Fiji and the trip so far...

We finally made it to Fiji after a long couple of days of travel. We left Crested Butte Monday for the long drive to Denver followed by a number of shopping trips in the big city. Michael and Vindya kindly put us up for the night and fed us lots of incredible Indian food - what a blessing that was before our departure!! We left Denver Tuesday evening and arrived into LAX for our flight to Fiji... departed at 11:30pm on Tuesday night and didn't arrive until 5:00am on THURSDAY!!! We completely lost Wednesday - hope you had fun cause we never experienced July 9th... so we're both that much younger... weird stuff that date line!


It's winter here in Fiji!! Brrrr!! Just kidding. We went from the longest day of the year (our wedding day) to short short days in the Southern hemisphere! Though it is winter and it has been a tad windy... the weather has been gorgeous despite the blustery conditions and a short-lived shower here and there. We've spent our first 7 nights at the Nabua Lodge on the island of Nacula in the Yasawa group of Fiji. The Nabua Lodge was a fun taste of real Fijian culture with mandatory participation in the Bula dancing every evening, good food served family style, and friendly fijian characters to help us along the way. They've taken us snorkeling in the blue lagoon, hand line fishing (we didn't catch anything), shown us their traditional dances, sold us jewelery, cooked us dinner in their traditional Lovo (earth oven) and gave us a tour of their village.


We're officially certified!! Our dive course was incredible, we had two of the most amazing dives (though we have nothing to compare to quite yet except posters and books - and these were both JUST like the posters or better!!) We've seen incredible species of fish and coral and crystal clear water! We're sorry we didn't buy an underwater camera - but we'll most likely splurge on one for our next dive which is on Saturday (we'll be feeding sharks!!!). Even our "confined water" dives which normally take place in a pool were held in the Blue Lagoon made famous by the Brooke Shields movie.


We've met wonderful people so far with time at each meal to meet people from all over the world (not many Americans traveling so far). We loved meeting Renee and Brigit from New Zealand and Germany - sorry we didn't get to say goodbye - unfortunately our final exam ran over... yuck exams on our honeymoon!! We both passed with flying colors!


We've just now arrived at our next stop down the island chain - we're at Oarsman's Bay Lodge which is a bit swankier than our last digs - hence the internet access.


We're going tomorrow to watch the village rugby match - but besides that and the shark dive we have nothing planned other than laying in the sun on the beach! The white sandy beach here is absolutely amazing with incredible snorkeling right off the beach... including a little pod of squid that live out there - they're pretty neat.

Check out our pictures from the past week here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mhewing/FijiNabuaLodge

We love you all!