Everyone deserves a treat on their birthday but this year I was utterly spoilt. The biggest present by far was spending it on the beautiful Beachcomber Island which ironically is rather small. Within ten minutes of arriving we'd checked into our rooms and walked the entire circumference of the island; a minuscule dot of sand in the middle of the wide ocean.
As the island was so remote myself and Kate (who shares my birthday) weren't expecting much in terms of celebrations. It wasn't as though anyone could just pop to the shop for us and buy a cake and candles. But where there's a will there's a way!
On the morning of our birthday, we were woken up and taken down to the beach for breakfast where the girls had tied coloured balloons to all of the palm trees. The islanders had helped them out by showing them how to wrap our gifts using giant banana leaves and flowers for decoration. They looked so beautiful that we were reluctant to open them but there were even more wonderful things hidden inside.
Whilst we ate our feast of a breakfast (having somehow ordered more plates of pancakes than there were people) a Fijian lady came by to sing to us on her guitar. It was the traditional Happy Birthday song but with a Beachcomber twist.
As the sun was so hot we spent most of the morning submerged in the sea, moving only to add more ice-creams to Stuart's tab. It cooled a little after lunch and so we played a round of crazy golf on the small course in the centre of the island. None of us are exactly pros but it was made even more difficult by the suspiciously uneven greens and the club which fell apart each time we hit the ball too hard. It didn't add much to our score sheets but definitely added to the humour.
Later we tried our hands at volleyball but soon found we were equally as bad at that and had no crappy equipment to blame. Fortunately the islanders took pity on us and came to our rescue, teaching us their tactics and playing alongside. The game finished just as the sun had started to set so we grabbed a cocktail each and watched the sky transform. It amazes me that we've seen so many and yet it still melts my heart every time.
In high season Beachcomber is Fiji's party island but with less than fifteen other guests there it was a rather intimate affair. It felt instead like our own private island and that's exactly how we treated it. After a few drinks and some Fijian birthday cupcakes we were running up and down the beach playing old school playground games until the early hours of the morning. We got so into it in fact that Will started tripping out from fatigue and had to lie down.
Exhausted but not quite ready to sleep, we ended the night with a group star gazing session. Not only were there millions of sparkling lights scattered across the sky but if we looked closely enough we could make out the Milky Way. It was really quite spectacular and not for the first time that night I acknowledged just how lucky I was.
As our cake had come without candles I'd yet to make a birthday wish so as shooting stars fell from the sky I considered wishing on those instead. But really, what could I possibly have wished for? In that moment life was just perfect and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday or better friends on both sides of the world.
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