Hello all!!!

We are actually in Cairns at the moment, but we had no internet in Fiji so i had to wait until now to blog!!

Fiji was amazing, very expensive though, we went quite a bit over budget whilst there so we are definately living off noodles for the next few weeks.

We spent one night in Nadi which is where the airport is, nothing exciting there just a stop over waiting for the boat to the islands the next morning. We got the bit yellow boat and thought we'd go to the furthest away islands and work our way down. We chose Nanuya Lailai as our island and Gold Coast resort as our place to stay. The island was beautiful, from our resort we walked 40 minutes over the hill to the Blue Lagoon which was simply stunning. The water was so calm, no waves or anything, just crystal clear still waters. Our resort itself was very basic, no electricity at all in our room, the only light was in the dining room, which was fun, especially when they brought us a lantern at 7pm for us to walk round with. Jez found this amazing, such a novelty, however, he wasn't too keen on the lights out at 10pm rule!! There was only us and another couple in our resort which made it a little weird, but it was nice to have the time to ourselves. We decided because it was very quiet and not much to do there that we would only stay one night.

We got back on the bit yellow boat and went down the islands back toward the mainland and stopped at Waya Island. We tried to stay at the same place Laura stayed when she was on this island but it was closed, the only one open with stuff to do was Octopus resort, which wasn't your typical backpacker place. It had a pool, dive centre, massages, movie nights, volleyball court, games nights, 3 course dinners, hog roast etc etc. We had our own room with outdoor bathroom, there is something about having a shower outside looking up to the stars, lovely!!! We spent 4 nights at this place as it was too nice to leave. I had a massage which was about the only cheap thing there $40 for an hour, which is about 13 pounds!!! We won a massage each as well at the games night, so i ended up having two! The massage hut was right on the beach so we could hear the waves crashing onto the sand whilst being massaged, amazing! Our bure (room) was right on the beach as well, so we fell asleep to the sound of the waves, so nice!!!

I managed to get over my fear of the sea for an hour and we went snorkelling, which was so much fun. The water was so clear and we saw so many different types of fish. There was some tiny electric blue fish and mulitcoloured parrot fish, i was following them everywhere, i got so into it!!! Apart from the snorkelling and some volleyball we mainly just spent a chilled few days by the pool or on the beach.

We had a Kava night, which isn't a cheap imitation of Champagne as you might think, its actually made from the root of a pepper plant. They mix it with water and it ends up looking like muddy water. It is quite a serious thing and you have to remember to clap once before taking the cup and clap 3 times after drinking it. It is not alcoholic, but it has the effect of an anithestic so your mouth goes numb and you end up being very chilled out and relaxed after a few of them! We ended up finishing the guest bowl and then moving to the back of the hotel and sitting with the staff and sharing their stronger version! It was a bit of an experience, but we all slept so well that night so it was all good.

The next day we decided to move islands again to Bounty island, which is so small you can walk round it in 20 mins! It is also where celebrity love island was filmed and the remains of the set are still there. We didn't arrive there until 5pm so we couldn't do any activities that day, so we planned lots for the next day and had an early night. Our plan was to hire a sailing boat for an hour, walk round the island and see the set of love island, and then go on a guided snorkel to see baby turtles. This plan changed dramatically when we were woken up by big mama and told to pack our bag asap and that a boat would be coming to pick us up because there was a tsunami warning. We were a little scared by this to say the least, so packed up as quick as we could and waited for the boat, forgetting that in fiji everything is done in fiji time. So having been rushed out of bed we then waited a good 40 minutes for the boat to arrive. It picked us up at 9.30 am and the tsunami was due to hit at 10am, it was only 20 minutes bak to the mainland so we thought it was a bit of a push but we should make it. However, when the boat left our island it went away from the mainland and started going round other islands picking people up and dropping them off at some of the bigger islands, we saw lots of people at the top of the hills on these bigger islands and started to worry as 10am got closer and closer. Nothing happened at 10am and we ended up being on the boat for another 2 hours before making it back to the mainland! Turns out the tsunami only caused a couple of waves not much bigger than usual! We were glad to be safe, but a little disappointed that we had missed out on all those fun activites on bounty island.

We stayed in Nadi again that day and just read our books on the beach, had some nice dinner at the hostel next door then got a reasonably early night as we few to Oz the next morning.

Oz so far has been cool, we have only been in Cairns a couple of days, and spent the whole of yesterday planning our trip down the east coast and booking all of our tours so we haven't seen much of it yet! We will update soon with tales from oz.

Hope everyone is ok

H and Jez xxxxx