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26/02/2010
When we arrived at Waya Lailai, we instantly noticed how much busier it was. Before we even got in line to get off the Yasawa flyer there was at least 20 people getting onto it from the small boat. When we arrived at the island we walked past one of the local villages. Waylailai has three villages on the island, unlike Long Beach, which only had one village. When we got to the resort, we were in luck again! We were upgraded to a double!
We went for afternoon tea, well Al had tea and I had Milo (a kind of hot chocolate) then we chilled out before dinner. The food was much nicer here, mainly because it's more of a resort, whereas Long Beach was more of a family run hpstel with only a few rooms. We were pretty tired so after dinner decided to go to bed early and watch a film.
It was so hot in the night that it was a pretty uncomfortable sleep.
After a really nice breakfast of choco flakes and toast we moved our bags into the dorm, as we were getting demoted again. Then headed to the beach to chill in the hammocks and read our books. After lunch I went down to the village and learnt how to make jewllery by weaving banana leaves, whilst Alex and Anders (a Norweigian guy we met at Long Beach), walked up to the the highest point of the Island. For the rest of the afternoon we went for a swim and chilled in the hammocks.
After dinner, we met up with some of the people we shared a dorm with in Long Beach and some friends they had met in Coral View resort. We played a few of those annoying trick mind games, where its really funny as long as at least one person didnt get the joke. Then I checked the Internet...I saw on the BBC News page that there had been an earthquake in Chile and that it could cause a tsunami across the Pacific Ocean! Shortly after that we headed to bed. I was quite worried, but Alex assured me it would be fine.
When we woke the next morning, Alex was pleased to say that he knew we'd be OK and nothing happened in the night. I felt a lot more relaxed at breakfast, then when I came out of the shower Alex said that there was a tsunami warning and we all had to move to higher ground! I thought he was winding me up because of last night, but then everyone in the dorm started saying it. People were recieving text messages and phone calls from back home checking if they were OK. The manager of the resort had called a meeting, by blowing a massive shell, which gave the eeriest sound ever. He confirmed it, but didnt seem overly worried. I think the locals took the Fiji approach to dealing with a natural disaster - laid back. Although, we were all told to wait on the highest level of the resort for more news on whether or not we had to move to even higher ground. (To where Alex had hiked to the previous day). There were lots of rumours flying around about where the tsunami had hit, what islands in Fiji were being evacuated etc etc. We were told that it should hit Fiji at approximately 10am, so when we heard at 10.01am that we were allowed down to the beach we were a little bit cautious. I was worried about after shocks and the fact that we couldnt really find out too much information because of the lack of electricity during the day, so we stayed on the highest level of the resort until after lunch.
For the rest of the afternoon, we played beach volleyball, and the Tsunami was soon put to the back of our minds. The only thing we were worried about was our next destination - Bounty, it is one of three very small, very flat islands and we had heard that they had all been evacuated, and that all staff and guests from Bounty were on the mainland. So we werent sure whether or not we could get there? But the Yasawa flyer was still operating so off we went.
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