Day 7

I said goodbye to the kittens and everyone from
White Sandy Beach. We've had a great 2 days there, and seeing those tiny kittens made it for me. They look a similar colour to my cats back home. The catamaran picked us up from there, and we had about half an hour boat journey until we reached our next resort, Long Beach.

Matacawalevu Island- Long Beach

It's so called because it has a long stretch of beach. This time when we arrived there were a few people singing and playing the guitar as usual. It was nice to be greeted there, but we won't take that for granted. Everyone at the resort were having lunch. We thought we'd missed it but after we checked in, they gave us lunch too. We checked the board for activities, and there was a cave trip and a blue lagoon one, but they weren't for today, so we'll do them the next few days while we're here.

As there were no activities on today, we decided to just go for a swim in the crystal clear water. It was low tide, so we had to walk out quite far to swim. We swam up towards the other side of the beach. It was also too shallow for snorkelling too, so it's another lazy day ahead of us. If you can't relax in Fiji, then where can you. It was too hot to do anything other than go for a dip in the sea.

Later in the evening, we heard the drum roll, which signifies dinner is ready. Our entertainment was the Fijian man singing in Fijian and playing the guitar to us, which was nice throughout dinner. We got chatting to some English girls after dinner sat with them. We got invited to a cava ceremony with our hosts, which we excepted. So the guys got some powdered cava and started mixing it with water, until it was a muddy brown colour. John was first to start, and there were around 10 of us who all took it in turns to receive the bowl with cava in it. Before you receive the cava, you have to clap and say Bula once. After you've drank it, you clap 3 times. This must have carried on until around midnight. During our cava ceremony, the Fijian men were playing the guitar and singing all kinds of songs, including some Fijian ones. They then translated the songs meaning to us, which was nice. If you drink too much cava, they were telling us that you go numb and can't feel parts of your body, but it's a thing to have which can make you sleep well. After we'd all had as many caves as we could handle, we all left for a good nights sleep in the dark, as the power had already gone out.

Day 8

We had such a good nights sleep, that we didn't want to get up at 7am for breakfast. However, we had to as we're visiting the caves after breakfast. We had pancakes and fruit for breakfast, which I really enjoyed. Afterwards, a water taxi came to pick us up along with a few other people from different resorts. The boat ride to the caves must have taken over an hour to reach them. It was a nice ride, but it was quite bumpy and the boat kept splashing up.

When we arrived, we had to just go inside in our swimwear as the cave is in the water. Well in fact there are 2 caves, one just in the water, and a further hidden one that can only be reached by going under water. I've never really swam under water before, so i'm a bit scared to visit the second cave. I will give them a go and see how I feel when we're in the caves. We walked through to the caves and went down some steps, then we had to swim to reach the cave. It was a bit dark in there, but not too bad. We could hold onto some pipes to help make us float. The cave was nice, it had a really high ceiling and there was some natural light coming in from above. We could only swim into the cave at low tide, which it was now.

When we'd looked around the first cave, we had to enter the secluded underwater one. I was so nervous, but everyone made me feel at ease, so I did try and tackle going into the second cave. A guy gives you a snorkel and pushes you into the underwater cave, while another guy the other side pulls you back through to the other side. I watched people going through the hole and it looked so claustrophobic. I didn't think I could do it. I practiced hiking underwater first before we entered the cave and I could do it. So I just let the guide pull me through to the other side. I took a deep breath and held what oxygen I had left inside, I closed my eyes, and before I knew it, I was in this underwater cavern. It was pitch black in there, so the guide shone a torch through the cave. This one was an even tighter space than the other one and it was spooky swimming there in the dark. We swam to the end of the cave and our guide told us to shout bula, which we did, and it echoed around the cave. We didn't spend too long in there, so after I had gone underwater going in, I had to do again and go back out. I did it, and was glad to be out of the other side. We left the other side of the cave, and I was glad to not be in the darkness again. John was proud of my achievement and so was I to be honest.

After that we left to go back to Long Beach to have a lazy afternoon. We said goodbye to one of the girls, and lazed around on the sun loungers, occasionally going for a dip in the sea to cool down. The rain clouds came over a bit later on, and it started pouring hard. We went inside, and the rain carried on for most of the afternoon and had a power nap. We all went for dinner and by now, the rain had stopped. After dinner, we all played card games. We learned a new game that the Germans taught us, so played that for most of the night and a game called bulls**t, which is good. Luckily we finished just in time before the power went out before bed.