Imagine a tiny white sand island in the middle of the ocean; a picture perfect paradise with palm trees, and beach huts, and cocktails on tap. Now imagine that there's three hundred and twenty two of these islands, all within just a few miles of one another but thousands of miles from the rest of the world. That is Fiji.
The first island we hopped to was Mana Island, one of the largest of the Manamucas. In typical Fijian style we were welcomed off the ferry by florally dressed islanders singing us a song. The rickety old jetty led to the beach and a few steps later we were at our hostel. And that was it. Around the other side there were a couple of fancy resorts but we were well and truly in island backpacker quarters. There were no restaurants, no shops, no bars, no internet and no ATMs. It was quite literally beach, hostel and nothing else.
Luckily, with a beach like this one (and Will as our walking Wikipedia to replace Google) we really didn't need much else. We spent most of our days sunbathing on the sand and then cooling off in the sea, constantly flitting between the two paradise settings.
One afternoon we hired a boat from a local fisherman and found a great snorkelling spot near to Castaway Island. Being the water wimp that I am, I fully intended to stay on the boat but peer pressure had other ideas. Before I knew it I was bobbing up and down in the sea with eight of my friends and a whole load of fish. There were even reef sharks lurking about but thankfully I didn't see any. What I did see, however, were the most amazing coral reefs, fluorescent in colour and crazy in shape. It really is a whole other world down there, one that I'm now grateful I was forced to admire.
On the way back to Mana we let out fishing lines to try and catch some mackerel for dinner. We had three lines between us but not an awful lot of luck. Aside from Stuart who caught one right away, the rest of us barely even got a bite. It wasn't until an hour or so later when we realised the bait had fallen off all the rods that we understood why. Fish don't find empty fishing lines all that tempting.
As serene and peaceful as it was in the day, Mana Island turned pretty lively at night. Inevitable really, with the nine of us and Jack's leftover Wild Turkey. We played drinking games along the beach each night before stumbling back to our dorm room. One morning a few of the girls and I woke early for sunrise yoga but generally we slept in until the sun became too sweltering or the songs of the local primary school children filtered their way through the windows.
On an Island like Mana you could spend three days doing absolutely nothing because it hasn't been set up for tourism in any way. It's entirely up to you to make your own fun but I think we'd agree we did a bloody good job.
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