04th FEB We didn't have a 03rd Feb we lost it in the air somewhere! We landed in Nadi at 05.30am, collected our rubbish and went to phone Mumma's Tropic of Capricorn (the hostel we were staying at) who had said if we gave them a call when we landed they would come and pick us up..there number was 24!!! When we walked through baggage claim we were very surprised to see a fijian lady standing with a sign: Alice Wood x 2! She welcomed us to Fiji and then said 'Come on, Mumma can't wait to see you!' Mumma was actually a real person and everyone actually calls her Mumma!! When we arrived Mumma came out and gave us a massive hug and then cooked us breakfast. Later that day she cooked us lunch and dinner too!! she's absolutely wicked! Its more like staying in someones house than a hoste, she has about 10 cats running around the place and everything you ask she says..'don't you worry mumma will sort it for you!' After breakfast we had a little sleep and when we woke up one of the guys in our room was going to church for the 'experience' and invited us along so we thought why not? And what an experience it was! We were the only white people there and obviously newcomers. This lady invited us to sit at the front with her and they officially announced us and welcomed us to their church! First of all it was all cheery with the gospel singing and everyone getting really into it then when the singing stopped the priest started preaching in Fijian..Obviously we had no idea what he was talking about but suddenly everyone started screaming and crynig and getting completely hysterical! We just stood shell shocked and from that moment wanted to leave but the service lasted for 2 hours!! We were so glad to get out of there! We spent the rest of the day sorting out our island hopping and we leave for Walu Beach tomorrow. WALU BEACH We were upgraded to a lodge at Walu Beach beacuse all of the dorms were shut which was a bonus, its the first time we've had our own room and you forget how nice it is to have your own personal space! The first night we were there we were looking through the visitors book and stmbled across the comments made by a Mr William Fishenden and Rob Grocock!! It was so wierd to see it in there! We asked the guys that worked there if they remembered them and they did! 'AHH big will!! with the afro!!' hehe! They then invited us to go and drink some cava with them..we couldn't really refuse! Cava is the traditional Fijian drink, its made of dried root and water, it looks like muddy water and tastes like it too! We wondered why it was making our mouths numb and then found out that its slightly narcotic! We've never slept so well in our lives as we did that night! This place is paradise! The beach is beautiful and we can just chill all day, swim, sleep, swing in a hammock until we're called for our next meal! perfect! The evenings are pretty good too, they had a frog race one night (ours didn't win, i don't even think it moved!) It was so funny though, once one frog goes it starts the rest of them off they were hopping around everywhere, people were screaming and climbing on chairs while the Fijian guys were running around trying to catch them again for the second race! Chaos! They also had an arm wrestling competition one night, we were informed that when the boys were there Rob and Willy were in the final..Don't worry Willy I won't say who won!! haha! Soph knocked out Alice to get to the semi final (not sure how!) but then lost to the BIGGEST GIRL you've ever seen!!! Our best night there was the bonfire on the beach. Sonny, Mali and Siggy all had their guitars and sang, they were amazing. We just sat and listened, drank a bit of cava, looked up at the amazing sky..beautiful! SOUTHSEA ISLAND The next island we went to was tiny! You could literally walk round it in 2 minutes! When we we got off the big boat and on to the little one that actually takes you right to the island there were just 2 other people on there, they turned around and it was Allie and Leah!!! You've never heard louder screams in your life! We thought we weren't going to see them again for at least a couple of months! We had a really nice evening catching up with them and at dinner we all signed ourselves up to go scuba diving the next morning. Scuba diving was amazing, the coral is like nothing we've ever seen it was so colourful and there were millions of fish! We said goodbye to Allie and Leah again after the dive but have arranged to meet up on the mainland for our last night. We loved the scuba diving so much we decided to do our PADI course and get certified! This will mean that we'll be able to dive anywhere in the world and it makes it alot cheaper as your not paying for an instructor to be with you. To congratulate ourselves on our tough decision we decided to have a massage on the beach! :) We were on this island for 2 nights and it rained nearly the whole time, the dorm had no door and the roof was made out of leaves so it wasn't the most water tight of places to say the least! Soph was on the top bunk and woke up dripping wet! I don't think anything in our bags was dry again after Southsea island! BOUNTY ISLAND (Celebrity Love Island) From Southsea it was just a short trip across the water to Bounty. This