9th to the 10th August - Deserted...

Ok, out of 5 places to stay, Sarah did so well organising it was unbelievable, top marks all round. Except for Manuka island!

We heard from an Irish couple that it was BAD and that we should rebook somewhere else, we should have!

I got a little worried when the boat wouldn't stop there on it's journey north and we had to turn around and come south for a second go at it. We got on with two other English girls, Clare and Zayba. Again we got worried when we travelled for 20 minutes on a crappy boat and nothing to be seen. More worry as we got to a hut with no other people around. It was just us and numerous Fijian villagers. One hut, no electricity, no running water, toilets were flushed by a bucket of water, and showers were the same bucket of water.

To make things worse, it rained hard for a day, a whole day.

Anyway it was time to move on and we had read nearly everything and played a lot of cards, I have even learned 4 card tricks now. So we had to get in the small boat again. We were late as the idiots had no idea when the taxi boat was coming, but we got to the meeting point. The taxi went right past us in the distance, the fools hadn't told them we were coming. Suddenly their English got bad and we HAD to go back and stay with them for more nights. NO WAY!

In the end we were conned into going to the village to buy more petrol for the boat at some extortionate price to get them to take us to the next resort. The villagers lived better than we did at the resort. After lots of bartering and messing around we set off for an hours small boat ride to another resort, where we waited a further hour in the boat for the taxi. They cocked up BIG time. The taxi could only go south now and we lost our money and accomodation at our next resort, we had to pay even more to get in somewhere else before getting back to the mainland. I lost my sense of humour that day! Enough said. They tried to trap us and con us and it could have got nasty. DO NOT STAY AT MANUKA ISLAND RESORT EVER!

We ended up at an ok place called Sunset Waya and at least there was a rickety cold shower there to clean up and have a cold beer, not just one that came from a fridge that wasn't turned on at the stupid island before. Humour has returned, and we can now go to our good place tomorrow (Oarsman's Bay) for the remaining two nights before flying to NZ...

Yours rustically

Pricey