Once upon a time I dreamed of going to Fiji... then my fairytale came true! Not only that, I had a
pretty majorly good looking companion to go with.
A long time ago, as I was flipping through channels on tv, I saw this gorgeous green rainforest, contrasted by a bright blue ocean surrounding it. It was actually on an episode of
The Bachelorette. Admittedly, I watched most of the episode, although its not a show I keep up with. I wanted to watch to find out where on earth that show was filmed, because I wanted to go wherever that was. I found out it was filmed in Fiji, and ever since, going there has been on my bucket list.
We considered all sorts of honeymoon destinations, and kept on getting discouraged by the insanely high prices. I wanted a place that had a dolphin excursion, since swimming with dolphins was also a bucket list item of mine. Unfortunately, the dolphins didn't get the memo that they were supposed to show up for our excursion, so the dolphin swimming dream will have to wait awhile. After weeks and weeks of searching amazing honeymoon locations, I came across this Koro Sun Resort on Expedia Travel's website. It had the overwater bungalows, was in Fiji, and did offer a dolphin excursion, so I decided this was the one! Since it was all-inclusive, we wouldn't have to pay any extra to feed ourselves, which was a nice bonus.
We went ahead and booked our trip, only to later find out that the package sold on Expedia was not really all-inclusive. The not-included part happened to be a flight from the airport in Nadi, to the island our resort was on, Vanua Levu. Kind of critical. This was kind of Expedia's error, kind of ours. We did not see the fine print that stated we needed to arrange transportation from the airport to the hotel. We just did not realize that transportation meant arranging another plane ticket. Long story short, we had to fly out earlier than we'd planned, which meant catching a flight out on our wedding night. We stayed the first night at a pleasant little resort in Nadi, then flew out the next night to Savusavu, on Vanua Levu island.
The other hiccup in our honeymoon trip was the email I received on the way to the airport as we were to fly out, stating that the new villas we had upgraded to stay in, were still under construction. They were planning on having them done the day before we got there, which meant that we'd be the very first to stay in them! That was the idea, at least. This stroke of bad luck turned out to be quite the opposite, because the resort credited us about $700 US dollars to be used toward any resort activities/items we wanted during our stay. We had no problem spending the extra money! On top of that, they let us stay in their original bungalows that weren't brand new, but turned out to be even better, in our opinion. They were more spacious and still had ladders that went directly in to the ocean beneath. No complaints from us!
I didn't know what to expect, going on a new adventure, far across the sea, in a land called Fiji :) It was one of the greatest highlights of my life. The pictures do not come close to doing the beauty of Fiji justice. I can't say enough good things about Fiji. It was an experience I will never forget. I was in heaven the whole time we were there... oh yeah, except that I started getting sick on our wedding day and I lost my voice while in Fiji. I totally didn't even care though, I was having too much fun in the awesomeness that is Fiji!!
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| My family dropped us off at LAX on their way out of town... we can't wait to get to Fiji!! :) |
The flight to Fiji was about 11 hours. We actually went back in time, sort of... since we passed the International Time Zone. Pretty cool. We took Fiji Airways from LAX to Nadi, where the international airport in Fiji is. Long flight, but not nearly as bad as it was on the way back, where we had to board 5 different planes! At least this flight was direct.
