Happy New Years!!!!

Bula!
So, I can't believe that it's been a week since I left Tennessee. Seems like ages ago. So much fun has been had in this short little ol' week.

Thursday, we went on the zip line tour. So much fun. I wasn't very good at using the brakes....so I just stopped using them all together! It was amazing flying through the rainforest! There were 8 different lines, with the longest being 250 meters....I'm not sure how that converts to feet or anything! It's long though.

After the zip line we transfered to Mango Bay Resort. Angie and I had seperate dorms and I get to mine to find 2 guys sleeping and it sleeps 8. I was in there and realized there was a tiny lizard on my bed. I don't touch lizards!!! So, I'm trying to get the lizard to crawl on my shoe so I can take him outside when one of the "teeny boppers" as I named them woke up. I said there was a lizard in my bed and he laughed. I then asked if he liked lizards, thinking he could pick it up for him. His response was, It's just the culture!!! WHAT! I gave him a go to you know where look and said, I know it's the culture, but I don't want a lizard in my bed!!!! I was going to show him some redneck culture!!! That night we went down to the restauarant/night club and had dinner and drinks. They had a specail entertainment for us, which were 6 teenage boys dancing. It was weird, hilarious, and really good all at the same time. My favorite was the one gu who did the complete Beyonce "single ladies" dance. HILARIOUS!!!

Overall, we thought Mango Bay was for the younger crowd. We did have fun. Friday we got out and had breakfast and claimed 2 chairs under the palm trees at 8:30 and didn't get up off of them until 4:30!!! It was perfect. We saw some people who went on a fishing trip and came back with a huge fish. Well, that was our dinner that night. Tuna with a lemon butter and it was very nice!! They had a DJ come in for New Years and it was a struggle for us to stay up to midnight. Old age I suppose. At midnight they had an amazing fireworks show over the ocean and other resorts down the way had fireworks as well.

We got up early and caught the bus into Nadi and are now at Nadi Bay Hotel Resort. We went to the bar/restaurant here last night and met a nice native Fijian who is now an Australian citizen named Ken. He is the largest importer in Australia of Cocunut Oil. His friend Dave he was meeting with goes to the villages and teaches the natives how to properly make the best cocunut oil and buys it from them. We asked Ken if we could set up shop in Nashville and sell some as well, that way we could come to Fiji and have a tax write off!!!

We also got back on the subject of wild boars. Ken said it's very popular and it makes you feel proud to bring your village a boar back. I said it looked dangerous and he said some young boys have died from the boars tusk. I said it seemed dangerous because you are running full speed with 2 spears in your hand and what if you fall? He said you don't fall, real men don't fall and if you are clumsy and fall then you can't hunt wild boars. So...that answers my question, I will not be hunting wild boars anytime soon!!!!

We hung with Ken and Dave last night. Dave is good friends with Jimmy Buffett and his dad was his boss at a shipping yard in Mobile Alabama!! We had the Fijian musician sing "country road, take me home" and of course, "sweet Caroline!!!" Such good fun.

Today is Angie's 30th birthday. All along the plan was for her to skydive. Well, the plane is under maintance, so it's been postponed to Monday the 10th! We decided to do the waterfall/mudbath/hotsprings tour. WOW...what an adventure. We asked if there was hiking involved and the answer was no. Well, we trek about 10 minutes through the mud to the starting point. We were then told it was a 30 minute hike. Our guide was Michael, who is about 14 or 15 and this was his 2nd tour to do...his first being yesterday. So...our 30 minute hike turned into an hour and a half hike to the waterfall. But it wasn't a bad hike at all. Just super muddy. Angie fell, but I didn't. There were 4 girls from Aussie who were with us. They were told there would be no hiking and were flip flops and ended up going barefoot! The waterfall was amazing though. So worth the walk. Freezing water, but nice and relaxing. Come to find out there was a short cut we could of gone on, but Michael's mom told him not to go that way!!! We went to the village afterwards and had lunch. We then went to the mud bath, which was awesome. It looked just like a little pond in the middle of the field and we got in and covered ourself with mud, with the help of Ester who was 9. After we dried off we got back in to rinse it off. It felt so good. After we went to the hot springs, which was HOT, but awesome. Overall, an unexpected, but good day.

This will be the last email for a while. We are doing the island hopping tour tomorrow and won't be in any type of civilization until Sunday evening. So looking forward to this part. Overall, it's been an amazing trip so far...of course!!! Hope everyone had an awesome New Years!!!