Friday, April 27, 2007

Fiji

For the second week of my Easter break, I flew from Christchurch, NZ to Nadi, Fiji to meet my roomates for a week of paradise in the Yasawa Islands. Well, it wasn't quite paradise, but we made the best of it. Sunday night we stayed at a hostel in Nadi, and sailed out early Monday morning. We caught the ferry out of Nadi (pronounced Nandi by the locals) to the Yasawa Islands, and steamed for about 4.5 hours to Sunrise "resort" on Nanuya Lailai Island. Sunrise wasn't exactly what I would call a "resort", but it had food, shelter, and water (or what we thought was water), so I wasn't too disappointed. Modern civilization hasn't quite made it out to the Yasawa's, so forget about docks, phones, internet, and the like.

Now, typically I feel like I would love this type of simple, laid back lifestyle; however, the water from Sunrise resort made me very ill, just from showering in it, and getting sick has made me slightly bitter towards Fiji. Also, from the day we arrived in Nadi, to the day we left, the weather was rainy and overcast, with only a couple of hours of total sunlight. Long story short, if you ever go to Fiji, do your research and know exactly what you're getting yourself into.


Fijians don't use docks, they use dinghies!


Sweet view from the ferry


The inside of our hut/dorm

While I was still well, we had some great fun around Sunrise. The first day there, we took about a 40 minute hike to the "Blue Lagoon" on the other side of the island. The hike was long and muddy, but the lagoon was pretty cool, and it was where they filmed the movie Blue Lagoon, so it was worth the trek.


This hut was right by the trail to the Blue Lagoon


These "flowers" were all over the place, but they were interesting because what looks like a flower is really just pink coloring on the leaves. I don't know what they are, but they're pretty cool.


Starfish in Blue Lagoon...waterproof camera comin' through in the clutch.

The next morning we got to go on a cave tour on one of the nearby islands. I feel like I've been in tons of caves lately, but these were some of my favorite. The first cave we went into was open to the sky and had plenty of light, but when we swam under the rocks to the second room, the only light was from the guide's waterproof flashlight. Once we came back out to the light cave, one of the Fijian guides (Sammy) was climbing up the walls like a monkey, and jumping off the cliffs. Of course I tried to climb up them too and couldn't do it, until he showed me an easier place to climb up. I eventually made it up to about a 30 footer with his help, and it was an awesome experience. I was practically shaking when everyone was counting down for me to jump off, but I couldn't back out, so down I went. Of course after I jumped Sammy climbed like 20 feet higher before he jumped, but I definitely went high enough! That afternoon we went on a "shark feeding" trip that included watching a Fijian guy go spear fishing, and snorkeling around with not much to look at. We did get some fresh fish for dinner though!


View from the entrance to the caves


Me and Sammy at the top!


Corona commercial?


These jellyfish were everywhere while we were snorkeling/spearfishing, but they didn't sting at all, so you could just grab them and toss them at people...Hayley especially liked it...haha.


Hayley having fun with the catch of the day

After leaving Sunrise, we boarded a "live aboard cruise" for two nights. The cruise was definitely not what we expected, in that the quarters looked similar to a hospital, the food was pretty crappy, and the most it moved in two days was circling the nearest island. I got sick about 12 hours after I got on the ship, but the rest of our group seemed to enjoy it alright. The first night we got to play "fun games" which included trivia and an exciting game of drunken musical chairs...


The next island we went to was actually pretty cool, although we were there when I felt the worst (so I don't have any good pictures of it). It was a really tiny island named South Sea Island, and it literally took 5 minutes to walk around the whole thing. Hayley, Chris, and Dan went on a Sailing trip, but I wasn't feeling up to it, so I stuck around the island with some friends we made (Brie and Liz), and met them back in Nadi that night. Dan took my camera and took some great underwater pics on their sailing trip.


One of Dan's pictures from the sailing trip


Airplane view on the way out of Nadi

Basically, I've never been so happy to see Australia, especially our clean apartment in Newcastle. I've never had this bad of an experience being sick while travelling, but at least if I had to get sick, it was rainy and overcast the whole time, so I didn't miss too much!

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