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Bula Vinaka! What a beautiful country!! 'Lapped by clear warm turquoise coloured water, fringed with vibrant coral reef and cloaked in the emerald green of the tropics fiji is the paradise seekers dream come true'. From Lonely Planet 2004. i cant put it better than that!<br/><br/>

Fiji (part 1)

Leebee
2006-01-06 16:26:09

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Bula Vinaka! What a beautiful country!! 'Lapped by clear warm turquoise coloured water, fringed with vibrant coral reef and cloaked in the emerald green of the tropics fiji is the paradise seekers dream come true'. From Lonely Planet 2004. i cant put it better than that!

Stepping off the plane at Nadi airport your body is instantly envoloped with a warm suffocating humidity & you immediately feel you are in a foreign land.

There is a party atmosphere everything is totally relaxed (fiji time). Which basically means you add 20 minutes onto everything. Which means everybody here is a lazy git. Which means i was at home here.

Your senses are bombarded with the smell of fresh fruits on a nearby market, the fijians have tendancy to spontaneously break out into song with drums and guitars! bright Green hills, coconuts palm trees and water bluer than you ever imagined! strike your visual, tactile & auditory senses. There is so much colour! contagious energy & a congenial appetite for life!.

Here are some photos from the Mamanua (definitely spelt wrong) islands snorkelling off the schooner seaspray (visible in the 1st photo) free champagne was provided whoohoo and bbq for the day

yeehaaa.

Modriki island is where i headed first the location of the movie castaway with Tom Hanks, i loved this film and was well excited to be there, bit surreal, you'll be glad to read that i withstood the temptation to take a volley ball with me :-) so i cracked open a few coconuts instead yum! (was alot easier than Tom Hanks made it out to be).Anyway this has now become my favorite part of the world, the fijian people are awesome, so happy, helpful, friendly and free spirited. Definitely and eye opener to how you can live. I thought about all those office workers in cities commuting to work on overcrowded trains and buses everyday with grim frowning expressions on their faces (i used to be one of them), earning small fortunes relative to fijian earnings but the people here are so much happier and care free, it gives you first hand experience that there really is alot more to life than money and material belongings.

The 2 weeks i was here i spent 10 days on the feejee experience bus, a tour of the main island Viti Levu aimed at young backpackers that takes in traditional fijian villages,
if you are in possession of a digital camera here the village children see you as a wealthy god and thus are worshipped accordingly whilst they marvel at their own images, if they discover you are in possession of aworthless old APS camera you are suitably frowned upon then politely ignored. I was not worshipped :-(

Kava ceremonies (puke!), sand boarding on the dunes, fire dancing on robinson crusoe island, bili rafting, snorkelling, sunsets, tubing & lots of drinking and varying degrees of low quality dancing. Awesome!.