It wasn’t supposed to rain in Fiji and there were even a few claps of thunder! By the afternoon the rain had subsided somewhat and we headed over to Honeymoon beach, it was OK but nothing too special. We made sure we were back in time to say our goodbyes to Rachel and Rachel who were heading off to another island. It was sad saying goodbye to them as they were a great laugh. After dinner we did another bout of Bula dancing with Rob being a little less enthusiastic than he was the night before!

Rob was hoping to do some snorkelling and swimming with Mantra-Rays which he had planned to do today but when we went into the dining hall for breakfast we saw that today’s visit was a village visit which also included a visit to the local community school. We both wanted to do a village visit, meet the chief and try the legendary Fijian Kava, which is a drink made with ??????????? Root and is

non-alcoholic but midly narcotic and gives your mouth a weird numbing sensation! We were also glad to have the opportunity of visiting a community school. These schools rely mainly on tourists for money but are run solely by the people of the local village. The boat ride round to the other part of the island was amazing and it took around 25 minutes before we pulled up on the beach and were given our etiquette instructions. Bert was to sit opposite the chief and the rest of us would sit round in a circle, we had to clap once before we drank the Kava then clap 3 times and say Bula when we had finished. The actual chief was on the mainland but we met his second in command, who was a very smiley chap. He was mixing the Kava in a large wooden bowl and to be honest it looks like dirty dish water but the taste wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. It left a mild numbing sensation on your tongue as I would hazard a guess that if you drunk great quantities of this stuff then you would have a serious numb mouth!