fiji: there's no such thing as time in paradise

well as our week in fiji draws to an end and while we still have a good wifi connection i thought i'd take the opportunity to blog about our lovely time here in paradise. we spent our first night (thursday) on the mainland near the airport in nadi as to get to waya island where we have been staying we needed to take a boat which we had missed for that day. bright and early on friday morning we got the octopus resort boat up to the yasawa islands where waya is located which took us about an hour and half as we were on a direct boat (it can take 2 or 3 on a non-direct one). when we got to the island i was blown away by it's beauty, the beach is perfect - beautiful clear white sands and crystal clear turquoise waters. the island is very pretty full of colourful flowers, palm trees and leafy green trees. it's picture postcard stuff.

we spent the week staying in our little garden bure which looked directly onto the beach and was surrounded by flora and fauna. we did have a few unexpected (i.e. crawling/scuttling) houseguests but nothing that we couldn't handle luckily!

each night everyone on the resort eats together at the same time. the entire country seems to run on what the locals refer to themselves as 'fiji time'; what this means is that something scheduled for 10:30am for example can happen as early as 10am, or, more frequently, as late as about 11:30am! because of fiji time, wristwatches become somewhat redundant, so mealtimes are generally announced by blowing on the conch which can be heard around the resort. when everybody has had a chance to hear the conch sound, we all sit on tables of eight which was a great way of meeting new people and making friends.

there were plenty of activities going on varying from voivoi weaving, fijian cookery, organised visits to the local school and fishing to name but a few. i'm a bit ashamed to say we didn't participate in any of them (despite grand plans to begin with!) but instead spent most of days reading, swimming, snorkelling and sunbathing. the pool was just lovely and the water, in both the pool and the sea, was always so warm. something i haven't really experienced before.

after dinner there were usually things going on from movie night, quiz night and party night - these were all pretty good fun and we joined in. the social experience of mealtimes meant we quickly made friends, particularly with two girls from perth, and another couple from melbourne. on party night, we also participated in happy hour, and really bonded with these four australians. there was some pretty talented dancing on the beach.

some of it was even coordinated. okay i'm not sure what move this is but it was definitely an impressive routine at the time.

we were quite sad to see our holiday friends all move on a couple of days ago, but the rest of the time we have just chilled out and had a really relaxing time, getting ourselves ready for the next part of our journey!

and i musn't forget to mention that we saw some stunning skies!

so now we are about to leave fiji and fly to los angeles tonight - we will cross the date line when we fly so we leave at 10pm thursday and arrive at midday thursday despite a ten hour flight in the middle!