the Mozzies and the sand flies!!!! any skin without insect repellent was demolished in record time....as Mark found out on his 1st night . As the food was included we only had to pay for drinks which were CHEAP! because there was only about 25 of us on the island they wanted us to spend more on drinks so most of the time they turned Happy hour in to happy day! good times. .
All in all we loved Fiji and we loved Robinson Crusoe!!! its a shame we didn't have a bit longer there but we'll have to save that for another trip.

More to come soon!

Love Rob and Jo xxxxxxx