Fiji, Nanuya Lai Lai: Staying in a Traditional Fijian Bure

Our second island destination in Fiji was the beautiful Nanuya Lai Lai, a much smaller island than Naviti, the first one we explored. We chose to include Nanuya Lai Lai in our Fiji itinerary because of a famous movie that had been filmed there, "Blue Lagoon" with Brooke Shields. Kyle remembered a time back when he was eight years old, when he sneakily watched the film late one evening while his parents slept; he thought that it was so cool to be watching an R-rated film (equivalent to the 18 rating in the UK) with nudity without getting into trouble, and he told all of his friends at school the next day. Dan hadn't seen the film or heard of it, but was sure that his parents would know of it, so he easily agreed on the island choice when Kyle told him about the famous beach and lagoon there.

At noon, it was a quick departure for us when we left Korovou Eco-Tour Resort on the island of Naviti. We had been putting the finishing touches on a travel journal entry that morning after having eaten breakfast, and the small boat that was due to take us back to the Yasawas Flyer catamaran was ready to take us without warning. We had to quickly gather up the laptop and all of our other things so we could be shuttled to the Flyer, which would then ferry us north to Nanuya Lai Lai. All we could do upon leaving was wave goodbye to the other backpackers we had befriended and hung out with during our stay on the island; we wished we could have exchanged emails or said a proper goodbye, but we had run out of time and needed to move on.

There was a group of us that built up the nerve to drink ceremonial kava, something that Fijians held quite close to their hearts

After an hour on the catamaran, we disembarked onto a smaller boat that delivered us to Seaspray Resort, the place where we had booked accommodation on Nanuya Lai Lai. The smaller boat journey took around 20 minutes and we had great views of the ocean and island, as well as its neighbouring islands. Seaspray was located on the eastern coast of Nanuya Lai Lai with other backpacker budget accommodation such as Sunrise Resort; the "Blue Lagoon" was situated on the western side.

During our first afternoon on the island, we walked along the beach and around the northern shore to reach the famous lagoon; we actually needed to get more cash because we had spent more than we thought we would on Naviti and didn't have enough leftover cash to pay for all of our accommodation at Seaspray Resort; plus, the "resort" didn't take credit cards. The walk around the island was only possible at low tide because the beach was only exposed there at that time of day.

Before our walk around the island, we were served lunch, our first of many free meals that were included with our stay (that's the way the majority of the Yasawas Islands resorts are set up, to include meals). When we sat down at the table where lunch was to be served - the table rested on a sand floor under the protection of a tin roof with no walls around it - a huge plate of egg fried rice with sauteed vegetables was placed in front of Dan, and an equally large portion was set down in front of Kyle.

We could have easily shared a plate between us, but it wasn't our place to suggest that because the meals were included and had been arranged by the family running the tiny resort. The place wasn't a resort, by any means, so if anyone reading this is looking for a plush, fancy resort on Nanuya Lai Lai in which to experience Fijian paradise, you don't want to choose Seaspray. If you want a friendly, cosy place with little to no cares in the world, then Seaspray would be perfect for you.

At Seaspray Resort, there were three traditional bures on the beach, each able to accommodate two people. A bure (pronounced burr-ay) was a small bungalow made of all-natural materials including wood and coconut palm leaves that have been thatched together to serve as walls and a roof. There was absolutely no electricity in the bure, or water-related facilities; we had to walk several metres to a separate little building to use the toilet or to have a shower, but the showers were only possible at certain times of the day. The toilet was basically a hole in the ground with a white base that looked enough like a regular toilet on top of it; as long as we didn't look down into the hole, using the toilet was not a problem, despite the smell. Next to the toilet was a box full of dried leaves and one roll of toilet paper, so we were generously offered two ways to sort ourselves out after going number 2. We won't tell you what we chose to use, you can use your imagination for that!

