15th October 2012
So it was time to leave Mantaray Island! After a wonderful 4 days on this awesome island, it was time to move to another island. I really wished I could have stayed longer but as I said in my previous post that I wouldn’t be doing Fiji justice if I didn’t travel to another island.
So after a long morning, Michelle (who was also leaving Mantaray Island) and I boarded one of the small boats and headed off into deeper waters to await the arrival of the Yasawas Flyer. We left to a sad farewell song played by the staff and I found myself welling up inside. I really loved Mantaray!
Boarding the Yasawas Flyer, it was another 2 hours north to reach my next destination…wait for it…Blue Lagoon Island! It was at far north the boat could go and it was meant to be a lot more beautiful place. It was meant to be more remote, more ‘untouched’. This I couldn’t wait. As I caught up with Scottish Michelle more (I didn’t really talk to her as much as I would have liked back at Mantaray), we had a huge laugh about everything.
Arriving at Blue Lagoon, I was pretty astounded to see how blue the water is. I shouldn’t have been surprised given the name but it was a deeper shade of Blue (cue dancing to Steps). Getting another little boat, we arrived at the resort and was shown to our dorm room and gasped as I saw a clean towels folded into shapes and garland petals strewn across the bed. This was luxury for me after 7 months of travel!
We promptly went for lunch and sat down to an al la Carte menu and I kept ordering seafood. I just love the stuff and even if they could serve Octopus Legs or Fish Brains, I would have had some. Why? Because the food was completely fresh! Only caught just hours ago. Michelle and I had a laugh about the waitress there. She couldn’t have wanted to work there and kept sighing with a frown everytime we took our time with the order or walked away before thrusting the menu at us.
The rest of the day, Michelle spent her time tanning (she’s from Scotland remember?!) while I spent time reading my book (Stars Wars woo!) in the swinging hammock. This was bliss. I also managed to do a bit of snorkelling. But unfortunately, the reef wasn’t as good at all compared with Mantaray’s. But with further investigation, I could see that the reef has been damaged a lot. Speaking to the staff at the dive shop, I heard a massive storm completely stripped the top layer of the reef hence why I didn’t see any huge variety of fish or corals.
Michelle and I also could be found in hysterics when we observed a Chinese man come to the beach…a heavily sunburnt one. On the Yasawas Flyer, he fell asleep with his vest, long shorts and sunglasses on. For the beach, he opted to wear some speedos thus revealing sunburnt lower legs, white thighs, white torso, sunburnt shoulders and arms, sunburnt neck and a sunburnt face with the only thing that was white was where his sunglasses has rested. It was truly a comical sight!
Even as I sunbathed on the beach of Blue Lagoon, I was still missing Mantaray. I knew why. I missed the community that was so close knitted there. Here, it was full of honeymooning couples who liked to cavort in the sand and hold hands. After a while, we knew that this beach was for a more ‘older’ crowd and despite having some really mint conversations with some of them, both of us yearned for Mantaray.
As both Michelle and I were new arrivals, we were invited to come to the traditional Kava ceremony. A drink that looks like tea being brewed in a large wooden bowl, it was called Kava. We had to do a series of claps and shout out certain words like ‘Muther’. We had to drain the large wooden bowl and there were 10 of us to do so. It took a long time but it was nice to see some culture for a change. Afterwards, they began to play some music on their ukuleles (I want one!) and some Tahiti girls who were with us began to do a South Pacific dance much to the delight of those leading the Kava Ceremony. They danced pretty good. Only to detract from a muddy taste in your mouth from the Kava.
After another 3 course meal later, we were invited to take part in a beach activity…crab racing. Seeing as we did this the night before for FREE, both Michelle and I didn’t partake in it but it was funny to see drunken old people get upset about their crab…
Meanwhile, afterwards after hanging around, it was bed time. Only in our luxury beds yay!
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