was probably our least favourite island. There was nothing really going on, the food gave us dodgy stomachs and to top it all off there were rats in our room! LOVERLY! We went to see the loveshack which was mostly ripped out but still looked quite cool (see us posing in the pics!) Everyone had written on the walls so obviously we had to leave our mark! We had a chilled 2 nights on this island and by the end we were ready to get to the party island! BEACHCOMBER ISLAND (The party island!) You've probably already guessed by now that this was our favourite island! We were staying in a dorm that had 60 bunk beds in it which was crazy but really fun! They had an awesome beach bar and happy hour started at 5.40! Every night they had a band playing, on our first night there they had a dancing competition, everyone had to get a partner and if you were tapped on the shoulder you had to leave the floor..You'll never guess who won!! :) Well OBVIOUSLY it was us, have you ever seen our moves!?!? One night us and a few other girls went for a late night swim, we floated around on our backs looking up at the sky for ages, it seriously is the best sky we've ever seen you can see millions and millions of stars, even saw a few shooters! We made friends with one of the guys who worked there and one day he took us to see his turtles! He let us get in the pool and swim with them, everyone else had to stand behind the fence!!! I don't think we had more than 3 hours sleep in a night on this island! We met so many good people here! AWESOME! BAREFOOT ISLAND After 3 nights on the party island we were ready for a bit of a chill out and Barefoot was the perfect place for it! When we first arrived on the island we were feeling just slightly under the weather (self inflicted we know!) but still after having under 2 hours sleep the previous night all we wanted to do was SLEEP! But no..when we arrived they were so excited to have us there the 'manager wanted to show us all around the island and he was the SLOWEST speaker we've ever met! he showed us absolutely everything, he even pointed out a banana tree to us..pretty obvious seeing as there were big bunches of bananas hanging off it, no we don't want a banana it'll probably make us sick but oh your gona give us one anyway! thanks! He was actually a very sweet man but this was the state of mind we were in at the time! Everyone else staying on the island was actually part of a cruise and so they were gone all day which meant we had a whole island to ourselves! it was paradise! The Fijian guys really wanted to involve us in their lives because we were the only people there so we went snorkelling with them to pick the seaweed for dinner and we went fishing aswell! Alice caught a huge fish (obviously inherited her Daddy's talent!) Soph caught a couple of nippers which the Fijians chopped up and used as bait to catch Alice's monster! This island had no electricity which was quite funny and we stayed in this wicked beach hut (Yawini) While we were on this island we completed our diving course at the island over the sea, Manta Ray. They came and picked us up every morning. We did some amazing dives to finish off the course, the ones where we went off the boat were the best. Alice had a bit of a frightening experience on our first open water dive though. When we were about 8m down we heard this HUGE bang whch vibrated the whole sea, it sounded like a bomb going off and not even our instuctor new what it was! We carried on swimming and Alice (clever little chicken that she is) checked her air guage as she felt the bang more than anyone else. She realised she was out of air and so grabbed the instructor and had to share his air to the top! It turned out that one of her pipes had burst under water which is the rarest thing, trust it to happen to Alice! She was a little shaken but she's ok everyone! Unfortunately she couldn't come down for that dive but the coral orgasm dive we did later was the best one anyway so she didn't miss out! WANA TAKI For our last night in the islands we stayed on the Wana Taki boat which cruises around the Yasawa islands. We managed to get upgraded here too! There was a spare double room curtained off from the rest of the dorm so we got put into that one which made a few people a little jealous! This was a fun way to end the island hopping. We jumped off the boat met some cool people, had a few drinks and played some silly games! Splendid! 19th FEB We got the boat back to the mainland today which took 3 1/2 hours! We were on there with Allie and Leah and so told each other all our stories from the islands. We went back to mumma's for our last night, she was very excited to see us again and has offered us a job in our summers from uni! Crazy old mumma, we love her! 20th FEB Mumma's friend gave us a lift to the airport where we went through and got straight on the plane to fly to Auckland to see Sarah and Kiwi. We've heard good things about the Kiwi Experience which we're going on so we're excited to get going. Staying at Sarah's house for a couple of days is going to be complete LUXURY! It's so true you don't know what you've got til its gone! One month, 3 countries down......bring on the rest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!