When we walked into the bure, we were surprised at how spacious it was inside. There were two beds and a rectangular coffee table and floor space between them. Along the wall parallel to the beach, there were three windows that opened and gave us brilliant views of the beach and ocean beyond. Having the windows open also meant that a cool breeze flowed through the bure, so we were comfortable during the night; it was hot in there during the day, though, since it was quite hot and humid outside, around 30 degrees Celsius (around 86 degrees Fahrenheit). When we pulled back the wooden shutters covering one of the windows (they were all lined with a plastic wire-like mesh to keep mosquitoes and other insects out), we noticed a small opening at the bottom corner, and we couldn't figure out how it got there. Later that first evening, we found out exactly why it was there, and you'll find out soon enough when you get to the appropriate paragraph.

The family members running Seaspray were all really friendly and we enjoyed our stay there; the atmosphere was completely laid-back, even more so than it had been at Korovou Eco-Tour Resort. After we finished our massive lunch, we asked Bow (pronounced bow, as in "taking a bow", not "shooting a bow and arrow"), the woman who was the overall manager of the resort, how we could get more money on the remote island so we could pay her for the rest of our stay. Bow mentioned the walk along the beach at low tide and a resort on the other side of the island that could possibly change money for us. We decided to do the walk and set off north along the beach in front of our bure.

After half an hour or so of walking, and taking several stops to admire the scenery and take photos, we made it to the resort situated on the edge of the Blue Lagoon. The man working at the reception desk said he couldn't change any money for us because they only had enough cash on them to keep the resort running until the following day, and that we should check back then to see if they would have enough cash to exchange with us. We weren't that bothered about the entire thing, having adjusted well to a no-stress Fijian island life, and we continued our walk along the beach. A few metres further, we passed a dive shop and decided to ask them if they would be able to change money for us, since there was no harm in asking. We were in luck there and were able to exchange enough Fiji Dollars to cover the remainder of our accommodation cost and give us money to spend on Fiji beers, which would likely be a staple for us either that evening or the next.

Despite the film having been made well over 20 years ago, commercial development around the lagoon was heavily restricted, allowing its natural beauty and peacefulness to remain. The lagoon was the main attraction in an underdeveloped bay with a long, sandy beach lined with coconut palm trees. The water was really calm and clear, but we didn't see Brooke Shield swimming in it, or getting busy with her boyfriend, as she did in the film. Across the lagoon was another small island that protected the bay from the strong ocean currents and tides, providing the calm waters for swimming, snorkelling or gazing at whilst sunbathing.

To get back to our resort, we decided to hike over the tall hill in the middle of the island instead of walking back along the beach; high tide was coming and we didn't want to get stranded as the beach disappeared. There was a small trail leading up and over the hill, linking both the eastern and western sides, and to begin the hike, we had to find the start of the trail, which began at the Blue Lagoon beach. With the beach being exceedingly long, we had some difficulties finding the trailhead, but a woman walking along the beach noticed that we looked lost and offered to help us. She just so happened to have completed the hike that morning and knew exactly where to send us.

Once pointed in the right direction, we were making our way through the tropical forest. Initially, the trail led us through dense vegetation, but all of the plants and trees thinned out at the crest, opening up as a grassy area before us. During our walk, we were provided with fantastic view of the Blue Lagoon and surrounding islands, and we were chased by aggressive mosquitoes, thus setting the scene for many more mosquito battles during our stay. The walk over to our side only took about thirty minutes and we really enjoyed the landscape and scenery.

When we returned to our resort, we borrowed some masks and snorkels and went snorkelling from the beach where our bure was situated. The water was warm and really nice to swim in after our long walk around the island in the heat of the afternoon. We didn't see many fish when we went snorkelling because the ocean floor was mostly covered with sea grasses and had very few coral formations. However, we did see a new type of sea slug that we had never seen before, one that looked like a yellowish-green, long, skinny, accordion-like snake thing with several alien-like tentacles extending from its mouth. It looked like some strange and evil creature!

We saw a few of the oddities cleaning the grasses and were worried at first that they could hurt us. Later, we found out that they were harmless and only a different type of sea slug. We saw some fish while snorkelling, a couple of them fairly large, but none to write home about, really. By the time we were ready to head back to the beach, we had drifted out a couple of hundred metres and had to swim back to the shore without any flippers. The current was moving against us, pulling us out into the ocean, and it was helpful that we were both fairly decent swimmers because it was hard to swim so far back against the current.

