Wednesday, April 13, 2011

First couple days in Fiji!

Well lets see I don’t even know where to start it is only 7:30 pm here and I feel like I’ve been up for days. Oh wait… I kinda have. When they say time stops, it really stops today felt like it went on for ever. So let’s start at the beginning with the   flight to LA. We chit chatted the majority of the two hour flight and also read our Chelsea handler books. The most eventful part was this crazy lady two rows behind us who had the highest pitched voice I’ve ever heard and she was talking loud and did not know what was appropriate to be talking about, especially on an airplane. Well her voice upset a few of the people sitting around her and they complained and had the sturdiest come over and ask if she could quiet down, this of course upset her and made a big scene. “What do you mean I always talk like this, this is my real voice that I’ve had for 45 years…ok fine I just wont talk the rest of the trip.” Then after about 15 min the people in font of them were very immature about the whole thing and started talking about it and making fun of her and this drew in more stewards and the other people around us to look at each other and laugh a little. Oh by the way this lady had fizzy white hair with magenta streaks in it. We finally made it to LA. It took us a while to figure out where we needed to go to get to the air pacific international terminal. Finally did and oh here comes some more bad news, as we are checking in they require that no matter how many suitcases you take in they have to be 50lbs or under, and for anyone who knows me and my travel style you know I can not fit everything in one suitcase let alone have it be under 50 pounds. So yes I had two suitcases, which were both 50.2lbs and 50.4lbs so I was charged a whole bunch for that one over the limit suitcase. It would have been nice to know this ahead of time, at least I’ll know for next time. ;) Let’s see we didn’t do too much after this, went to our gate and had a beer that was 8 bucks and a small snack then tried to skype with Bethany but apparently you have to pay for your internet while at the LA international gates so that was kinda lame. We mostly people watched and waited to board, by this time we were getting verrry tired and just wanted to sleep. Finally the time has arrived and we get to board our plane, and I would like to refer to our plane as a ship because this puppy was huge, double decker, huge first class seats and then section upon section of seating areas. We of course wanted to sit together so we were put in the back of the plane, which was the greatest thing ever. We were able to spread out and take our own rows of seats. I also took a natural sleep aid thing to help me sleep and boy did that works, I wasn’t but 10 minutes into Seabuscit and was out. I woke up a couple times to rotate my position and then was back to sleep and I was asleep until like 45 minutes before we landed.
Ahhh finally in Fiji! We get through customs and go to call for our shuttle that was said to be part of our hotel, it wasn’t. So I tried to talk to this one guy about it and could not understand a word, was he was even speaking English? So we went to this other lady who confirmed that no we did not have a shuttle, let me remind you it is about 5:45 am at this time and I’m still half asleep. Finally we get a cab and are on our way to our hotel.
            Once we checked into our hotel we decided to go run on the beach, it was so great. The sea breeze blowing in my face and the waves crashing next to my feet, I loved it. I am not sure how far we ran but it was pretty far. Running on sand is a lot harder then it looks. After we went for our run we showered and got ready for our day at the beach. Oh yeah its still only like 8:30ish in the morning, they are still grating the sand and no one is awake let alone out on the beach, but we head out there anyways. We pick our perfect spot right on the sand under all of the clouds. How wonderful our first day in Fiji and it is not sunny out. HA big mistake, just because it is not sunny does not mean you wont burn. Yes I am a little pink at the moment, I mean I guess it is expected when I was very white before this trip and we were out there for like 6+ hours.
We are totally messed up on time it is so early in the morning but so late to what we are used to so our schedule has been very off. After a while of sitting in the sun a huge group of kids come over with some of the people who work there yelling “fish time” “time to feed the fish” and all of the kids come running. Just about 5 minutes before this event happened Rach and I were talking about taking a dip in the ocean until we saw all the fish. The kids all got pieces of bread and were not but ankle deep in the water tossed the bread and the fish came alive, freaked us out of course. So after this we decided to move closer to the bar and farther into a patch of sun we found. There we stayed for a few more hours. We chatted most of the time, went for a swim, ordered a couple drinks.. These drinks were not very good and not worth the money. These drinks were like 8 bucks or so and were not blended and did not tastes very good. We had to drink them anyways because they were so expensive. Bummer. We did a little shopping in the hotel lobby and in a small hut where some of the ladies make homemade jewelry and things. We also set up a catamaran ride to go on tomorrow it’s called “ooolala” we will get to go to a private island with white beaches and clear waters where we will get to snorkel. So that should be fun. We got a 50 percent off voucher to eat at this buffet, which was amazing because we didn’t eat much during the day due to the high cost of things so when dinnertime came around we felt like we could eat a whole cow. We showered and got ready for dinner headed down and ate like we’ve never ate before. We had a good couple plates and went back for seconds. It was great. Oh a big thing people say here is Bula and some of the time I cant understand the people and it sounds like they are saying hola. So after we ate we came back up to the room and started to watch tv because we are sooo tired!! I’m getting very sleep so I think that’s all for now, I will keep you posted on how the boat ride goes. Miss you all!

