Bula Bula! It's Fiji time!
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2010
1
23
Trip End
Sep 07, 2010
Nadi, Viti Levu, Fiji
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
We departed from the mainland on the Awesome Adventures Bula pass and took their Yasawa Flyer catamaran up to the northern most resort on the Yasawa Islands called Blue Lagoon. In short, we found paradise! Turquoise sea, coral reef in crystal clear water off the white sandy beach and palm tree island. Absolutely delicious food and an upgrade out of the dorm we had booked. We snorkelled, lazed in the gorgeous 30 degrees sun and spent our night hermit crab racing and having a laugh with some friends from the boat. Perfect!
We carried on in this vain for nearly the entire trip (albeit for two days of torrential rain where we played a card game 'Yaneth' obsessively with a fun group of people) We also did a shark feeding dive where we went 20m down and held on to a rope and watched as dozens of sharks appeared circling round us to get the fish the dive instructors were doling out. We saw lots of Moray eels, reef sharks, black and white tips and at the very end 3 enormous 4 metre long mean looking Lemon sharks swooped in and gobbled up the remaining fish... it was a little unnerving when even the sharks scarpered away from them! All in all another awesome diving experience- genuinely not as scary as it sounds.
We stayed at some great resorts - each on tiny beach rimmed islands covered in palm forests with only a local village and the resort on them. We therefore had some great experiences with the locals teaching us to chill out and work on Fiji time, fishing with a hand held line and even visiting a Sunday church service. We had a guided tour from Bola a 14 year old local from the Yasawa islands largest village 'So So' (it was the school holidays) where we saw a taste of real Fijian culture and community life - we left totally envious and warmed by their friendliness and generosity. Several nights we were treated to entertainment in the form of traditional dancing and fire dancing - some were fantastic and others namely the 'Bula boys' looked mildly embarrassed by the whole thing!
We took a trip out to snorkel with the Mantarays in the channel as they were in season we were lucky enough to see one and follow it around, it was absolutely enormous, roughly 3m in diameter and so graceful in the water. We also spotted octopuses (octopi?) and sharks just snorkelling off the beaches and what must be thousands of typed of tropical fish and corals.
Fiji was the best end to our travelling adventure that we could have imagined. We were so sad to leave knowing the chances of returning to this spot of paradise were so slim as we were possibly as far away from home as you can get. And on that note we embarked heavy hearted but after the best 6 months of our lives on the 48hour trip home.