When we returned from our snorkelling excursion, cleaned up and got dressed for dinner, darkness had arrived and we found ourselves manoeuvring in the dark with Kyle's small torch (that's the same as a flashlight for the Americans reading this) that his dad had given him for Christmas a couple of years ago. If we hadn't had that small item with us during our year-long trip, we would've struggled against darkness on more than one occasion. Once we made it to the dinner table, we were given a kerosene lantern to light our way throughout the evenings. That definitely helped more than the tiny torch!

At dinner, we met a friendly young English couple who were also staying at the resort. We ate grilled sausages, rice and chicken chow mein, and all gawked at the size of the meals we were served. During dinner, we had a nice conversation with the Brits about their travel plans and where we had travelled for the past ten months. It turned out that they were just starting out on their travels and had planned to work in Australia to pay for their trip to Asia sometime next year. Once our dinner plates were cleared, we chatted with the family who ran the resort and then all headed off to bed. The mosquitoes were bad that evening, but we were given a couple of mosquito coils to place on the floor of our bure that worked pretty well.

Sleep came easily for us after a day full of long hikes, extreme snorkelling adventures and two huge meals. We were asleep by 9:30pm and deep into our R.E.M. sleep patterns when we were both woken up by a noise coming from a large creature moving about in our room. We were both dazed when we sat up and asked if the other heard something. At first, we thought the noise came from outside our bure, but when Dan picked up the small torch and turned it on (the kerosene lantern had been turned off when we went to sleep), we saw a big ball of fur crouched down in one corner of the room.

The furball was a cat that had caught something in its mouth and was busy chomping it down. That was when we realised that a second noise could be heard, the noise of bones crunching. At first, we didn't know it was even a cat, but once we figured it out, we weren't as scared as we had been thinking some monster had invaded our bure. When we looked closer at the cat, we saw a small, furry creature with four legs and a long, skinny tail hanging halfway out of its mouth.

Knowing the cat had caught itself a mouse, we were completely grossed out thinking of the bones that had been crunched, and also by seeing four legs become two legs, and two legs become a tail, as the cat finished its meal. Soon, the tail itself was slurped into the cat's mouth like that final piece of spaghetti on a fork would have been slurped by either of us. Our stomachs turned a bit, we shut off the torch and went back to sleep, hoping to avoid any nightmares from what we had just witnessed, and hoping that the cat would leave at some point throughout the night.

We ate roti for breakfast on both mornings, a type of pancake that we came to enjoy in Malaysia back in January. We were surprised to see roti served to us in Fiji, but when we reminded ourselves of the Indian influence on the island nation, we knew how that food item came to be. It was the same in Malaysia; we had eaten roti on many occasions from stalls or restaurants run by members of the Indian population there. The roti at Seaspray Resort was served to us rolled up on a plate, and we spread butter and jam (the jam was only for Kyle, since Dan doesn't like to eat jam on anything except in jam tarts) on them.

For lunch and dinner on our full day on the island, and breakfast on the morning of the day we left the island, we ate alone because the English couple who had been staying at our resort left to visit another island. It was nice because we were the only people at the resort for the remainder of our stay, and we were able to talk with Bow and other family members, like Elie (pronounced ee-lee), working at the resort. The funniest was Daniele (pronounced dan-yell-ah), a little two-year old boy that loved to scream, loudly. He was the second Daniel in the family, hence the nickname Daniele. Our lunch was similar to the one we were served when we arrived, a large plate of egg fried rice and grilled vegetables. Our second dinner at Seaspray included enormous portions of sausages, fried chicken, rice and vegetable chow mein.

A village and school tour was offered as one of the activities we could do from Seaspray Resort. The price for such a tour was only $15 Fiji Dollars each (around £5, or $10 US Dollars), a bargain if you'd asked us. The school and village we were due to visit during the tour were located on a small, neighbouring island called Vuaki. Ben was our boat driver and guide; he pointed out things of interest during the journey and also at the village and school. The school, incidentally, was a Catholic mission school financed by the European Union.

