Day 2 - Beachcomber

Breakfast this morning contained hash browns and bacon so you can imagine how happy Simon was! After devouring 4 hash browns and lots of bacon we got ready for our Seaspray Sailing day.

There was a slight panic in the morning when I realised that we had forgotten our voucher for the sailing and the guys on the boat said that we may not be able to go without it and couldn't go back for it. They did however let us on so all was well. Phew!

Our sailing boat for the day was called the Jolly Bula and we were greeted with bubbles, fruits and cakes. This was going to be a good day. We also had a free bar all day so we wasted (well mainly Simon) no time in getting started on that. Our first stop on the boat was the Castaway island where they filmed Castaway staring Tom Hanks where you could find HELP ME written in the sand with coconut shells. It is an uninhabited island (except for Wilson) as there is no source of freshwater here. We had an hour on the island to explore and go snorkelling. We saw all kinds of amazing, colourful fish. The water is so clear here!

After around an hour we went back to the boat for a BBQ lunch. There was so much food, including chicken skewers, sausages and fish! Delicious! Our next stop on the boat was an island which contained a village on which around 600 people live. It even has a medical centre and a primary school. After they told us a little bit about island life, we experienced our first kava ceremony. Kava is a special drink that Fijians drink made from the root of a plant. They do some singing and then hand you a bowl of kava which is nothing like the delicious alcohol and looks a lot like muddy water. Before you accept the bowl you have to clap once. You then drink the kava , hand back the bowl and say vinaka which means thank you followed by three claps. It was disgusting! It was nothing like I expected and had an almost spicy flavour, which left your mouth a little numb afterwards. Needless to say we didn't have anymore.

The men on the island work on neighbouring islands, go fishing, or farm the island whilst the women earn money at the shell market where they sell all kinds of tourist tat to us tourists. We bought a fridge magnet for our collection and then went on our way. Before getting back on the boat we walked through the village so we could see the houses and the primary school and observe the island way of life.

Back on the boat we had more cakes and then headed back to the island. On the way the crew played the guitar and sang lots of songs, some of which were quite funny!

Back on Beachcomber we were completely shattered after a day of drinking in the sun and Simon fell asleep before dinner. I think he would of stayed like that until morning if I hadn't woken him. We definitely headed straight back to bed after dinner though! Rock and roll!Read more