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| Here we are boarding the plane to Fiji! I snuggled up to my honey and tried to get a bit of shut eye, which is always difficult on a plane. Bottom pics: At the Nadi International Airport, waiting for our shuttle to take us to this cute little resort we found. As it turns out...the shuttle finally came and took us all the way across the street from the airport :) |
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| I had one of the worst sore throats of my life by the time we arrived in Nadi. We walked over to the little poolside restaurant and checked out the menu. I saw the chicken noodle soup and thought that would feel marvelous on my sore throat. I was so right! That was the best chicken noodle soup I have EVER had. I told Mike that next time I am sick with a sore throat he has to take me to that resort in Fiji to try the chicken noodle soup that heals it ;) We were also entertained by the fact that they gave us Fiji water :) And there were little lizards and frogs everywhere! Very cool. Bottom pics: taken in front of our room at the Tokatoka Resort in Nadi. |
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| Next we flew out of Nadi on this teeny tiny cute little plane. We had the whole plane all to ourselves! The views from above were truly spectacular. We made a stop in Taveuni, before arriving at our final destination. |
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| The next stop was Taveuni island! We arrived at the teeny tiny cute little airport there. The sign behind me in the photo shows where the International Time zone passes through. Next we got back on the plane and headed to our final destination. In the bottom right photo you can see the Koro Sun Resort below. The little island was called Bat Island, which is the island we kayaked to and went swimming in a hidden pool there. A-mazing!! |
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| En route to Koro Sun Resort from the airport. I am soooo excited!! Looks like some papaya trees in the top left corner. Bottow right shows a lily pad pond... bottom left shows the honeymooners, in love, and in love with Fiji!! |
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| We made it!! We were greeted by Koro Sun staff playing island music, and brought inside to enjoy food massages and coconut juice, straight out of the coconut!! Talk about royalty treatment. What a fantastic start to the best vacation ever! The WELCOME was spelled out in pedals when we entered our bure (Fijian word for wood and straw hut). |
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| When we first arrived at our bure, we were a tad bit disappointed because it didn't quite look like the pictures we'd seen... the tide was down at its lowest. Us Utah folk didn't understand that tides rise and tides go down, making a drastic difference in the water levels... and this happens twice a day! So crazy. We were completely fascinated with the ocean life. We took lots of pictures of crabs and fish. You can see a large fish pic that was taken right beneath our bure! We had fun climbing down the ladder and exploring what was beneath us. Sooo amazing! Oh, and my husband is super handsome :) |
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| We took lots of pics of what our bure looked like. It was definitely the most incredible place I'd ever stayed. We had an ocean behind us, and a pool in front, with a bridge going over the pool to get to our front door. We had a balcony attached to our bedroom, where we watched the spectacular ocean sunrises from... it was heavenly. |
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| Mike took plenty of pics of me :) Hopefully that means he likes me, since I'm his wife now! We decided in our next house we are most definitely getting one of these lounge mattress thingys. They were inside the main lobby and every time we walked in they tempted me to come relax. Which I was allowed to do, since we were on the honeymoon! ;) |
Fijian meke dance:
The first night at the resort, they had a singing/dancing celebration from some Fijian native villagers. It was entertaining to watch some of the energetic young-uns.
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| I had a blast watching the show, and even joined in the dancing afterwards. Happy memories. |
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| Mike had fun with the camera, trying to capture the indescribably beautiful views from our balcony. We woke up to exquisite sunrises to start our day, like nothing I'd ever seen before. So beautiful. |
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| Of course I couldn't come all the way to Fiji and not go for a run! Okay, maybe it wasn't so much a run as it was a sight-seeing exploration. I kept getting side tracked on our run, by the coolest things ever. Such as... this giant SWING over a waterfall! Wow! Way too much fun. |
My sweetheart swings his way in to my heart :)
I thought taking a video of this amazing swing was entirely necessary. Notice my lovely voice...or lack of a voice. This is how I sounded most of the trip. I think people who met me must've thought I was super shy or rude, since no words seemed to come out when I opened my mouth to speak. Luckily, a local Fijian who worked at the resort had a sure-fire way to get rid of a sore throat: put a wet towel on your throat. So simple! I didn't have much faith in his remedy, but he sure was thoughtful to try to help out.
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| Some absolutely AMAZING shots we took on our run. We ran up a hill in the rainforest and found some monstrous houses up top, with the most gorgeous views ever. I also caught a wee little frog :) Bottom left: hard to see, but there is a Fiji water bottle perched in that tree. We were happy to have discovered where Fiji water comes from. They collect it in bottles in the trees! Genius idea... I think one of my favorite shots is the top left picture we took of our Bures from a distance. Doesn't get more breathtaking than that. |
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| For one of our awesome activities, we got to go downtown and visit the marketplace. We visited a wood-carver's shop and made a few souvenir purchases to take home. We wanted to take the giant wood carving in the picture but lacked the funds and a way of transporting it back home. It was super cool though. The colors in the marketplace were mesmerizing. They had all sorts of things for sale that I'd never seen before... |
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| These are some photos from our drive-to-town adventure. We especially like the POTS store, where you can buy: pots :) On the way back we stopped at some natural hot springs to check those out. We also watched some locals play a game of volleyball. Our team (Koro Sun) lost, but put up a good fight... we got to become pretty good friends with some of the locals, as well as some others staying at the resort for their holiday :) |
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| We'd been dying to take our snorkel gear out behind our Bure and go exploring in the water. Mike tested out his GoPro camera and took LOTS of fun photos. Next time I will make him share more, so we have more underwater Mike photos. We had such a blast exploring together! |
Some GoPro action of our snorkeling adventure:
Mike took some great underwater videos of our snorkeling excursion by our Bure. We even ventured out to the new Villas that we were originally supposed to stay in. We took a peek and decided that we had the better deal with our sweet pad. We saw all kinds of beautiful fish, blue starfish, and just swam around in awe, taking it all in. So so amazing!!
