Coconut Bay-Watch

Bucket Brigade
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Naviti - Day 1

It was a very interesting start to our stay at the Coconut Bay Resort. We met everyone going to the resort on the ferry trip over and started talking with a few of them from that point. There were eleven of us staying at the resort. The group staying in the dorms consisted of 9 of us with 2 Irish girls traveling together, 1 American gal by herself, 3 german girls together and myself and my traveling buddy and the Australia buddy we met at the prior resort. My first impression of the place was that the main building was small, but everyone seemed very nice and the beach looked pretty good. We all went to the dorms after we arrived to settle in and clean up. We had been informed upon arrival that the water pump was broken and we would have to get water in buckets from the rain reservoir if we wanted to have a shower or flush the toilets. We all wanted to clean up so we filled up a bunch of buckets to use.

Honeymoon Beach - Naviti Island - Fiji
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I have lived a beer commercial! The 2 irish gals and 3 german gals (all fairly attractive I might add) decided to wash in their bikinis in the yard so they could help each other with pouring the buckets and soaping up. The american gal asked the german girls if she could take pictures of them as they washed each other and the german gals got their camera as well and started to frolick and play as they posed and washed for the camera. I was tempted to take some pictures myself but refrained cause I hadn't know them long and I didn't want to come off wrong. It was hard enough to try not to stare. I just ended up helping them fetch buckets. It's definitely an image that will remain etched somewhere in my brain. Spending so much time working together to get clean helped bond us all as a group and we were all fairly tight knit throughout the rest of our stay at the resort.

Coconut Bay Resort - Naviti Island - Fiji
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We decided to take a walk along the beach and check out the surroundings and the other resorts in the area. There are three resorts along that stretch of beach and we knew some of the people staying at some of the other resorts along the beach from our stay at our prior resort. We met up with some of them that afternoon and arranged to meet them at one of the other resorts later in the evening for drinks. We took a brief swim out in the water and then headed back to our resort for dinner which was pretty good. After dinner the hosts at the resort had a meke (traditional Fijian song and dance) and taught us how to do a Fijian dance and showed us some of the different ways that there is to tie a sarong (there are about 8 different ways for a guy to tie one and I think 6 for the women). After that we all hit the dance floor for a game of freeze dancing which I was eliminated from pretty quick. (my partner couldn't keep still) the last two contenders ended up being pretty close, so we decided to change the rule and have them do a dance off to determine the winner. (there's always room for a dance off to solve things..) We all then headed out along the beach to the other resort which had a better bar. We couldn't locate any of the people we were looking to meet around though so we all just hung out there and had a few drinks together and then stumbled home on the darkened beach afterwards.

On the beach - Naviti - Fiji
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Naviti - Day 2

After breakfast went overland on the island to Honeymoon Beach with some of the others from the dorm. I have to say it was one of the nicest beaches I've been on so far on this trip.  It helped too that we were the only ones on it.  We came back for lunch and then spent most of the afternoon lazing around the resort. I finally got a hold of a book to read (Called "Temple", I forget by who. It sucked) so that killed some time. I normally don't bring books with me when I travel cause I read pretty fast and they never last me more than 2 days.  I should have brought something I didn't want with me thought so that I could have traded it at one of the book exchanges for something else to read. Our Australian friend and the American gal left for another resort that afternoon but we were going to meet the Australian guy the next day when we headed to the same resort and would see the American gal on her way out from that resort.

Dinner was very good that night.  One thing I have to say about Coconut Bay was that the food was excellent all the time we were there.  (One of the staff, a real nice guy had studied cooking and was an excellent chef) After dinner there was more dancing and I we all had a fun time dancing with staff.  My partner for the evening was one of the staff who was the most flamboyantly gay fijian I've met. He was a fun guy and certainly put me in my place as his partner on the dance floor.  after the dancing died down I just played some cards with most of the others and some of the staff for a quite a while (The staff were really good players!!) and then called it a night.

Naviti - Day 3

Didn't do much on our last day on Naviti.  We just hung out on the beach during the day and read till the afternoon ferry that would take us to our next resort. (Oh the stress of island life! :-)  )