We were due to go to one of the islands yesterday day but unfortunately the hotel was booked up so we had to have a quick change of plans, but luckily all was not lost as Fiji were playing the Maori all blacks in rugby union at the stadium just down the road. We got a taxi to the ground and it was the best three quid we've ever spent!

The game itself was really good, but it was the atmosphere that was amazing due to the attitudes of the crowd and the police. At one side of the pitch there was one section of stadium and the other three sides of the pitch were surrounded by a grassy hill that everyone was sitting on. All of the floodlights around the ground had people climbing all over them and even the huge sponsorship boards had people sitting on top of them some thirty or forty feet above the ground.

Whereas most rugby matches are fairly civilised events, this was something quite different. Whenever anyone made a mistake on either team, rather than boo's or people shouting them, what they actually got was ten thousand people laughing at them! Due to the number of spectators sitting around the sides of the ground, people often hopped over the barrier around the pitch to get from one side of the ground to another and rather than escort them off or out the stadium, the police just shook their hands and let them get around to where they wanted to get to. They continued to laugh and joke with the crowd as whenever they got in the way and people couldn't see, they just shouted at the police to move and they did!

It was such a brilliant atmosphere and at half time all the kids were invited onto the pitch and two rugby balls were kicked into the air and it was basically whoever could get the ball off the pitch to their families, kept it! One little boy thought he had managed to escape and get the ball, when suddenly about five people came out of nowhere and completely flattened him!!

In the end Fiji lost 29-27 with the Fijian kicker missing a conversion in the last minute, but the result hardly seemed to matter such was the carnival mood. Having said that, one of the Fijian players obviously wasn't keeping up with the game because when the final whistle went he started jumping up and down thinking he'd won! Once people had pointed out that they had lost he had to have a wee lie down.

After being thanked by a few people for supporting the Fijian team we headed to Suva for some tea and back to the hostel to play a few games of pool before watching half the game again on TV!

We have spent today in Suva having a look around and finding somewhere to stay tomorrow night that is closer to town as we are going out to the islands on Monday now that accommodation is available.