If possible the Feejee Experience was even better than the Kiwi Experience! The 4 day tour loops around the main island and the ticket includes so many activities. The buses are much smaller too, those in NZ had carried about 40 people but our bus only had between 10 - 15 people each day, making it much easier to get to know each other.
Our first day started with an 8.30am pick up, and we were taken into Nadi Town to buy sarongs and any other items we may need. Our guide, Api, was covering for another guide who was ill. Api hadn't been a guide since January so was a bit rusty, and kept looking to us for approval of his suggestions as though we would know better! Luckily our driver, William, had been driving for the Feejee Experience for 6 years so was able to jump in when Api forgot to tell us important information.
After the town we drove to a beach where the guides prepared a BBQ lunch for us while we spent some time in the sun. Sunshine was very welcome after 3 weeks in the winter in New Zealand! After lunch we had a trip to a local village, Malomalo, where Api gave us a tour and explained a bit about the culture within the different tribes. We had to wear our sarongs which was a bit of a surprise for some of the guys who couldn't see much difference between a sarong and a skirt!
Afterwards we went sandboarding down the dunes which was really fun! I would have gone down loads of times if it hadn't been for the steep and difficult path to the top!! Once we arrived at Mango Bay Resort we were invited to a Kava ceremony. Kava is the traditional Fijian drink made in a large mixing bowl and has a slightly numbing effect. The ceremonies involve sitting around the bowling and clapping at the necessary points in the chant, and after a smaller bowl is passed around to each person. To accept the bowl you have to clap and say "bula", and then down this cloudy drink, which in all honesty tastes like drinking muddy water! Not my favourite alcoholic drink... After dinner we all sat by the bonfire while one of the hotel reps played covers of different songs. He did surprisingly well given that 2 of the strings on his guitar were broken!
The following morning we went on a 3 hour trek, which was one of the best treks I have ever been on. It started off with a walk along a path, which then led through the rainforest and ended with a walk through a creek. It had rained the night before and some of the paths were very slippery and there were a few tumbles but luckily no injuries. The creek walk involved almost swimming at some points, when the water would reach up to the waist. At first I didn't want to get my walking boots soaking wet so I attempted to go barefoot, but after about 10 minutes of walking mainly on rocks my feet started becoming very sore so I gave up and put my boots on. A good decision at the time but I'm still airing them out now!!! Once we got to the river a boat came to meet us with our lunch, and then we all got tubes and floated down the river to the waterfall. The waterfall had a jump off it which (against all my better judgements) I managed to do, but there were also some smaller pools to swim in. Afterwards we were picked up by a boat and taken the rest of the way down the river. However it was now much later in the day and unluckily had started to rain so we were all freezing!!! We were so happy when we finally reached the bus and were able to change out of our wet clothes! Our dorm room at Uprising Resort that night slept 25 people but luckily I was so tired that I managed to sleep through most of the noise made by the group of drunk guys that stumbled in at 3am...
Our first activity the next day was a school visit, so we stopped off at a shop to pick up some stationary to offer as a gift. We put on our sarongs again and got off the bus to be greeted by a group of kids who gave us each a necklace made from different flowers. We had one kid to take round 2 of us, and our guide was called Mere. She was very no-nonsense and took us straight by our hands and led us around the whole school. We then played a bit of volleyball with a group of the kids in the playground before being treated to a show, where the younger kids belted out songs at the top of their voices! My favourite was "If you're happy and you know it..." which I hadn't realised could have so many verses!!!
Our next stop was another village where we went to a Kava ceremony in order to ask permission to use the nearby river for our bamboo rafting. At the village we were shown how to make bamboo bracelets, or at least the girls were while the guys sat around drinking vast amounts of kava! The bamboo rafting was really fun. We had 3 rafts, each carrying 5 of us, and Api had to punt on the last raft. And he was useless! He'd never done it before and ended up falling in so many times that he gave up and just pulled the raft along by the rope! The rest of us played volleyball in the river while we waited for them. Then we played a cat and mouse game, and some more volleyball before getting back onto the rafts and racing each other to the other side of the river. I am pleased to say that our team won!!!
Our resort that evening was at Volivoli where Sascha, and incredibly camp fijian man, put on a series of different games, including crab racing and limbo... However I'd had chicken for dinner which obviously hadn't been prepared properly and gave me stomach cramps so I had a fairly early night and skipped the bonfire that evening. I was up most of the morning vomiting and felt really ill, so Api took me to the doctors to see if they had something to cure food poisoning. Well that was an experience in itself! A very elderly indian man sat me in a chair in a room which looked like a living room with a table in the middle and gave me about 8 different types of pills to take at various intervals of the day. There were no computers, just a hand written log book. Shortly after we got back we had to get on the bus so I decided not to take any of the pills (there was no information about any of them, they just came in a small plastic bag) but instead drank a lot of water and slept as much as I could on the bus journey.
We were meant to have a curry lunch so while the others were eating I sat outside to get some fresh air (there was no way I was going to attempt to eat a curry!) and the next stop was the mud pools and hot springs which again I gave a miss. I was actually lucky that I hadn't been ill on any of the other days, I would have been gutted to have missed out on the other activities. I was feeling much better when we got back to Nadi, but still decided against going to Beachcomber Island the following day, an island notorious for drinking and no sleep. I didn't fancy staying in the 100 bed dorm they have there!
So the next couple of days I spent lying on the beach, finally managing to finish my book. It was actually really nice to do nothing for a couple of days, I've been moving about so much lately that a beach and sunshine was a nice change. And when some of the others came back to the resort in Nadi with horror stories about their stay on Beachcomber I quietly set my face to smug!
Next stop is South America, the last stop on my itinery. I cannot believe I'm already halfway through my trip...
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