It's Christmas!

Manda writes:

Woke up at 5am and saw beautiful blue skies and fluffy white clouds. This definitely does not feel like Christmas! I had some fruit for breakfast and noticed that Christmas cake was on offer too. As nice as it looked, it was a little too rich for 7 o'clock in the morning, regardless of the occassion.

[Ian: for me, Xmas morning was a time for me to make good on the promise of shaving off the 3-week-old beard I'd been 'cultivating'. I was kind of getting used to it and it looked weird seeing myself without the shadow on my face afterwards. It also hurt like hell trying to shave off with a battery shaver and no wet shave to start off!]

All morning, the chef was busy preparing a 'lovo' for lunch. Lovo is an unusual way of cooking food. Basically, a pit is dug out in the ground. This is lined with stones. Firewood is then thrown in and set alight. Once the stones have been heated up, the firewood is removed. The 'oven' is now ready. Food wrapped in tin foil or coconut leaves is placed inside. Once all the food is in the 'oven', a couple of sacks are placed on top and shovels of sand bury it all. This is left for two hours to cook underground.

Food ready for the lovo oven.

Putting food in the lovo oven.

Paradise found? The view from the island where the lovo was being prepared.

We went over to the beach to see the chef prepare the lovo but unfortunately, we didn't get to taste it in the end as we had to transfer onto the Yasawa Flyer that would take us to our next destination. Not before the crew sang a Fijian goodbye song to us first though. These guys are multi-skilled - they cook, clean, sing, dance, play musical instruments and pilot the boat. We watched as the crew members took on the various baratone, tenor, alto notes and sang harmoniously.

We were sad to leave the boat as we'd had an excellent time and had met some great people. The fact that we couldn't try the lovo was disappointing but hey, there were still more islands out on the Pacific Ocean to explore. Our next stop was Nanuya Lailai, where the Blue Lagoon was filmed.

We stayed at the Sunrise Lagoon Resort. Facilities are a lot more basic compared to the mainland but this just adds to the overall experience! I felt remote from civilisation as this place is on a desert island and only has electricity 4 hours a day. Our bure was just metres from the water and we had an excellent sea view.

Once unpacked, Ian and I went exploring. We walked to the other side of the island to the Blue Lagoon (where the film was shot). It took 20 minutes to walk over and the beach is how I'd remembered it from the film. We jumped straight into the water to cool down from the midday heat. Snorkelling here was excellent - a lot of the coral that we saw was still alive and looked like tree branches (this also reminded me of the film). The variety of tropical fish was vast; it was like swimming in an aquarium. At one point, we had the whole beach to ourselves - paradise!

The Blue Lagoon beach.

For dinner, we had lovo - we got to try some in the end! We watched as the now ready lovo was being dismantled.

The chef had prepared a feast of chicken, beef, pork, pumpkin, advocado, coleslaw, spinach, sweet potato, salad etc. There was even a Christmas tree in the middle of the room. Throughout the meal, the resident puppy (Meti) and resident kitten were scrapping under the table. Obviously, the Christmas carol: 'Silent Night' rang no bells to these cuties!