Next activity: Rainforest hike!
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| For one of the resort activities, we signed up for a Rainforest trek, which included a hike up a steeeep hill... which we were experts at since we already trekked up the hill on our exploration run earlier. The New Yorkers who joined us did not have such an easy time, so we had to wait a bit for them to catch up. I thought it was comical that our Rainforest guide was trekking through the trails barefoot (top left). These are some shots from our hike. |
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| Wow! We found this little waterfall while on our rainforest hike. Spectacular. Those rocks were slippery! The guide had to help me out with crossing so I didn't fall in to a gigantic spider web...there were lots of those! |
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| Everyone there recommended that we try out a relaxing banana wrap massage at the Rainforest Day Spa. Since we had an extra $700 cash to spend however we wanted, we went for it! The trip up to the Day Spa was quite the experience. The Spa was up in the trees, alongside a fresh stream right outside. There were gorgeous flowers along the trail there. The massage was definitely relaxing, almost putting both Mike and I to sleep. The whole time we were in Fiji my skin felt amazing! The Utah dryness was replaced with the Fiji moisture, and I felt like I knocked 5 years off my skin-age. So nice! |
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| The resort had a restaurant over the water, where they had live island music playing, and interesting foods all new to us. Some delicious, some not-so-delicious. We set the timer on the camera and practiced taking some romantic moonlit pictures from our balcony. Bottom right: picture of one of our lizard pets who stayed with us inside our bure :) |
Check out the footage Mike caught of a lightning storm!
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| Some GORGEOUS photographs we took at our bure. The little lone tree in the sea was so neat to watch. When the tide was high, the water came all the way up to the leaves. When the tide went back down, we could see all the roots of the tree. Every photograph was postcard-worthy. I couldn't imagine anything more beautiful. |
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| The top left photo I took of all the fishies that hung out all the time beneath our bure, playing in the rungs of the ladder. There were the cutest little bright blue guys, and then some stripey ones, as Mikey called them :) Our next activity was a bike ride!! Woo hoo!! We rode along the Hibiscus highway, with our trusty guide, Dobbs. |
Here is a quick video action shot of my honey riding a cruiser, Fiji-style! Impressive he can ride the whole way with broken handle bars.
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| We made a few stops along the ride to check out the scenic views. Dobbs showed us how youc an blow into a crab shell and make the crab come out of his shell. That way I didn't steal any shells that were still occupied by their owners (actually, I accidentally did, that is a funny story). I collected a basket full of shells to take back home and share with the girls. I knew Avril would be especially excited to see all my treasures. Poor Mike had to ride his bike with broken handle bars, giving him a handicap that made me almost at his riding level! I found a nice palm tree with notches for me to climb up... so fun! |
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| The boys took a break to chill on the beach while I shell-hunted. This dog came out of nowhere and about scared me to death! Dobbs was also kind enough to pick me a fresh banana from a banana tree! Mmm... delicious! |
Dobbs was intrigued by my fascination with all the cool shells. He told me that he found a shell that would put all the shells I'd found to shame. The next day he brought the shell to me for me to keep as a souvenir. It truly was a beautiful shell that I will treasure :)
Now for my funny shell story: Mike and I were downstairs in our Bure relaxing and enjoying a movie. I had an entire bag full of sea shells I'd collected over the past couple of days, and they were all sitting up on the counter in front of our upstairs window. When we came upstairs after the movie, I noticed that 3 of the shells were on the ground in the bathroom, a good 15 feet away from the window counter. I asked Mike if he'd moved the shells and he said no. I thought, hmm, that's funny! How in the world did the shells get there? Maybe they were in the towel or something and fell out when we moved the towel. Then part of me got to thinking... what if there are still live crabs in there and they somehow wandered away? No... I thought, I'd checked thoroughly to make sure I had empty shells, so that couldn't be...
