We were woken up shortly after falling asleep last night by some drunk guests jumping in the pool, I peaked at them though our window and watched them for a while. I wondered what it would be like on the islands, in my mind I was picturing something similar to the Maldives, with the thought of paradise in my head I nodded back off to sleep.

At 8:45 am we had just made it to breakfast! We logged onto the internet and started finding out about the islands. Twenty minutes later it suddenly stopped working! I told our waitress and she said the wifi was only available between 7 and 9 am! I was very annoyed, the receptionist didn't tell us this and they both lied about it not working! This meant we couldn't do any research ourselves before going into town! Chris told me to chill out, I just wanted to get it all sorted.

We didn't want to waste any more time so we got showered and changed then caught a taxi to Nadi city centre. Before we left the staff had the cheek to say they could book us anything we wanted and would give us the best price, Pff! They had no chance, as if we would trust them now!

As we walked around town we immediately noticed how busy it was with Indians! This made us think that Fijians were perhaps of a Muslim background. Most of the shops were selling Indian curries and Indian clothes. We searched for a travel shop but couldn't see one anywhere. We stocked up on bug spray and antihistamine cream from the chemist and Chris found a low factor sun oil for only $13! I also found a good buy, a huge bottle of Palmers coco butter lotion with factor 15 for only $15. I didn't even know they produced sun creams! We should definitely have enough to last us for a while now.

Chris has been looking for a decent snorkel for some time now so we went in search of one of those next. We walked into a sports shop but they only had really crap ones. Chris asked one of the shop staff where we could buy a decent one but of course they said there was no where else, liars.

We asked in an information centre and a lady told us where to go, then she told us to come back to her if we needed to book island hopping!

We walked through some small streets then passed a market. The information lady advised us to go through it but we wanted to avoid being haggled. Eventually we found the shop called 'Courts', it was a huge warehouse selling mostly furniture but hidden in the far corner was an area selling swim gear. Chris found one straight away and it looked like a decent one. It was only $79 so he couldn't refuse but insisted on being able to try it on first, to see if the mask was the right size for his face.

Chris was pleased with his new snorkel, so we returned to the information lady to see what she had to offer us. She was really pleased to see us but soon lost interested once she realised she couldn't rip us off. She was rude too, a begging child that was mentally and physically disabled tapped on Chris's shoulder. The lady shooed the child away and said to us "She's just a cripple". We'd had enough, we left and went to a restaurant nearby to have lunch. There were quite a few tourists in there so we thought it must be ok. We had a fish burger with chips and a drink each, only $11 each and it wasn't that bad. Just as we were finishing the waitress came over and asked us if we had plans for our stay in Fiji yet. We told her we hadn't, then she recommended her friend Pa. The waitress wasn't Indian and she made a point of telling us her friend Pa wasn't indian either so she would be honest, then she said she could take us to her directly. We had nothing to lose so we agreed to go with her. We were really glad we did, we would never have found the office otherwise. Pa's tiny little office was a room situated in an apartment block next to a youth games room above the high street shops. Her business was called Paradise Travel but there was no obvious sign outside.

We sat down on a sofa and waited as Pa was already serving two other tourists. They were obviously happy with what Pa had quoted them as they were just finishing up their booking with her. Once they were done we jumped into their seats and told Pa what we were looking for. She was really helpful and honest and we found out that most of the resorts and islands were infact run by local villages. She said we should expect more of a backpacker scene in paradise rather than big expensive resorts like in the Maldives. This didn't disappoint us, we just didn't know, in fact we really liked the idea of getting to know local villages and taking part in some of their activities.

Pa put an itinerary together that we were happy with and gave us some really good discounts. We believed she was quoting us the local prices and she didn't have to say it was because she was family to any of them. She compared it to the prices in our brochure, we couldn't believe how much Awesome Adventures were charging, almost three times the amount!

It took a good few hours but finally we were done, we booked everything with Pa and were really excited now. Pa was happy too, we knew she made a nice profit from us. She offered to take us to the airport in a taxi and pay for it so we could pay for our boat passes directly at Awesome Adventures office. Then she paid for our taxi back and came into a bottle shop with us. We ended up buying two and half litres of local Bounty dark rum for $125 from the supermarket because we knew it would be expensive on the islands. Before we said good bye, Pa invited us to stay with her when we get back from the islands. We thanked her and said we would let her know then caught a taxi back to our resort.

When we got back the staff were waiting for us, they said the travel agent from the airport had been calling all day for us, we told them what we booked with Pa and they were obviously gutted we didn't book through them. Serves them right for lying!

We put our stuff away in our room then went out for dinner in a different restaurant. Afterwards we went back to pack and had an early night. We have to be up early tomorrow morning to catch the boat.