It took almost half an hour for our boat to get to the village, and we spent over an hour walking around on Vuaki before heading back to Nanuya Lai Lai. The people we saw in the village and at the schoolhouse were friendly and excited to see us and shout out their best "bula", or hello. The children were really adorable and studied many different subjects including English, mathematics and science. Some of the lessons on the chalkboards were fairly advanced, which impressed us!

In the village, we saw many traditional Fijian houses, but we also saw a few modern ones. By modern, we mean with concrete walls and a tin roof, instead of walls of wood and thatch. The second most famous person in Fiji, a rugby player on their World Cup team, was from the village we visited and was there during our tour. Our guide and his friend, who had also joined us from Nanuya Lai Lai that morning, were both from the village and knew the rugby player, so they paused to talk to him for a few minutes. Apparently, the player has houses in France and a few other countries, all part of his overall compensation package for being a good player, but he tried to get back to his village to see his family whenever possible. He was definitely a celebrity of sorts, with an entourage of people following him around!

That afternoon, back at our island, we decided to check out Lo's Tea House at the far end of the beach from our bure. We had spent a couple of hours playing with Daniele and lazing about on a large hammock in the shade of some coconut palm trees, but we needed to revitalise ourselves with some caffeine. Each of us ordered a cup of tea and we read our books for a while until we were interrupted by a loud group of English backpackers who also decided to have afternoon tea there. We couldn't concentrate and left soon after the others arrived, heading back to our bure. The weather then was cloudy and we didn't want to swim or lay out, so we decided to take the laptop to the bar in Sunrise Resort to write a travel story, or to play cards over a few Fiji beers.

On the island, we saw many dogs roaming around. They were mostly friendly, except one female that always growled and bared her fangs at us when we tried to approach and pet her. Some severe birthing from some of the other female dogs had occurred not long before we arrived, too; there were several younger pups running around that were no older than four or five months. They were the most energetic and playful of the dogs, and we found ourselves constantly being "attacked" by them, as they tried to gain our affection. The pups were cute, but sometimes their playfulness was too much and we had to push them away or off of us. We saw with the older dogs that their idea of gaining our affection was by leading visitors around the island, either along the beach or during the hike over the top of the island; we experienced this a few times with some of the more mature canines.

When we went to Sunrise Resort with the laptop, we couldn't use it because the battery had died and the power generator on the island wasn't going to be turned back on for a few more hours. We played cards instead and a few people sat down at the table where we were playing; the people were part of the English group that had been at Lo's when we were there. After some time, they joined us and we played some games of S***head with them, teaching them the rules since they had never played the game before, and having beers with them whilst we played. Throughout the afternoon, more and more people joined us, and then it was time for their dinner. Our meal was also being served at the same time as theirs, so we walked next door to our resort to eat; afterwards, we headed back to Sunrise to play more cards and to continue drinking beers with everyone.

The largest game of S***head that either of us had ever played, or had ever seen played, took place that evening at Sunrise Resort. There were at least fifteen people involved in the game and we used five decks of cards to ensure that there were enough to accommodate so many participants. Each game lasted awhile with so many players involved; thus, we were only able to play two games before the bar closed for the night.

After having quite a few beers throughout the afternoon and evening, there was a group of us that built up the nerve to drink ceremonial kava, something that Fijians held quite close to their hearts, and something that apparently made one's face go numb after drinking. We enlisted the help of Queen, one of the Fijians running Sunrise Resort, in the search for kava, and he led us in complete and total darkness to several different bures to try and find some.

At each stop we made, our search was hindered more and more when there didn't seem to be anyone around that had some kava we could use. The person who was known to supply the islanders with their kava was visiting another island that evening and Queen told us that we had waited too late to try and engage in the ceremony ourselves - it was nearly midnight by that point in the evening. Since it was our last night on the island, Queen offered to get us some rum and coke so we could continue the festivities into the wee hours, but on one condition. We absolutely had to keep it a secret because the woman who was going to supply us with the alcohol would have gotten into trouble for doing so. It was some tribal law or rule of some kind.

