Our laptop has unfortunately decided to play silly buggers and is refusing to switch on. So this will be an entry without any photos. For those of you who think I talk to much and usually just scroll through to look at the pictures, I apologise. We're going to try and get it fixed tomorrow.
On day 3 of the Fiji Experience we felt really pleased because the group who had arrived the previous day, and who we would be spending day 3 with were small (there was 5 of them, they weren't midgets) and quiet. After the stupid girls from the other day it made a nice change. Despite the fact that one of the main reasons for booking the Fiji Experience was so that we could meet people, you may remember from earlier entries that we don't really like people, so despite our best intentions we were glad we didn't really have to do lots of chatting.
We left Pacific Harbour at around 7:30am and we thought that the first stop of the day would be in Suva, the capital of Fiji. But it turned out to be just a "driving tour" which basically meant that they needed to drive through Suva that day so on the way through our guide pointed out a few nice buildings. We actually ended up stopping in a small town just outside Suva for an ATM and supermarket shop - why we couldn't have done this in Suva we're not quite sure...
The real first stop of the day was at a school - the children there ranged from age 5 to 14 and were very funny. As soon as we arrived a number of them took us by the hand and interrogated us. We were shown to some seats where we were welcomed to the school by one of the teachers and then a group of children sang and danced for us. It was great but we did feel slightly awkward, like we were on some kind of royal visit. Except we ain't royals. After the singing the teacher assigned a child to each of us to show us around the school and we were taken by the hand and lead in completely different directions. Chris almost caused a riot by getting his camera out in one of the classrooms as all of the boys clambered to have their photo taken. Jen ended up singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" with Class 3 and Class 4, before meeting the head girl and getting a load of attitude from her. We were both handed scraps of paper with kids names and addresses on and heard stories of "One boy here, a Fiji Experience person sent him a letter and some books and some chocolate...". Jen nodded and smiled. Chris ended up agreeing to send some kid a rugby ball and a David Beckham football shirt.
When we had finished our tour of the school there was more singing and dancing, before more clambering for photos with Chris as we left - all the boys at the school loved him. We will definitely need to send back some kind of package from the UK at least with photos and maybe some chocolate...!
Our next stop on day 3 was a visit to a local village for a traditional sevu sevu (kava) ceremony. Before stopping our guide said that we needed to nominate a chief and a spokesperson and they would have special roles in the ceremony. Chris was chosen as spokesperson and another guy was chosen as the chief. When we arrived at the village we had to wait outside the chief's house to see if he would allow us in; once we were inside Chris had to give the chief some kava and say some words. Then the village chief made a very long speech (all in Fijian) whilst we all sat around nodding as if we completely understood what he was saying, and trying not to fidget. Once the ceremony started we had to try and remember all the clapping and words we'd been taught by Reuben on day 1 which was a bit of a stretch but we seemed to do OK and they didn't order us out of the village so we must have done alright. After we had all drunk a round of kava the chief wanted to know a little about us so we went around the group saying who we were, where we were from, and what we do for a living. Jen didn't want to tell the chief that she is technically unemployed in case he frowned upon her, so instead she opted to lie to the chief and tell him she worked in marketing. Once we had all done this it became clear that Chris's other duty as the spokesperson for our group was to say whether or not we would drink another round of kava, but by this point all of the girls in the group had been taken to do bracelet making with the village chief's wife so there was only Chris, our chief, the village chief, his son and our bus driver drinking the kava. They had 6 rounds before it was all gone. Kava is not alcoholic so they were not drunk but they did start to feel rather mellow.
When all of the kava had been drunk we made our escape - thanked the chief and his family and left to go river rafting nearby. It had been advertised that we would build our own rafts and race them down the river - but as it turned out the rafts were already built and we just sat on them whilst two Fijian guys leisurely punted us down the river. It was all very nice but not exactly the thrill ride we were hoping for.
Once we had dried off from the rafting we had about a 2 hour drive to Volivoli beach where we had booked to stay for the next 8 nights. When we arrived they told us that the dorms were full and we would be upgraded to a private room for one night. We couldn't believe that we had been upgraded again and much high-fiving ensued. Although slightly prematurely. As we were looking for our lovely private room one of the staff came to find us to tell us that actually they had found room in the dorms. Maybe our cheeky upgrade luck is running out.
We had booked a package of 6 dives each at Volivoli beach but we found that it didn't cost much more to increase our package to 10 dives each so we thought we may as well as this would be our last chance to do any diving on this trip. And so we spent the next week at Volivoli beach resort doing 2 dives almost every day. And it was bloody lovely. The resort was beautiful, the diving was great and the weather was hot. We could describe it on a day by day basis but there's little more that needs to be said. We managed to meet up with a few people we'd met at Mango Bay on the Coral Coast and it was really nice to spend the week together. We felt very sad this morning when it came time to say goodbye to both the resort and the people - definitely somewhere we would come back to.
Today was our last day on the Fiji Experience bus, so we really made an effort to talk to people and make some friends. No of course we didn't. We did chat to a couple of people but most people seemed a bit annoying so we kept to ourselves most of the day. We left Volivoli Beach around midday and stopped in a town called Lautoka mid-afternoon for a bit of shopping and 5 pakoras for $1. Mmmm.
Our final stop of the day was at the Sabeto valley mud pools and hot pools. Which, to be honest, was absolutely disgusting. Still fun, but disgusting. We knew it wasn't going to be some kind of deluxe mud spa but when we arrived it was like we had driven onto a farm and decided to go for a swim in their pond. Their grubby mud-filled pond complete with frogs swimming in it. But we thought that since it was our last day in Fiji we may as well get involved. As we may have mentioned, it was disgusting. On climbing into the mud pool you realised that it wasn't full of mud, just water, but as you put your feet down on the ground, through about a foot of weeds, you found the mud. And it was hot and squelchy. Oddly enough, not everyone jumped at the chance to get in but those of us who did, covered ourselves in the mud which was a lot of fun. After a few photos we rinsed off and headed to one of the hot pools which was a lot less disgusting, the water was very hot and clean with no weeds or frogs. It did make you feel a bit light-headed from the heat but was welcome relief after the mud. Once we had all gotten out we used their handily provided shed showers and got back on the bus.
And now we're back in Nadi, spending one night here and heading out to Hong Kong tomorrow morning - via a 10 hour stopover in Sydney which means we don't actually arrive in Hong Kong until the day after tomorrow. Yuk. We are really gutted to leave Fiji, we will definitely come back here at some point in our lives as we've now found out about a hundred different dive sites that we didn't make it to on this trip. But we are excited for Hong Kong and China - we have a feeling it may be a little more fast-paced than Fiji.
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