FIJI TTIME!!

I seriously I am the luckiest girl EVER! So my parents decided once again to take us on yet another incredible most awesome trip to a quite remote location to Kadavu FIJI! We were able to go over Kyle and Carli's spring break so it worked for them not missing too much school. I can't even explain how much I was looking forward to go and then once we connected with everyone to head out on our rendevous....it was all PERFECT. I love my family so much - it just doesn't seem like we get to be together often enough. So everyone made their way to LA (actually I guess just Kyle and I did since everyone else was already in LA) then met up at LAX International and we got ready for the "red-eye" out of LA straight to Nadi, FIJI. Yes it is quite an excrutiating 11 some odd hours. Everyone wanted to sleep and I was so excited I couldn't sleep so I kept Hailey up and chatted up with her. It's moments like that where I just am so grateful for my sisters. I am lucky to have such great friendships with them and so glad that we can connect so well and be the best of friends. Hailey and Carli are the best sisters EVER! xoxo.... So sometime in the air we are probably into the next day by now and then cross the international date line so lost another day.....ugh! Anyways, we get to Nadi and have to head over to catch our next domestic flight to Kadavu. I must say that was the most smooth transition we have ever had at the Nadi airport. I mean "Sanga Na Langa" can only work so much for me in the airport. Yes I do understand "FIJI TIME" all too well. However, the flight was great...45 minutes, not bad. Some guys that work with the resort we are staying at, picked us up to go and hop on the boat (maybe I should say a "dingy") that would get us to the resort.

Yes, we arrived. Matava Resort is where we resided the whole week. It was beautiful. Eco-friendly. No computers. No TV. No phone. No real world. Just utter beauty surrounding you and adventure to await. Amazing. It was perfect - ok perfect until we had to climb the hundred some odd stairs to get to our bure. Ok once I saw the view I won't complain about the stairs. There was just our family and 3 fishermen from Austrailia that were there staying at the resort. Can't say it can hold much more than that Ha! It was great. Mom, Dad, and Carli had the highest climb to their place. Kyle and I were next below, and then Steve and Hailey were just below us in their bure. We got all settled in and enojyed a little relaxation......

My dad had to go out there to make phone calls back to the farm...haha it was so funny.

READY TO DIVE! So I must say that this is the main reason we come to places like this. The diving is supposed to be INCREDIBLE. Coming here we get a lot of bonuses that come along with that. :) So this year is even different from the year before diving because the lil car car decided to get "certified" and become a diver like all the rest of us....ok except mom still...that is going to take a lot more work for sure. Maybe never - but I hope that is not the case. So we dove dove and dove and it was amazing! We saw lots of beautiful fish, TURTLES, and sharks - they were really great dives!!

Since the resort is an "eco-friendly" resort, they unfortunately didn't have some of the things other resorts may normally have, which "our bad" for not really paying attention to that minor detail when packing. So the staff mentioned to us that we could go to their "mall" to pick up whatever we needed. First, we are thinking...where in the world is there mall on this "un-developed island"? and second how long will it take us to get there? So Ok well if you have a mall, we're thinking we won't have a problem finding whatever we need. To our benefit their so-called "mall" was a 3 minute boat ride....not to worry. Mom, Hailey, Carli and I decided to go and see what we would be able to find. Once we arrived, let's just say it was not a mall. :) We did find the shampoo we were looking for though. All is well.

One afternoon hanging out after diving, we were sitting for lunch and a boat showed up. A lady, Nancy, and her son Ben (ironic that they were from Utah) were going around Kadavu letting the resorts know about their non-profit organization they created to help villages on Kadavu use their own water resources to have fresh drinking water. It was really neat speaking with them and hearing about all of the wonderful things they have done to help the villagers on Kadava. Their non-profit is called Wananavu Kadavu.So Fiji has some amazing things to offer tourists other than diving and sitting in the sun. We got to go and visit waterfalls agian. We have been able to do this in the past before and we loved it! We all were so excited to go. It was great because we first had to go through the village to get to the falls. It was a lot of fun to meet some of the other people that live in the village. A lot of the staff were from there.

We had got back from the waterfalls, and the fishermen returned with a huge trophy fish. It was a couple kilo's away from beating the Fiji record for a "yellow-fin Tuna." It was so cool...oh and really really really big. We show up for dinner later that night and apparently they wanted to eat it so bad, we all had super fresh sushimi for an appetizer....oh my, I had never had such fresh fish ever in my life. I mean a couple hours prior to dinner they had just barely caught this ginormous fish! It was awesome and my whole family loves sushi :)

Back to diving...Our dive crew was so much fun. Simon was the "boat captain" and referred himself as the "boss." Tey was our divemaster. They were lots of fun and were such happy people. Since we were diving, we all got spend lots of time together on the boat. so there is a dive site that is near by called "Manta -Reef." I'm sure you can already guess what we were going to be able to see there. Yes. MANTA RAYS!! :) So far our dive master has said ok today on this dive you are going to see this this and this and he has been right on everything so far.....so when today when Tey said ok "you are going to see Manta Rays cleaning today....we were all so excited and could hardly wait!! So the pool is open and we all go diving. We get down into the dive about 2 minutes I think and that is when we saw our first Manta Ray. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It was so graceful as it moved through the water. It was huge! It was 15-20ft. in diameter. AMAZING! Anyways the 2 dives we were there diving with the Manta's and it was absolutely an incredible experience. Kyle had gotten his foot cut up a little today, so Maggie had to dr. him up a bit and get it all cleaned up. poor guy.

There is always a Fijian Lovo Night, where they cook a very traditional Fijian meal and cook it in the ground and basically cook it by steam. It is really cool the process that they do it. This night also includes a little dancing too :)