Happy that we were going to be able to continue drinking, we went back to our bure with Queen, the woman with the booze, and a couple of the English guys who had been playing cards with us, ready to enjoy the drinks in secret. The last thing we needed that night was more to drink, though, since we were already fairly drunk from all of the beers. Queen doled out equal measurements of rum and coke to each of us and told us many stories about his life. The one that stuck out most in our mind was the one about him not only meeting Oprah Winfrey, but also staying with her for six weeks in the US. We don't know whether or not to believe the story because it seemed farfetched, but it was a great story nonetheless!

The next morning, we were lazy (and slightly hung over) and took naps after eating breakfast. Then we just packed our things up and waited for the small boat that would shuttle us to the Yasawas Flyer catamaran so we could make our journey back to the main island of Viti Levu. When we left Nanuya Lai Lai, we had to pay additional money for the small boat that had originally shuttled us from the Flyer to Seaspray Resort, and for our return to the Flyer from Seaspray. The boat journey cost us an extra $40 Fiji Dollars (around £12, or $24 US Dollars) and we were a little annoyed about incurring the cost because we had not been informed of the extra expense when we booked our catamaran tickets and accommodation at Nadi Downtown Backpackers at the start of our trip in Fiji. The transfer boats were supposed to have been included in the accommodation prices whenever they were booked.

During the ride back to Port Denarau, on Viti Levu, we watched the film "War". It was shown on big plasma TV screens at each end of the catamaran's air conditioned cabin. The film was okay, an action-fuelled adrenaline movie with Jet Li and Jason Statham. We saw many people during the journey that we had either seen on Naviti or during our other two boat journeys around the Yasawas Islands. We had booked one final night at Nadi Downtown Backpackers since the price of a room was cheap and it was conveniently located between Port Denarau and the Nadi International Airport.

When we arrived at Port Denarau, we were told there was a free shuttle to downtown Nadi. After waiting around for over half an hour, we were finally told we could hop in a resort's shuttle bus because they had spare room and could drop us off in town. The shuttle driver ended up taking us directly to the hostel we wanted to go to, and a couple of German girls also got off the shuttle there. We had chatted with Annika and Nina whilst waiting for the ride to Nadi and we told them about the hostel, which was cheap and easy to travel to the airport from since they offered a free airport shuttle.

The room we were given upon check-in was the same dorm room that we had slept in when we stayed there six days earlier. This time, though, we didn't have the room to ourselves. The man who checked us in put the two German girls in our room, too; the room had four beds so there was no problem with that. We were all quite hungry by the time we had moved our bags to the room, and since we were only given one key between the four of us, we all decided to go for pizza at a place called Mama's Pizza, which was only a short walk down the road. The pizza there was good and we ordered two large pizzas that ended up being way too much food for the four of us. The leftovers were taken back to our room and the girls (hopefully) ate the rest of it for breakfast the next morning.

We didn't talk to Annika or Nina when we left the next morning because our flight to New Zealand was at 6:55am and we left the hostel at 5:00am to get to the airport in time for check-in; they were both soundly asleep. We left a note for the girls on the pizza boxes, reminding them about their free breakfast, though. After a short ten minute drive to the airport, by the same driver - Satish - who brought us to the hostel when we arrived in Fiji, we found ourselves checking into our last Air New Zealand flight for this trip.

It was around the time that we were walking through airport security that Kyle felt pains in his stomach, the first of which would last over a week. Dan's similar pains started a few days later, and he had the same symptoms as Kyle, both internal and external. We couldn't figure out if it was the pizza from the night before that gave us dodgy stomachs, or if it was from one of the meals at Seaspray Resort. Either way, we didn't feel ourselves for at least a week after leaving Fiji, and we were glad to be eating food in a country with better hygiene than the one we had just come from. Since the next month would have us touring around New Zealand in a campervan, we could ensure that any food we prepared ourselves would be cooked thoroughly enough to keep us from getting ill again!