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Bula Everyone!
Bula is just about the most common word in Fiji... infact is easily is the most common word, it's said everywhere. It just means hello, welcome, cheers etc you get the drift. We're both waiting, trying to be patient as our flight's at 10PM to LA and there's not much to do really in Nadi. Fiji has been a fantastic place and it's somewhere we'd both come back to again. he people are so friendly and welcoming; the lifestyle is so relaxing, not to mention there's been some of the best fruit we've had for a while.
The 2nd part of our Feejee Experience bus tour started after 4 nights at the Mango Bay Resort down the coral coast. We got up early and joined our new bus-mates in a 3 hour trek up and down slippery clay mud that took us to a river where we sat in tire tubes down the river, occassionally flowing down some gentle rapids. We then took a rather long and uncomfortable longboat ride to where the bus was waiting for us and when we arrived in Suva, Capital of Fiji and the South Pacific, we were able to get a quick-fire tour of the place as it was getting late.
Another early start was required for our visit of a local village community school, the poorest type of school in terms of education and facilities in Fiji. It was a shock to the system as the facilities were really poor. For instance the kitchen was a tiny room with no use of electricity and food was boiled in a pot over a wooden fire - lunch today was sausage soup - no choice in the matter.
After seeing the school and meeting some of the pupils, we visited another local village for another kava ceremony - Fijians can't get enough of the stuff! What happened was that the ladies were summoned to do some weaving whereas the men sat around having kava. Not sure what we'd rather have done though as kava is pretty rank! We also had to visit the village to ask chief permission to use the rivers which lie within his land so we could bili-bili raft. It was a slight anti-climax however as the race was like 30 metres long and also involved a lot of pushing of the raft! But Stu's team won and he was pretty happy as the prize was a shot of tequila each.
That evening we arrived at our accommodation named Volivoli Beach Resort by the nearby town of Rakiraki. Bit repetitive eh! We had a pretty good night with party games and activities, finishing off with a bonfire by the beach, and a few more Fiji Golds/Bitters, depending which beer you prefered!
We decided to stay here for 3 nights, whereas the majority of people went the next day. Another few days relaxing by the beach was followed by another Feejee Experience Bus. We were allowed to lie in before the bus left the next day. After having lunch at the only pure Indian province of Ba, we jumped in some mud pools, which felt so wrong to begin with as it was so sloppy and warm, btu were really fun after getting used to it, especially as we started throwing the mud at each other!
We returned to Nadi afterwards and has a big rush to get ready for the final meal with our Feejee crew, including bus driver and guide, but the guide didn't even show up, how rude! We had to try and contact everyone who was involved in coming to LA before hand as well as showering etc etc. Jack was extremely helpful though as he didn't know his flight time. What he did tell us was a time that was 6 hours off the real flight arrival time! His method included a 7-9 hour flight from LHR to LAX and worked with a minus 10 hour time difference. Firstly the flight is like 11 1/2 hours and the time difference is minus 8! Cheers Jack! He even used Hannahs phone to work it out... not actually trying to find out the actual flight time. Anyway we had our meals and said our farewells apart from the guys who were going to Beachcomber Island the next day. Beachcomber firstly has a 128 bed dorm! And is notoriously the party island of Fiji. It didn't really turn out to be that way the certain night we were there but we made pretty sure we had a good night of it anyway. A few alcoholic beverages were consumed! We'll be in California the next time you'll hear from us. Ta ta x
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