Fiji, swimming with Mantarays and the death of the backpack

We spent a small fortune on our flight to Fiji so we were praying for some good weather.

We arrived in Nadi and booked ourselves into Escape Beach resort. It is a small, fairly quiet guesthouse/hostel run by an English guy. We booked all our trips to the islands for the week through him.

We left Nadi early the next morning to get the ferry to Mantaray Island, which is about three hours north of Nadi. All the islands in Fiji are relatively small, with just one resort option to stay in.

On Mantaray Island there is nothing but the resort, which houses en-suite and dorm rooms, communal showers and toilets, a bar and a restaurant, and a dive shop.

We decided to stay three nights on Mantaray as we felt we needed a few nights of good sleep and relaxation. Our plan for Mantaray was to sunbathe, snorkel, and go diving.... and that's exactly what we did. After a couple of days of soaking up the sun we booked to go diving. Fiji is supposed to be one of the best dive sites in the world, so I was so excited and expected it to be my best dive so far. Unfortunately, I was hugely disappointed. I think we were dropped way off the actual dive site, so we had to swim against the current for a good 15 minutes before we got to see any sign of aquatic wildlife, and even then it wasn't that great. The coral was nice and pretty but nothing I haven't seen before, and the fish were very few and far between. I was expecting to see sharks, but it was nothing like that. Sarah and I were so disappointed.

I think we were just unlucky as we had spoken to so many people beforehand who had dived in Fiji who said it was amazing and their best dive so far. I think I will have to go back to Fiji someday purely for that reason!! We were supposed to do a second dive, but we decided to save our money and go Mantaray snorkelling instead.......
So that's what we did in the afternoon. It was $25 for an afternoon of snorkelling with Mantarays, and the good thing about this trip was they guaranteed you got to see Mantarays. It was awesome! There were so many hanging around the afternoon we went, and they swam so close to you. I saw about three huge ones, they were incredible. It was a lot of fun. One of them swam right past my face!

On Mantaray Island, we also got the chance to visit the local village, just 15 minutes away. We visited the local scool and nursery, along with the church and small crafts village. The village is tiny with only 500 people living there and we only got to see half of it.

The school kids were fantastic, they loved having visitors! When we arrived they sang a few songs to us then insisted having their pictures taken with us.

It was pretty amazing. Va, our tour guide, is only 20 years old, but such an amazing woman. She does so much for the village, her family, and the children. She even offered me and Sarah a bed at hers if ever we wanted to go back and stay with her!

The following day we left Mantaray to go to an island two hours south called Beach Comber. This is classed as the Party Island, although it is probably one of the smaller islands as you can walk all the way round it in 5 minutes! As soon as we arrived we bumped into three guys who were on our Kiwi bus; Tom, Miles and Oli, so we had a few drinks with them that evenig which was good fun. We were all in an 84 bed dorm which was interesting! The following morning, another fellow kiwi passenger arrived, Jennie, so again, we all had a few more drinks the following evening! I really enjoyed Beach Comber and it as really cool meeting up with some people from the Kiwi bus, but while we were there, the weather wasn't that good at all, and the problem with Fiji is, if it isn't good weather, there really isn;t anything to do! Me, Sarah and Jennie often found ourselves playing crazy golf, a sport we are all terrible at! Having said that, Fiji was a lot of fun and I'm glad we spent (that small fortune!) to get there.

We had five nights on the Islands altogether before we went back to Nadi for a night to catch a flight back to Auckland the following morning. We were just in Auckland for a night in order to catch our flight to LA. Sarah and I both bought a huge suitcase in Auckland as we were so sick of carrying our backpacks!

We are now in LA and absolutely loving it. We arrived here on May 27 and are staying in Venice Beach. We are here for two nights then heading to Newport Harbour in Orange County for a couple of nights to stay with our friend Jay, who we met in Laos! It's his friends bithday so no doubt it'll be a good weekend...