The Big Trip. Stephen, Laura, James and Sinead head for an epic adventure: 17 weeks in South America 8 weeks in New Zealand 2 weeks in Fiji 11 weeks in Australia 14 weeks in South East Asia.

There are a few things it doesn’t take long to notice about Fiji… not only is it beautiful, hot and sunny but  its got a lot  of very gay men (and I mean very gay), its completely normal for men to wear skirts and the people are without a doubt the friendliest we have ever ever met.

We can all agree that Fiji without a doubt was one of our favourite places so far and we had the best two weeks there! Our first week in Fiji was spent doing the Feejee Experience. The feejee Experience is a hop on hop off tour where you have days full of activities and in between you can hop off at different resorts stay a few days and then get the next bus when you feel like it. It was brilliant and the resorts we stayed in were amazing.

On our first morning  visiting Nandi markets to buy Sulus which are like long sarongs or skirts Fijian people wear and we had to buy these because there are times when you have to wear them, even the guys had to buy them… Stephen and James just loved wearing them along with there sea shell necklaces we got when we arrived in the airport. After stocking up we headed for the beach for some sun and a BBQ which was followed by a visit to a traditional Fijian village and then sand boarding on the sand dunes. We hopped off the bus and stayed three nights in Mango bay resort. It was here on our first night that we were introduced to  Kava. Kava is the traditional drink of Fiji, its made from the root of a pepper plant which is dried ground up and mixed with water… and its disgusting! It looks and tastes like muddy water and it turns your mouth numb. Kava is very important to people in Fiji and the drinking of Kava involves a ceremony where certain traditions have to be followed, Its mixed in a special bowl and served in a coconut shell and basically there’s clapping and chanting and drinking and so on. There’s no alcohol in Kava but people here drink it all the time and they say it can have some pretty strange effects if you drink a lot. It impolite to refuse Kava so we ended up having to drink quite a lot of the stuff in our two weeks in Fiji.

There’s one person who made our stay in Mango Bay so memorable.. His name was Ore. Ore was a complete nutter who went round singing the “wheels on the bus go round and round” most of the time, he brought us to a big Kava and beer piss up with the people from his village and he got pissed and he possibly seriously injured himself by insisting on carrying all of our backpacks which together weigh about 70kg to the bus on our last morning. The second days activity was a hike to a waterfall and after this we arrived in Uprising Beach resort. We stayed here three more nights. We chilled by the pool, treated ourselves to full body massages, tried horse boarding.

Our last night in Uprising was pretty interesting. After dinner we were drinking with some of the other people on the tour when we noticed a crowd at the beach, a bomb fire and some girls dressed in very skimpy outfits. It turns out that some reggae star who is apparently huge in the south pacific was making his new music video on the beach. Me and another girl got talked into joining a crowd of extras on the beach. Basaclly a load of us just stood arround and tried to look like we were having a great time dancing arround the bomb fire. It was an interesting experience. An so I now star somewhere in the background of a music video for a guy iv never heard of… how random. Make sure you look out for me on MTV…! The rest of that night was spent drinking until very early the next morning in out tour guides room while Willy our bus driver tried to sleep even though we kept jumping on his bed . When we got back to our dorm with only about two hours to go until we had to get up Stephen was not to happy to find some girl in his bed… he eventually found another bed.  James spent the night snoring his head off, as he does when he’s been drinking but one girl in the dorm really didn’t like this and Sinead woke up at some stage in the night to find her standing over James with a shoe in her hand ready to wack him… luckily for James he rolled over and stopped snoring just at that moment. With a hung over guide and a driver who got feck all sleep we set off at 7am the next morning.

The highlight of today was visiting the school. The kids were so cute, friendly and so excited to see us they were running wild in the school. After a traditional Kava ceremony with the Chief of a village we got to our last overnight stop. Here the group drank, played some very funny party games involving dancing like fools and sexual positions, had more delicious Kava and then we stocked up on drink and had a bomb fire on the beach.

After a bit of a lie in the next day it was time for the mood pools and hot spring. We all stripped off and jumped into a natural pool full of hot mud. It went right up to our knees, was disgusting and slimy but we all covered ourselves in it and one or two of the guys made sure that all the girls had their hair covered in it too. To wash off we had to take a dip in the hot spring which was hot hot hot.

After one last night out with the gang and a very late night we slept on it the next morning at 7am and realised that the buss that we were supposed to get to the port for our transfer to the Islands was out side the hostel and it was broken down. We were so lucky, there was no way we would have made it unless we were lucky enough to have it break down out side our hostel. We made our boat on time and headed for Beachcomber Island where we were spending our last five days, we all had to go to bed as soon as we got there.

Beachcomber is a tiny Island of one resort, you can walk the whole way around the Island in less than 5 mins. The snorkelling was amazing so we did that quite a few times and seen some amazing tropical fish right off the beach. We also seen  Reef Sharks and Manta Rays, both harmless. We decided to give diving a go but the day before the dive Sinead got a cold and wasn’t allowed to go so it was me, Stephen and James. It was one of the best things we have done so far. We dived 10 meters deep for 40 mins. The dive instructor brought bread down for the fish and when he took it out of his pocket we were surrounded by hundreds of the most beautiful colourful fish. Scuba Diving is something will be doing again. After five days on the Island it was back to the main land for our flight to Australia.

We are currently in Oz. The four of us have decided that even thought we have had a great time over the last six months and have gotten on really well that its time for a change. We have decided to rent two cars and split up for about seven weeks before meeting up to spend Christmas and New Years in Sydney.