So I put the shells back on the counter by the window and we went to sleep. As I was laying in bed, about to drift off in to a sweet slumber, I heard a crash on the floor across the room. I walked over by the window, and saw that one of the 3 mysterious shells was again on the floor! Busted! I had a crab trying to escape! I then laughed, and realized that I had stolen some poor crabs' homes. I felt guilty for taking live critters, so I then walked out on the balcony with the shells and tossed the crabs back in to the ocean below.
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| After our bike ride we needed a sweet treat drink :) Mmmm, look how cute my husband is! :) |
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| Another exciting activity! We went kayaking to the coral gardens where we went snorkeling again. We sall all sorts of colorful fish and amazing coral, including "magic" coral that turned white when you touched it. One overzealous current tossed me in to the coral garden while I was trying to touch the "magic" coral. Ouch! I had some slices in my fingers and legs from my coral encounter. Battle wounds. |
And here is the video footage from our coral gardens snorketing adventure. At about 3:48 minutes you can witness my crash encounter with the coral reef. After that there is some Mike footage for once ;) And there are lots of fishy videos throughout! It even started to rain a little while we were out swimming. We didn't mind though, it was such a complete and total blast, as all things Fiji are :)
Next activity:
Dolphin Excursion
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Dolphin excursion! Notice I had to cross out the dolphin, since we couldn't find any :( We still had an awesome time out on the boat, sightseeing in the beautiful bay. We also found a coral reef with amazing sea life to observe while snorkeling. We even got to see a whitetip shark! That was seriously pretty amazing, and a bit scary... but little did we know, we'd get to see many more sharks once we did our scuba dive! |
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| More fun with the GoPro! The light reflecting through the water looked quite spectacular. Another awesome activity, snorkeling with my babe. |
Here is some of the GoPro video footage of our snorkeling fun. The light reflecting through the ocean water looked quite spectacular. Unfortunately, we didn't quite capture the shark we saw during the dive. He was a speedy little sharky.
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| After our non-dolphin excursion, we had some fresh homemade pizza at a resort called La Dolce Vita, meaning, the sweet life! It was owned by a rich Italian guy, and was quite the spectacle. They were kind enough to feed us some pizza and coconut juice, which looked EXACTLY like water. When you drink it though, you are unpleasantly surprised, because water it is NOT! We were all pretty parched, and kindly asked for non-coconut water to quench our thirst. |
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| The adventurer in me wanted to go exploring again, so Mike and I wandered around the resort, looking for more sights to see. We did find a gigantic spider web, and this cool cow that had a SKULL on his head! Had to get a pic of that. These cows have plenty of greenery around to eat :) |
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| After our hike we took a relaxing break by the resort pool... a little lizzy friend came to visit us again. Friendly little critters :) |
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| Part of the activity package that we purchased included a romantic candlelight dinner by the lily pond. Here we are enjoying the ambiance. There were literally hundreds of frogs surrounding us. I had fun pointing them out in the grass. |
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| Headed to the village to see the waterfall!! Stopped off the roadside to check out the incredible views again... and I checked out my handsome, silly husband of mine :) |
I took this video so you could hear what the Fijian native tongue sounds like. Here, our guide, John, is asking permission from the village chief, for us to go see the waterfalls that are on their land. We had to stop at the marketplace on the way there to buy a special root that was presented to the chief. Then we were granted permission to visit the waterfall. We brought a few of the villagers to accompany us to the waterfall. I found some cute jewelery that I purchased from the village women. We'd forgotten to bring our cash with us, so they were kind enough to let us take the jewelery anyway, with the promise that John, our guide, would bring them the cash on his next trip to visit. Wow, Fijians are so trusting! Never would've happened in the U.S.
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| Our village trip, and then a hike up to the waterfall... quite the experience! |
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| Just beautiful. |
Here is some video footage of our waterfall excursion: Some highlights: At about 6:54 you can see me get pulled underneath the waterfall by our guide, John...and then I swim right back out. At about 9:44 you can see Mike jump off the rocks in to the water. You won't see me doing that. Mike loved it though :)
The local villagers actually brought soap and scrubbers along and bathed off in the water...that's a cold bath! It was an awesome experience...thank you for bringing me to this heavenly place, love love. I'm so happy!!