Love always

Lindsey

Oh yes I almost forgot most of the people here are either families with many little kids or couples so it is very depressing. But our room is very nice we have two large beds, ac, flat screen tv, private balcony, and this sweet shower that has a showerhead coming from the ceiling and also a normal one so you get double the water. Our room looks out towards the water, we have a garden view due to the cheaper price. Apparently Fiji is made up of 300 islands and we are on one of those, our hotel is on a small island called duranu which is close to the main island so its pretty cool and pretty private.


Well what can I saw about today besides that it was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time! We woke up around 7am to my scary alarm that made Rachel jump out of bed practically, thinking it was a tsunami warning. So once things were calmed down we went for our morning run along the beach then went to our kind of breakfast, a buffet style. We figured hey it’s complementary we might as well eat as much as we can. We had freshly scrambled eggs and fresh fruit while sitting out towards the water with the fresh warm ocean air.  After our bellies were full we went back and showered and got ready for our oolala cruise. 9:10am we’re down waiting for our bus to take us to the port to board our boat. The boat ride was so much fun, we went slow and there were about 25 other people who joined us, most of them from Australia. We spent the hour and 20 minutes on the back of the boat basking in the sun. It was very hot today, there were not too many clouds out so that was great. Due to the over exposure of sun yesterday I wore 45spf today and I still managed to get some color. J We stopped short of our island that was called Salvala I think and got to snorkel. It was so much fun the water was so warm, I saw a round blue fish thing and a bunch of others. Snorkeling is a very tricky thing we kept getting salt water in our mouths and eyes even though we had our gear on. Our group swam pretty far away from our boat so when Rachel and I decided to swim back it was a lot farther then we had remembered. I swam like I was swimming in the Olympics, thinking at any point a shark was going to come up out of the water and get me so I was booking it. Don’t worry I made it with no sharks around. We get back to the boat and I’m trying to catch my breath and just as I stand up I get sprayed in the face with a hose of fresh water to clean off the salt water. It was quite refreshing. The taste of salt water is still in my mouth and is a terrible taste, so what better to do then to wash it down with a nice cold Fiji beer. After waiting for a while we put along towards our private island where we are then shuttled over on a smaller boat. Words cannot even explain how pretty this island was. Picture paradise on white sand and clear water, because that’s what it was. We could stand neck high in the water and still see our feet. What better way to spend time on this island of paradise then to get a massage. Yes, we both got massages on the beach it was amazing. This was probably the most relaxing massage I’ve ever had, she may not have been the best but the setting made up for it. Nothing is more calming then the breaking of the waves along the beach and the nice warm ocean breeze. It was out of this world awesome. For the rest of our stay we had a nice picnic on the beach and laid out in the sun. It was so nice we didn’t want to leave we asked if we could sleep there with a tent and make a fire and we were told no because we would get taken by pirates. Haha.  So the day was coming to an end. L While on the boat we met these two adorable little girls one was 6  her name was Ariowin and a 3 year old, Briana. They were from Australia and this little 6 year old was the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen.  So we played with them for the rest of the ride home. After we got back to the dock we made our way home and just in time because there was a small rain shower that hit. We finally ended our day with a trip back to the port where we did some shopping and went to dinner at Hard Rock Café Fiji. I had the fish and chips and it was SO yummy it was a local fish, I don’t remember the name of it but it was good. Our waitress was so nice she sat and chatted for a little bit. It takes her about an hour to get to work and an hour to get home, she works 6 days a week and pretty much all day long. The worst part of this is that she makes $2.80 an hour, which is like $1.40 US dollars.  She was so nice and we wanted to leave her a big tip but she said when people tip it all goes into a jar and then they split it between everyone. We still left a pretty good tip. Speaking of money, things are so expensive or at least they seem expensive when we first look at them because they are in Fijian dollars. Oh yes how could I forget when we got back to our hotel we went for a little walk on the beach and laid out by the ocean under the stars with the tiki torches going it was so relaxing. It upset us a little we really wished we would have had a boyfriend or something with us to enjoy this romantic scene…but we didn’t. Bummer dude. So that’s all I think we did today tomorrow we are going to lay out in the sun and then go to a fire show at night. 

4 comments:

  1. Linds!! I'm loving every minute of your blog! Almost as if I'm there with u:) love this pic and love that you are having a good time. Keep it up!! Love you!!xoxox

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like you are having an awesome time!! Love you and miss you!! Buy me something! :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fabulous journaling thus far can picture it all spectacular, looking forward to future additions, have fun!:)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds like you are having soo much fun! I am so jealous you were able to sleep on the plane! Love all your pictures! Keep em coming and have a blast! Love you girls!

    ReplyDelete