Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
UPDATE: There's 3 new blogs dating back from the 05/05/11 that we're putting up today (lucky people!) but they're reeeeally long so we suggest you read them a couple of days apart, as we wrote them :)
Blog 1/3 of the new posts!
Hello lovely people. We’re in Nadi now, the busy tourist-hub city on the west coast of Fiji. Now that we’ve finished the whole loop of Viti Levu, we’re back here again before we travel to the beautiful Coral Coast for a few days. The last night we spent in Volivoli was filled with banana splits & chocolate sauce, playing games with the new Feejee Experience group, kava, and night time swimming with our newest friend, danish Casper. The next morning Han and I spent an age packing our bags (we’re ULTIMATE messy travellers in dorms so stuff was all over our beds, home from home!) and then having a last relax by the pool until we hit the road again. Once we got back on the Feejee Experience bus for our last day (no Kay and Willy this time which was heartbreaking; our guides were two guys called Reubin and Eliza instead), we set off through Rakiraki village and onto the spot where the most famous cannibal in Fiji lived about 200 years ago. We got out by his grave, whilst Reubin was telling us that he was known to have eaten close to one thousand people..! Greedy man.
Our second stop on Thursday was at a very remote village on the north coast of Viti Levu. It was so so far off the beaten track along some rough, unmade roads. That, mixed with the occasional abrupt stop for a random cow or goat in the way, left us all feeling pretty fragile as we got off the minibus. This stop was probably the most unusual of them all. The concept was to stay in an Indo-Fijian village to learn about the culture, but the host was quite awkward and we didn’t really learn much at all. Han, Francis and I ended up laughing our way through the weirdness of the situation. We’re still wondering what the point of us going there was, but we can’t complain because we had a really nice Indian vegetarian curry in the awkward host’s house, and also got to make our own roti’s outside under the palm trees.
We were on the road again soon after lunch time, and drove around some stunning coastline to the Sabeto Valley mud pools near Lautoka. These were natural hot pools in between the mountains, and once we got there, we all got on our bikini’s and covered ourselves with the hot clay at the bottom of the pools. It felt really good for our skin, and we kept reminding ourselves that it would have cost about £40 for a spa treatment at home! We waited for it to dry and took some pictures, before running over to the hot pools to attempt to de-dirty ourselves. We’re all still finding bits of mud where we shouldn’t be!
The plan was to visit a school at the end of our Feejee Experience adventure, but because it’s school holidays here at the moment (found out today that they don’t have half-terms in Fiji, which seemed a little harsh to us!), we arranged to go to a children’s home instead. The home was a modest little purple bungalow, where a group of Fijian women took in children that had been orphaned at an early age. All of them were absolutely beautiful, and greeted us with beaming little smiles, ‘What’s your name?’ and ‘I love you’. We spent a while there playing with the children, and Han and I talked to a 10-year-old girl who put us to complete culinary shame as she told us all about cooking and how she makes curries and roti’s with various herbs and things. She was also really excited to hear about the Royal Wedding and talk about Kate’s dress..! It was lovely to visit, but it was definitely hard-hitting to see little 2-month old babies there, and frustrating to know that we couldn’t really help them.
Finally we said bye to everyone on the Feejee Experience bus, and got dropped off at Horizon Backpackers, where we got our beds for just $10 FJD a night! We were expecting somewhere filthy but, aside from the shower floors which really are vile, it’s not too shabby at all and we’ll probably stay here again before heading off to the Yasawas in about a week’s time. We just walked over to Smuggler’s Cove with Francis and Rebecca from Feejee Experience, for a night of chicken pizza, beers, and chats about New Zealand which has got us really excited for the next part of our world venture…
Tomorrow , Francis is heading off to Mantaray Island to meet a friend, and we’re going to be making our way down to the Beachouse on the Coral Coast, for 6 nights. We’ve heard that most people love it so much that they extend their stay multiple times, so we’ve got big hopes that it’s lovely there! Before that though, we’re gonna have to stock up in the MH supermarket in Nadi for bulk 2-minute noodles, rice and maybe some chocolate. Han is also definitely travelling up the East Coast of Australia with me in July now, so we have even more to look forward to! Excited. Thank you for keeping in contact, sorry that we’re being pretty rubbish with communications and things, internet access is a bit sketchy on parts of the island. Hope May in the UK is going well. Love from us in Nadi, xx.
- comments