Birthday Shenanigans

I have the great honour (!) of sharing my birthday with Chinese National Day! And Julie Andrews. So, 1st October truly is a great day!

This year I had the fortune to get to share my birthday with a bunch of Suva expats, O'Reilley's Bar and Leleuvia Island.

The birthday weekend away actually started at such a high peak of fabulous, that I was afraid I would out do myself before I had even begun. Witness the tiny plane we caught on our 12 minute flight to Levuka:

Four people on the plane and a whole load of newspapers from the mainland! It was so much fun and so bizarre. Now Levuka is the old capital, so it has a lot of interesting old crumbly buildings and not too much else! The people are pretty friendly though - I had so many conversations and will probably never say 'Bula' quite so much ever again.

The initial plan had been to go for a hike, but the weather was pretty unfortunate. I did manage to scramble someway up the nearest mountain after stopping in to watch the volleball game between police wives from Levuka and Nausauri. I managed to get a random guy in gumboots to help direct me to the nearest rockpool where a bunch of kids were splashing about - I have more bruises to accompany that story too!

So Day I complete, we then made the boat trip to Leleuvia for two days of fun in the (hopefully) sun! Along the way, we unexpectedly bumped into three pods of dolphins, who were quite keen to skim under the boat and disappear. If you look hard though, you might just see them.

 And Leleuvia...ahhh. What can I say, except that I have been spoilt beyond belief. As soon as we arrived on the island, the sun came out and it very rarely hid after that. I got to try scuba diving for the first time ever, which was accompanied by a stream of:

"I'm going to die. My ears are going to explode. OMG, I just saw a giant blue starfish. But my head still feels like it is about to combust"

 

Fun times! I kid you not! The water is so crystal blue, and there is so much colour and life just so long as you dip your head beneath the water for a second or two.  I saw a stingray and almost saw a shark (but out snorklelling, not diving!) It is breathtaking, but I should remind everyone not to stop breathing when scuba diving or your lungs WILL explode. No, really!

 



 The only sad part to this story is that it had to end at all. What a great weekend away! And now that I have scratched the surface of Fiji's waters, I have to get my diving certificate and go wild!