Today's our last day at Barefoot Island, it's been one of my favourite islands so far as it's got so much to offer, it's well organised and it has 3 beaches, so you can watch the sunrise and subset here, unlike some of the other resorts we've been to. I think this and Beachcomber are my favourites, and if I ever come back here, I would definitely like to spend more time at these Islands. If only it was manta-ray season now, that would give Barefoot the edge, but as it's not, we haven't seen any rays.

Johns fishing trip

This morning John got up at 6am to go fishing with a group of 4 other guys. Meanwhile, I had a lay in until breakfast. I was going to watch the sunrise again, but it was cloudy, so just went back to bed after he left. I went to breakfast, while we were there, the guys came back from fishing. We asked how they all did, John caught 3 large fish including Barracuda, Spanish Mackerel, and Rainbow Runner. The fish must have easily been over a metre long and some. One of the other guys caught one fish, but John caught the most fish. Another John, an experienced fisherman from New Zealand, didn't catch a thing, so he wasn't too happy. John said he had beginners luck. We'll get to eat some of the fish for lunch as we check out today, everybody else will get to eat the rest of the fish for dinner tonight.

Abseiling.....

As we couldn't do the subset cruise yesterday, we asked to swap it for abseiling. We didn't want to do it yesterday as it was valentines day, so we signed up for it today, for my sins. After breakfast, we went to the dive shop to get kitted out. I haven't had chance to think that i'm actually going to be abseiling down a sheer cliff face of about 24 metres, so haven't been nervous yet. We walked up the path to reach the top, and where we'll be abseiling from. Our guide put on our harnesses and ropes and had to tie the rope around a large rock. It was just both of us and the guide. The New Zealand older couple were also doing the hike to the to of the island, so they stayed to watch us do the abseiling.

Once we were all kitted out and ready, we stood in a line of 3, with our guide in the middle. He said we'd all be going down together and showed us how the equipment worked. We had to sit on our harness and let our waist take the weight, while slowly levering the rope through the caribina with our left hand. While our right hand we had to hold behind us with the rest of the rope. He said let's go, so John and the guide went first, then I had to walk backwards not bending my knees. Just as I was going backwards, I lost my balance and fell over sideways, landing on my elbow, which hurt. I think that knocked my confidence a bit. I still got up and went back, but now I was shaking and my knees were wobbling all over the place. By now, John and the guide had already gone over the edge, so they were there waiting for me.

I slowly stepped back, feet wide apart, knees wobbling, I had to overcome the most difficult part, which was making myself go over the ledge of the cliff. The guide and John were encouraging me. I think John thinks I'm not capable of doing it, so I'll prove him wrong. I took the hardest steps I'll probably take in my life, and I was literally dangling over the edge of a cliff. At this moment in time, I was so frightened. However, once I was over the edge, it got easier. I just let the rope run through my fingers, not letting go of the grip, or I would fall. John was loving it and flew down. The guide was telling me to take my time. I kept bouncing my legs off the cliffs gently lowering myself. My hand was hurting as I was holding the rope so tight. By now adrenalin was pumping and I was sweating buckets. It felt like I was going down for ages, and I was still shaking. Once John and the guide were down at the bottom, they were encouraging me. I was nearly down and I ended up spinning around facing out from the cliff. Luckily, I regained control and made it down to the bottom safely. It was an exhilarating experience, and once i'd got over the initial shock of it all, I did enjoy it. I expect the more times you do it, the more confident you become. After we finished, we had to climb up some rocks to get back up to the top. The guide asked if we wanted to go again, I gave it a miss, but John went for it full swing. He even went down before the guide. I watched him drop off the edge of the cliff and they went down pretty quickly and came up again. I'm glad we did the abseil, it's something I probably wouldn't have done otherwise if we weren't doing it here in Fiji.

After our experience, I was still high on adrenalin. We walked back to the resort for lunch and bumped into the New Zealand couple who watched us doing the abseil. They kindly took pictures of us, which they let us have so we have proof that I actually did it! They also had pictures of the fish John caught, so we got those too. It's annoying not having our compact camera working at the moment. We sat there chatting to them until lunch was ready. The kitchen staff came out with a fish on a plate that John caught, the Barracuda. It was a huge plate and the biggest whole fish I've ever seen served on a plate. This was to be shared amongst just 4 of us, John and myself, and the older New Zealand couple too. It looked far too much fish for everyone. We served it on a plate and tucked in. I didn't know if I would like it as it's more fishy. I tried it and it wasn't too bad actually, well not too fishy for me anyway. We couldn't all finish it, so offered it around to different people, so at least it wouldn't go to waste. We sat chatting with them until it was time to board the ferry south back to Beachcomber resort.

Beachcomber

As we left Barefoot, they all sang us a farewell song and hugged us goodbye. There were a big group of us leaving and also lots of new arrivals. This is a resort that volunteers come to, sponsored by STA Travel, if you ask me, the prices are extortionate for what it actually is. Our voluntary work at the animal sanctuary was a quarter of the price for 3 weeks! We boarded the ferry on the rain and it took 2 hours to arrive at Beachcomber. They carried me off the boat so not to get my boots all wet, how sweet. We were welcomed back with a cocktail and shown to our room. We had a different room around the back this time. The injured bird with a broken leg was still here, hopping around on one leg, poor thing. If I could fix it's leg I would. The rain did not stop all afternoon, so there would be no subset to watch tonight unfortunately. We just waited until dinner time to go downstairs in the pouring rain. A really good selection was served as usual, with jelly and ice-cream for desert. Every pudding we've had here has been great!

Polynesian floor show and limbo

After dinner, the staff announced they'd be doing a Polynesian floor show. We waited a while to see what it was, and they announced that people would be dancing traditional dances from different countries in Polynesia. It sounded fun, so we stayed to watch it, there were dances from Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and some other places we'd not even heard of. Then some men came out fire dancing, which was cool. They were swallowing fire, and throwing a stick of fire around, dancing really fast with it. One guy was excellent and really fast, the others were average. It was something different and cultural, so we enjoyed watching. They invited everyone to take part with them afterwards too, so we all got up on our feet, dancing in the sand. After the dancing, they did another limbo competition. This time, I decided to join in as I didn't do it before, and wanted to see how low I could go. John done much better than he did before and stayed in for quite a few rounds. When the bar got quite low, he knocked it off. Then it was my turn, and I did the same thing. Most people went out this round, apart from 2 other girls who got through it. They both drew as winners. We stayed dancing and drinking for a few hours, it was still raining outside so was much cooler.