A week in Fiji (AKA Paradise)

I don’t even know where to start with this entry! Fiji was amazing and surprising in every way possible.. how about I start at the beginning... and finish at the end?

You know that holiday feeling that you get when you step off an aeroplane and the heat hits you like a big cuddle? On our several holidays that we’ve been on since we moved to Abu Dhabi, we’ve never had that feeling- we were always going somewhere cooler or a similar temperature. But after two weeks in New Zealand, the Sun Huggle (ooh, should this be trademarked?) hit us for the first time in years- and we didn’t mind it one little bit!

We spent a lot of our time in Fiji catching our breaths- after driving almost 10,000kms between us in just over a month- it’s something that we welcomed with open arms! Between beach walking, pool swimming, cocktail and kava (a traditional Fijan drink made from a root that tastes like muddy water, but makes your tongue tingle) drinking, sitting in local gardens watching the day go by, meeting people (Fijans are THE most friendly people we have ever met! We were invited by one person to have kava and dinner with his family, and were given a local rugby shirt by another in honour of the Fiji 7s tournament that we unfortunately missed!) and shouting BULA! to everyone we met we still managed to see and do plenty- including going for a hot mud bath, where you literally drop waist deep into the hottest, stickiest mud in the middle of a field, climb out and let it dry on you (and take some scary pictures) and then dip into naturally heated pools of water (which were so hot, it was almost unbearable) to clean off! Much fun!

The most notable thing for Mike would definitely have to be a shark dive (apparently the shark experiences in Fiji are the world’s best) and after watching over 40 of them feed from a few feet away, he even got a wee souvenir- one of them left a tooth in the feeder’s hand! Thankfully he came back in one piece, with ten fingers, ten toes, two arms and two legs- just as I’d requested!