Fiji

Bula! (word for cheers or hello!) This is how Fiji people welcome you at every place. People here transmit a special feeling of joy and happiness we haven't seen anywhere else on our trip.

Fiji consits of more than 300 islands varying in size and has a population of aprox. 865.000 people. It is situated next to the international dateline, which actually was shifted eastwards so all of Fiji's islands could fall in the same timezone (GMT+12). Viti Levu is the main island and by far the biggest in size with Suva beeing the countries capital. The other three bigger islands are Vanua Levu, Taveuni and Kadavu.

On our 10 days in Fiji we visited (by hopping from one island to the other) several destinations situated on the "mainland" (Viti Levu) and on two groups of islands (the Mamanucas and the Yasawas): On the Mamanucas we went to Mana Island and Bounty Island and on the Yasawas we visited Nacula Island and Waya. Although this seems a lot for 10 days, hopping from one island to the other is extremely easy and comfortable... Put your swimsuit and your toothbrush in your backpack and you are ready to go!

Time passes a little bit different here than in other places and quickly you get used to what locals call "Fiji time" which is a rough aproximation of a certain momento of the day. Still, days pass by as you had a busy agenda where a "busy" day is anything that involves more than half an hour of beachvolleyball and two times snorkeling.

Obviously the water and the surrounding corals are one of Fiji's main assets: hundreds of species of hard and soft corals and an astonishing marine fauna take your breath on almost every dive or snorkeling trip. We had the chance to see turtles, an octopus, moreens and sharks almost everywhere. One highlight for us was definitely the sharkdive we did on our last day on Nacula. During this dive, sharkfood was put in the water to attract some of the most incredible creatures. Not only reefsharks (whitetip, blacktip and grey reef sharks) and lemonsharks, but also some absolut impressive and massive bullsharks were swimming a couple of meters in front of us!

We stayed just 10 days in Fiji but could have been hopping from one island to the other for weeks. Fiji is a wonderful place with beautiful people and an awesome nature!

Here some pictures from the sharkdive. The bullsharks were massive!