Early rise for sunrise

So this morning, as we're staying in the bures on the sunrise side of the island, we decided to get up early to watch it. The sun rises at 6am here. As we haven't seen many subsets, we thought we'd try our luck with a sunset. We went onto the beach and there were a few people there already waiting. We just sat on the beach and there were a few people watching it in the tubes, which was a good idea. We waited for around 15 minutes and the sun came out from the clouds. The sky was a light pastel pink colour. It's nice to see a sunrise, as we don't often get up for them. We sat and watched it, took a few pictures, and went back to bed until breakfast.

Snorkel Safari

After breakfast, we booked to go on a snorkel safari. This is where the guide takes you to the reef and explains a bit about the coral and types of fish that we'll see today. So it's a slightly different snorkelling to what we've done before. We went out on the boat to a reef quite close to the island. There were us, and another couple who went on this trip. Once we were in the water, we saw loads of different types of coral, different to what we'd seen already and in abundance. The guide pointed out soft and hard corals, and identified different types of coral and fish in the water. He picked up a sea cucumber which we all touched. It felt rubbery and slippery, it was weird. He pointed out some fish which change from blue to green when they feel threatened, and back to blur again when they feel safe. It was an interesting snorkel because it was different to what we'd already done. When we finished the session, we carried on snorkelling around the bay ourselves as they let us keep the snorkelling equipment.

Coconut cracking

When we finished lunch, we went for a walk around to the beach. The Fijian guy gave us a coconut demonstration. He shows us how they chop a coconut with a machete to get the juice out. We got to sample the green coconut juice, it had a strange fizz to the coconut taste, which was quite good. Then we got to watch him hack a brown coconut open like we tried to, which he also made look easy. After the brown hair was off, he told us he was going to chop the coconut with his bare hands. He put the coconut on a rock and balanced it on a leaf that he had put in a circle shape. We had to count to 3 really loudly, then while we were saying 3, he did a karate chop with his hands and broke the coconut, which was pretty impressive.

Later in the afternoon, we went for another walk around. I saw a tiny coconut, compared to the huge ones we saw earlier in the coconut demo. We did a bit more tubing to cool down too. We were suppose to do a subset cruise, which would have been good for valentines day, but there weren't enough people to do it. I was a bit disappointed as that would hand been good tonight as it hadn't rained yet today. We can swap it for another activity anyhow.

We thought we'd be having dinner on the sunset deck tonight as it wasn't raining like it did last night. Because it rained for the past few nights, they didn't set it up down there, so we'll be having dinner inside tonight. As it's valentines, we got some cocktails and watched the sunset ourselves. Surprisingly, not many people watched it, so we enjoyed it ourselves. Then it was time for dinner, so we made our way back inside.

Fijian costume show

So we had dinner with another couple we'd met here. We both had a few cocktails to celebrate valentines. After dinner, the hosts put a Fijian costume show on. They all came out dressed in their traditional clothing, starting off with their chief outfit, then clothes that the warriors would have worn to protect the chief. They also showed us traditional men and women wearing sulus and a woman's costume. After this, they invited us all to have pictures with them. We got a picture with the chief and warriors. The warrior had a sharp axe like weapon that they would have used to kill people back when they were cannibals. One of them wrapped that around my neck, it was sharp and hurt as he was putting it right around my throat. It was another different experience we've had in Fiji and an interesting one at that.