Ahhh.. Fiji

Seriously, the most beautiful place I have ever been. Beautiful trees, water, and people. Fijians are incredibly friendly and treat everyone like family. We stayed at a resort that was owned by an amazing family. By the end of our stay, they knew everyone's names. They played volleyball with us and took us deep sea fishing. We got to go to a local school and hang out with some of the kids. We even went to the island where Castaway was filmed. I enjoyed a massage on the beach with coconut oil and even bought a package of Rolos for $9. See. I told you I have a problem.

All of the kids LOVED the camera

This is the Island where Castaway was filmed













Before the ship wrecked...


After the ship wrecked and was sinking..

Warning: kind of a long story. You don't have to read..
So I have to explain the story of how our ship wrecked. We had just packed up and left the resort that we were staying at. There are tons of different islands in Fiji and we needed to get to the main one because that is where the airport is at. We had just had one of the nicest weeks of our lives but we were all really anxious to get home because we had been away for 6 weeks. We were on this huge boat. Now I wouldn't say that it was like Titanic or anything. But it was a fairly large speed boat that had 2 floors and could fit well over 100-150. We were speeding a long pretty quickly, some of us sleeping or just trying to enjoy the ride. All of the sudden we hear a thud thud thud. It was pretty loud and it jolted the boat. Some people joked around that maybe we hit a dolphin or something. The captain kept going right along when all of the sudden these really loud alarms went off. He slowed the boat down and realized that he had ran straight into a coral reef. Everyone just kind of sat there like "Oh, no big deal. I am sure it just scratched the boat or something." Some of the staff kept saying that we needed to put out life jackets on. I kept thinking in my head the line from Titanic. "Get your life vests on!" A lot of just just laughed it off like it was some sort of precaution and started to take pictures of us pretend freaking out. But we realized he was serious when we looked to one side of the boat and it was rapidly filling up with water. They made us all get to one side of the boat and try not to move. The boat started filling up fast and we were worried because we had ALL of our luggage, souveniers, passports, plane tickets, cell phones, cameras, and wallets with us. What were we supposed to do? A bunch of people started pulling out ziploc bags that they had and everyone just combined as much stuff in them as possible. My camera was in some strangers bag, my passport in another. We could see land, but it would have been quite a swim in who knows what infested waters. They told us to wait for the rescue boats and remain calm. About 15 minutes later the first boat came. It was kind of funny because a lot of people were crying and really scared. These little boats took us to land and we had to wait to get on another boat. We never found out what happened to the boat, but it was pretty submerged in water when we last saw it. We finally got to the airport only to find that all flights had been cancelled and we had to sleep in the Fiji Airport for 10 hours. WITH NO AIR CONDITIONING. And it smelled like vomit. Anyway, it was still soo much fun and it was kind of neat calling my parents and telling them that I was going to miss my flight back home to Utah because our ship wrecked. Anyway. Everyone should go to Fiji. It rocks. The end.