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| We bought hats! Super cute ones :) Part of our activity package included a picnic on the white sand beach. We loved taking all these cool photos of the white sand against the deep blue shades of water. Plus, we met some more crabby friends that let us take their pictures. |
Check out this awesome footage we took of one of our crabby friends who accompanied us at our picnic! We actually got a good close-up of him :)
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| This is one of my favorite photos from the whole honeymoon. The ocean was just breathtaking to look at. I quite loved my new hat, too! :) |
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| We walked down the white sandy beach to make footprints in the sand, thinking it would be a cool photo opp. We were right :) This is another one of my favorite photos. The blue hues in the ocean were amazing! |
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| We had a good time taking all kinds of gorgeous photos at our beach picnic. Afterward, I came and relaxed in the lobby, getting my facebook fix in :) |
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| Bat island, here we come! Dobbs was our most excellent guide... we kayaked to the island and walked around the edges, finding all kinds of creatures in the tide pools, including sea cucumbers, star fish, fuzzy crabs that looked like tarantulas, |
This one's a long one, I had a hard time watching all the clips deciding what to edit out. I don't have the most advanced video software, so it takes quite awhile to do. Anyways... some highlights: At around 10:00 is where you can see me getting in to the hidden Bat Island pool. At about 14:18 you can see a giant underwater sea sluggy thing that looks kind of like a snake. At 16:13 Mike shows off some skills by doing an underwater summersault :) At 22:50 you can see a blue starfish up close. 23:42 shows one of the spikey balls, as Mike calls them...not sure what the technical term is... At 25:07 you can see a crab up close and personal. At 28:45 you can see me trying to pick up a shell that turned out to be occupied..At 29:39 Dobbs find a tarantula-like crab that was all fuzzy-looking. At 31:30 Dobbs demonstrates how to open a coconut, and lets me try out the soft marshmallow insides. I had so much fun checking out all the sea life that lived in the tide pools. Bat Island turned out to be one of my many favorite Fiji spots to explore.
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| The pathway to our Edgewater Bure. We stayed in EW #4 :) Our little honeymoon home, with my honey! We loved it!! |
Next activity: SCUBA DIVE!!
This is what we'd been waiting for... I even got certified in the midst of all the wedding/reception/honeymoon planning, which was quite stressful, but so worth it! Scuba diving with my sweetheart was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. We got to do two open sea dives... including a shark dive!! And we did get to see all kinds of sharks, close up even! That was a bit nerve-racking for sure!!
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| Here is the happy couple, all prepped for our first ocean dive! |
We certainly had some fun with the GoPro! The first dive was our shark dive, and boy did we get to see a LOT of sharks! Around 6:21 you can see a whole school of sharks. Up higher, I believe there was a school of barracudas! Around 16:39 you can see me touching a giant sea caterpillar... actually I have no idea what it was called, but it was cool! At about 22:14 you can see the sea turtle, he's so cute! What an amazing experience... yup, we went scuba diving in Fiji!
Next activity: Pearl Farm Visit
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| Back to town we go! We got to learn how pearls are formed, which was pretty interesting. Due to rainstorm weather conditions, we didn't get to go out in the boat and see the actual pearl farm, but we were okay with that, since it meant we could squeeze another cool snorkel trip in! I learned that freshwater pearls are much cheaper than the ocean-made ones. The nice, perfectly round ocean pearls you pay quite the pretty penny for. The necklaces shown in the photo were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars! In U.S. $ Crazy!! Needless to say, we didn't bring any of those home with us. I did, however, buy some beautiful fresh water pearls that were just as beautiful to me! |
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| Haha, this was kinda funny. I was laying on the bench over the water, just resting. When I tried to pull myself up, my head would not move. It was stuck. My new dolphin necklace that I'd purchased at the Fiji Savusavu airport, was stuck between the wood beams! Mike had to rescue me and undo the necklace so that I could pull my head up. I still love that necklace, even if it tried to imprison me. |
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| Sad day. The time has finally come for us to leave our beloved Fiji. Our flight back home took FOREVER. We stopped in Nadi, Samoa, Honolulu, LA, and then finally arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah. We took some scenic pics from up in the air. It was incredible just how many islands of all different shapes and sizes were out in that vast ocean. In Honolulu we opted to get a room, since we had like a 7 hour layover that lasted overnight. We found a cheap hotel nearby and got a little rest before getting on another plane. Once we finally arrived back home we were completely exhausted. And cold. If only we could've brought the Fiji weather with us... |
Thank you, sweet husband of mine, for the time of my life! Fiji was everything I dreamed it would be, and more. I will never forget the experience. I'm so grateful that I got to share such amazing memories with my loving husband. Thank you, Fiji, for being awesome! I hope we can some day visit again...
