Volivoli, Fiji | Round The World Trip Diary Entry | My Travels

Round The World Trip

Volivoli, Fiji Diary Entry

Date Posted: 13/02/2006

After spending the night on the 10th at Raintree Lodge in Suva where a guy called Dre from our bus wowed us all with his magic card tricks we set off on the morning of the 11th and visited a orphanage where we took pens and pencils to the kids.

After the orphanage visit myself, Nat, Lisa and Nicky were dropped off at a bridge to get our ferry (basically a long boat) out to Caqalai Island where we were staying for two nights at the recommendation of our tour guide Luke. Got to the island and it was tiny, you could walk round it in about 10 minutes and including us there was a total of about 25 people in total on there! The beach was lovely and the snorkling really good, the reef was basically about 5 metres or so from the shore. The shower was a bucket of rain water which you threw over yourself with a margarine tub and the toilet had to be flushed by chucking a bucket of sea water down it! Pretty basic stuff but really cool to experience the 'non-tourist' side of Fiji. Spent the afternoon sunbathing, swimming and lazing about in the sun before drinking Kava in the evening with the locals! (Kava is an odd drink made with water and the root of a plant which is rumoured to make the Fijians so laid back as it gets you all sleepy and drowsy). Went for a late night swim around midnight / 1am which was pretty cool!

Sunday (12th) we all got the boat to another island to go to church! Went to a full on Methodist ceremony in Fijian in a tiny village, I had to get up and address the whole church and tell them who I was and where I was from and what my country was like... crazy! At the end of the ceremony we were all lined up outside and shook everyone's hand who had been in the church. Afterwards we were shown around the village by the locals and then taken for another Kava ceremony! BULA! Headed back to our island for a massive Sunday lunch of fresh fish straight out the sea and then in the afternoon a spot of snorkling on the reef. That evening it rained a little bit so we sat in playing cards having a beer.

Had to leave the island today and get back on the bus. All the people who worked there came down to sing us off and put flowers in our hair. It was actually quite sad to leave. Got the 'ferry' back to the bridge and was picked up by the Feejee Experience bus which was full to the brim of 30 people - complete nightmare after our 2 days of peace and quiet!

Visited a local school and then went onto a village for another Kava ceremony, by now me and Nicky were loving Kava and asking for 'high tide' which basically means 'fill the cup up'!

After the ceremony we headed down to the Wainibuka river for some bilibili rafting and swimming with the locals, great fun!

In the evening we went to Volivoli Beach resort to chill out... also had a well deserved shower! The Kava was out again that night as well and by now we were becoming experts at drinking it!

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