hey all,

so im in new zealand now, auckland to be precise but at the moment i better fill u in on what happend in fiji after i tld u that i was going to go scuba diving

4th may continued....

so we went scuba diving with the guy who seemed to be the manager of the place called nico who was fairly cool - we got suited up - the pictures are hillarious as were all suited and finned up but stood on dry land. so anyway we headed off out on the boat and jumped off the side (oh we had to do all the saftey things first before we were allowed anywhere near the water) and then swam for a bit before heading down to the bottom to feed a bunch of fish. we then had a bit of a tootle around the bottom (and i mean tootle, was a bit short for our liking) and then fed the fish somemore before heading to the surface - was good fun and definitly interested in doing a PADI course. then we headed back to the island as wed travelled out to the Blue Lagoon to do our dive. came back and mooched around and had afternoon tea as well chatting to caroline and katie who were in our room (or beach shack that i think i described earlier - was litterally a thatched room which was quaint to begin with) then i chilled out in a hammock while laura and mark joined some others and played volleyball, met our two new shack mates, sarah a girl from queenstown, NZ and a bloke called Jamie who was from scarborough, went to uni with me and lived practically across the road from me in 3rd yr - all very strange. anyway we all had tea and then played about a million games of cards and finally decided on going to bed, but didnt actually sleep. we all ended up chatting til like 2 in the morning. HOWEVER.... our roof decided to leek when the rain started so we were all up at 4 to move our stuff out of the way of the leeking roof. not impressed with that

May 5th

was still fairly miserable when we got up for breakfast but was signed up for the cave trip so me jamie and sarah went on it. was really good fun as we had to get a boat out to where the caves where and then jump into a plunge pool before swimming under the wall of the cave a couple of meters into the next cave which was in complete darkness, we had a guide with us which was just as well as u could barely see a thing in front of you! we then swam through a series of different tunnels with our guide and eventually back to the plunge pool again. was so much fun and a little scary but definitly worth doing if i had the chance again. then we came back in time for lunch before the boat picked us up and took us to our next destination which was the BIG YELLOW BOAT called the WANNA TAKI. when we arrived we were fairly miserable cos it was still rainning but it eased off a bit. we then got on the yellow boat and had a cup of tea and about a dozen busicuits before deciding that it would be a great idea to jump the 7/8 meteres off the boat into the sea (i would like to point out that the boat was staionary at this point so i wasnt being completely stupid). so we did that for a while before getting bored and then showereing and changing and all that jazz. then we headed up on deck to chat to the new dive master who joined us on the boat who turned out to be from where i was in australia for 6 months so we chatted about that and was quite happy to just look at him cos he was quite fit (me and laura thought so anyway) after dinner the cards where out and a game of ring of fire broke out. was hilarious - ended up having one too many beers and then decided to go night fishing with mark off the side of the boat which prooved useless as i was hammered so decided that bed was a good option! felt very strange as the boat moved i couldn't tell if i was drunk or it was the boat - im going to blame the boat!

May 6th

we got up and it was really chucking it down so after breakfast (which was barely touched as the hangover had decided to kick in) practically everyone who a had played last night decided to go back to bed. when people were up again we decided to watch a film or 3 as it was still raining and were not in the mood to do anything. got on the next boat after lunch that look us to KUATA which was an eco haven and very pretty, it had stopped rainning a bit when we got there so after dumping our stuff and catching up with katie and caroline from the last island we went for a walk along the beach and a bit of a rock climb to see what we could see. then we messed around for a bit before tea. BUT before we were even allowed tea we had to attend a Kava ceromony which was very interesting and were given kava to try. now for those that dont know kava is full of crazy properties that make u hallucenate but thats if u drink a lot. me and laura quickly came to the conclusion that it tasted like dirt and therefore decided against drinking anymore. after tea which was lots of fijian food which we had to eat fijian style (with our hands) so we then played cards (again) then headed to bed

bored again so will write more later. getting there i promise! xx