Fiji is nothing like I expected. I mean that in the best of ways. There's been no sign of tourists and no coastline of beautiful resorts. Just horses roaming on the beach and the friendliest local Fijians with their very humble mini-marts and shops. We are staying on the Coral Coast, which means we are far from the majority of luxurious resorts that anyone may imagine a tropical location to have. That is what makes this such a more unique place that I imagined...taking the bumpiest roads into to town where there are collapsed wooden bridges in the river and local children walking home miles from school in their blue and white uniforms. Today we woke up and enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of fresh fruit, including paopu (like papaya) and delicious coffee with what I'm sure was goat milk. Oh yes, and for the second time in my life, I tried vegemite with my toast. It is even worse than I remember when I had in ten years ago on the plane to Melbourne. I think of myself as having an acquired taste for foods, but there is NO way I will ever get used to or enjoy the taste of that salty brown spread! I made the most disguised face and then realized there were Aussies at the table next to us, so I quickly tried to act less disguised. After the eventful breakfast, we lounged down to the beach (in our PJs still!) and walked for a while until we spotted a horse half way into the ocean's sandbar. Of course, we were curious and kept walking towards the horse, to find out there was a 5-star resort down the road with horse back riding and a lot of action surrounding it. There was a camera crew there filming a group of people on Sand Masters (I have pictures of that on facebook.) It was an incredible sand sculpture! I got in trouble for getting too close and being in the view of the camera-whoops! We continued to walk around the gorgeous resort and we went down the road to find an Eco Tour Park that we adventured to. SO glad we did. We ended up walking around what felt like a scene straight out of Lost, with a tropical rainforest surrounding us. We got to feed sea turtles with raw tuna, walk into a free flying parrot area (where Heather got semi-attacked by one of them,) see peacocks freely roaming around (and I attempted to attract them with my colorful peacock purse, but was very rejected), observe the plentiful indigenous species of herbs and plants Fijians use for natural medicine, hold a bunch of iguanas named Gwen, Ben, Fred and Wilma, and have a Pacific Coast Boa Constrictor wrapped around my neck and head! I LOVE FIJI. After such an eventful day, we decided to have a more relaxing night and get dressed in our new dresses we got from the shop we went to earlier today in town, and walk to the same resort down the beach. We sat down at the beach restaurant famous for their pizza, and we could see why. It was the most incredible experience. Maybe because we hadn't eaten since breakfast at nine this morning and it was close to nine at night. Compliments of the chef, we were served pita flatbread with five diverse dips such as their version of balsamic vinaigrette, tomato chutney and grounded up green olives with sea salt. There are no words in the English Dictionary to describe how gorgeous the sunset was tonight. I have never seen such an immense amount of color painted in the sky. Oranges, pinks, purples and blues all melted together and reflected into the ocean to create a canvas of beauty. We were serenaded with the incredible voice of a Fijian guitar player as he sung the most beautiful renditions of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Wonderwall" and "What a Wonderful World" just to name a few of my favorites. After such a satisfying night we were just about to walk on the beach home, as we turned as the sound of pouring rain. When it pours rain in Fiji, it POURS. With no umbrellas and a take home pizza box, we adventured through the sheet of rain and wind back to our hotel, completely drenched. We didn't even try running back...it was too perfect of a feeling, as if we were in the middle of a scene from the Notebook and there would be a dramatic kiss in the rain..instead of a kiss at the end of the scene, we got our hotel! MUCH better. What a way to fight jetlag :) Speaking of which, it's time to rest up for a big day tomorrow adventuring with a tour through the waterfalls! Going to sleep with the sound of the (still) pouring rain...ahhh paradise.
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