Rest, relaxation and, er, gastroenteritis

We had a great 48 hours of chilling at Plantation Island...loads of swimming, watersports and sunbathing, until the last evening when J had stomach cramps, while I packed up (hmm, suspicious I know!) and then,,overnight I started with D&V and continued well into the morning so that I couldn't get up. Luckily J's didn't develop further, so he got to finish the packing and got to me to see the nurse for some anti sickness tablets to get me through the journey to Hawaii.

It was always destined to be a hideous travel day; a 45 minute boat ride, followed by 1/2 hr coach to airport, 3 hour wait at airport, then a 7.5 hour flight.

When we booked the flight it was originally due to land at 1.30am, which didn't seem so bad in the grand scheme of things but down the line it was changed to 3.40am, with a stopover in Samoa, so lights were on and food wasn't served till after we took off from Samoa at midnight!

Luckily we had booked a night in a hotel we nicknamed Bates motel, it had terrible reviews everywhere but was 3 minutes drive from Honolulu airport, and was the cheapest we could find, but still extortionate at $200 a night!! We got 4 1/2hrs sleep there before getting up to go back to airport for last little 45 minute flight across the islands. The hotel was actually ok, we were so glad of clean sheets on a bed, that aside from a weird gear-stick kind of tap in the bathroom, we couldn't fault it!

Weird gear-stick tap

Anyway, long story short, it was hideous, sure I lost a few of the pounds that have been accumulating over the last few weeks, but after 24hrs of on/off travel we have arrived in our next stop Hawai'i's Big Island...home of the active volcano that J has wanted to see since Geology university days...and I am feeling good again :-)

Swimming in the sea

Back in Fiji though, we had free use of all water sports on the beach, so we used them all, kayaks, stand up paddle boards, sea-trampoline, and we paid a fiver each to go on a boat out to a sand bank to do a snorkel for an hour....it was epic, to use Freya's words.

The kids confidence in water has just gotten amazing, give Liss a pair of goggles and she is diving head first into the sea, waterfalls, she doesn't care and Adam and Frey are loving it too. They both loved the snorkelling, Frey was in her element with her underwater camera! which we can't download yet, but we saw amazing coral and fish, and someone else on our boat saw sea horses! Liss had a great try in the sea but had a wobble when she managed to go too far under and fill her snorkel tube with salt water, so didn't manage as long In there as the bigger two, but still saw some great things. It was definitely one of the biggest highlights of the trip for J especially, he loved it :-)

Other than that we sat and baked ourselves a bit, watched the kids in the water for hours and just chilled...if only it was closer to go back again...(minus eating the chicken stirfry...)