IN. finally got a bit of free time so thought i should probably try and write down what we've been up to before i forget. currently in christchurch in new zealand, but im gonna try and backdate these entries roughly so u can get an idea of where we were when and stuff. right anyway, fiji. fiji was good. everyone in fiji says bula at you all the time, seems to be some sort of general greeting, although sometimes they say it quite aggressively so we weren't entirley convinced. mostly everyone was ridiculously friendly tho, like you'll be walking down the road and some machete wielding sugar cane farmer will be cheerfully shouting bula at you from a ditch on the other side of the road, pretty wierd! so after my last entry we eventually woke up a bit and had a walk into the nearest "town" (martintar?), which was about half an hour away from our beach hostel and consisted of a couple of bars and the odd occasional shop. luckily we stumbled across ed's bar, which had a big friendly fijian barmaid who took great pleasure in introducing us to the local beer and chatted to us for ages. she also tried to introduce us to the local 58% rum, but we decided we might leave that for later seeing as it was midday. we learned that the fijian working week ends on wednesday, when everyone goes to the pub and gets progressively drunker each night until sunday, when they stop drinking for a bit and go and cut down some sugar cane. pretty similar to uni really, except the sugar cane bit.

decided to have some food outside, until a big digger came along and started dropping loads of dirt into a truck right by the bar, for no apparent reason whatsoever, so that big clouds of dust went all over us. this prompted a big row between the barmaid and the workmen, who seemed adament that their dust moving operation was of great importance. eventually cut our losses and went back inside, where i had some wahoo fish which was phenomenal, best fish ever. tpo went for the slightly more controversial goat curry, which he wasn't quite so enamoured by. after that pretty much went back to the hostel and crashed out, really knackered, until we were rudely awakened by tpo's mate williams storming in, having miraculously found us despite the rather limited directions that we left him. it was really good having williams here, mainly because the extra pair of hands made it easy to prise tpo out of his hammock and make him do stuff. or just swing the hammock till he fell out, which was funnier.

next day we decided to explore the island a bit, fiji is made up of loads of islands but we were on the biggest one called viti levu i think. got in the back of a pick up truck taxi thing and hurtled down to the best stretch of coastline, which was pretty sweet, really nice beach , except for the obligatory building site nearby just like in croatia. spent most of the day lazing about , taking care to avoid the marauding sharks and stonefish which were almost certainly after us. on the bus on the way back a little fijian with a toy gun kept shooting me, which everyone thought was hilarious. ha. gonna be really funny when all the fijian kids think shooting at foreigners is acceptable behaviour, then we'll see who's laughing. went to bed pretty early again, seemed to be getting into a slightly disconcerting sleeping pattern of getting up early, doing some stuff during the day then having an early night, most unfamiliar.

last full day in fiji we decided to get off the main island, although getting their takes ages and its really expensive to get to the good ones, so we got the cheapest tour we could find and went to a little budget island with loads of stones and coral on the beach and a couple of palm trees. on the plus side, got a massive bbq lunch and all you can drink included, so we were more than happy. also there was free snorkelling, glass bottomed boat and kayaking, which was the best thing ever. me and tpo got a double kayak and took great pleasure in tormenting williams, who eventually sank. this was really funny until we accidently beached ourselves and williams capsized us. git. sharks all over the shop (probably), so went back to the beach and played with the beachball and drank beer, awesome. had to walk through nadi on the way back which was pretty unsavoury after dark. thought we were in for the bumming of our lives at one point when we got surrounded by some shady looking characters, until we realised they were just the friendly neighbourhood drug dealers and wanted to inform us about some local products that were on available. we had a nice chat for a bit then politely declined their offer and were on our way. lovely chaps. think thats about it from fiji, got flight to the cook islands the following morning, and watched blades of glory on the plane, awesome. and PROVOCATIVE. gets the people GOING. OUT