Alan and Amanda's Adventures in Oz: Bula!

We recently celebrated our anniversary, and we were fortunate enough to celebrate it in the beautiful country of Fiji! Be prepared, there are heaps of pictures in this post!

I have always wanted to go to Fiji, and seeing as it's only a 4 hour flight from Brisbane, I think we'll keep it in mind for future vacations. Fiji is beautiful and the Fijian people are so friendly and warm. We had an amazing time. We were able to snorkel every day, we drank some cava and numbed our tongues, won a hermit crab race, had our first and second ever massages, and on our last night in Fiji, the resort had a live reggae and cover band which meant... BOYLE DANCING!!! (Only my Alberta cousins will appreciate this.)

We flew into Nadi (pronounced Nandi) and then took a 30 minute flight in a little plane and a 30 minute speed boat ride to get out to our resort. Once we got to the resort, we were welcomed by the staff singing a welcome song, and were given shell necklaces, a lovely drink of fresh tropical juices, a flower for my hair and a nice cool towel.

It was a tiny little plane!

The airport consisted of a runway

And a little thatched hut.

This was not the boat we took, but it made me laugh.

Land ho!

Our own private island.

Matching sulus, and a nice welcome message on our bed.

Our own private plunge pool and the view from our villa. We could see fish in the water from here, the water was so clear!

On our actual anniversary, we booked an excursion to the sand spit. The Sand Spit is a sand island at the edge of Beqa lagoon that appears at low tide. The resort prepared a picnic breakfast for us, and set up an umbrella and chairs on the island for us, and then dropped us off and said "See you in two hours!". It was beautiful. Words can't really describe it, and even the photos don't do it justice. We snorkelled, ate, drank champagne, snorkelled some more, swam, took silly pictures, snorkelled again. It was such a special way to spend our anniversary. Then it was back to the island, and time for our first couples massage. And then a private dinner for two on the beach. Methinks we are going to have trouble topping this anniversary celebration. And this was only our fourth... Ruh-roh.

Marooned

Alan making sure the boat doesn't float away

Life is rough, isn't it?

This still doesn't do it justice.

Time for some sparkling wine!

Can you see the cork?

It was absolutely beautiful.

Time for silly pictures!

Oh, and a nice one too.

Doesn't this look like it's from some travel magazine? It's not!

Time to go back to the island.

The water was so clear, and quite shallow so it was easy to see the fish and corals.

I've only fairly recently gotten into snorkeling. My first snorkel experience scared me off a little, as it consisted of waves, sharp coral underfoot, and me feeling as though I was drowning... Not a great start. Alan can attest to that. However, it's amazing what a difference a good fitting mask can make!

The island on which the resort was located was surrounded by a reef so we were able to snorkel around the entire island, which only took about an hour. There are so many different fish, and you can even feed the fish with bread from the kitchen. We even took bread into the water with us and got in the middle of a feeding frenzy! Our favourite fish on the reef were the clown fish. We found Nemo! There were also a few reef sharks around, and they were really cool. The ones around were quite small, and not scary at all. By the end of the week we wanted to take one home with us. They were really cute!