Fiji - Nadi & Mana Island

First thing we discovered about Fiji is that "Nadi" is actually pronounced "NANDI" which seems crazy to us but sure what do we know!! We spend our first night in Nadi in a nice hotel but other than that Nadi didn't leave much of an impression on us so we were excited to head off on our boat (where for some reason we got VIP treatment in the Captains lounge!!??!! - no complaints there!) to Mana Island.

Mana Island is like paradise and really lived up to our very high expectations! The beaches were fantastic with golden sand and clear warm water - fantastic! The Mana Island resort had amazing facilities and the fijian staff were so helpful and relaxed! We also lucked out on our ocean front suite (very fancy!!) which was amazing (double storey and two bathrooms!!!) and we woke up to an amazing view of beach and coconut trees every morning!

Despite worries about the cyclone and the weather in general we actually got amazing weather (Ro's red shoulders proved this!!) and spent the week in and out of the water! There was loads of great activities to do, so we tried our hands at kayaking, jet skiing, paragliding and waterskiing (not that we were any good at all!).

We also snorkelled at least once a day which was amazing as there was such a great variety of fish to be seen (Orla was terrified of some of the pointy nosed ones!) with such amazing colours. We became experts at stealing bread from breakfast and used this to attract all the fish!

We couldn't have left Fiji before attending a Kava ceremony, so on our second last day we sat down for some. Lets get things clear, Kava tastes nothing like sparkling wine !! basically it is the Kava plant mixed with water, which comes out in a mouth-watering muddy brown colour. In a Kava ceremony men sit at the front as they still harbour some sexist beliefs, but luckily for women they get to drink less, when you see Orla's face after tasting some you see that all chauvinism isn't bad!!!!










Have to say that it was great to leave our bags in the same room for 6 nights straight and after being there for two days we really felt like we lived there! We were sad to leave but had an amazing time, probably the best holiday we've ever been on (even if we didn't deserve it)!