Alice’s Gap Year Travels

It has been two weeks since we arrived home and it has been hard. The first week was pretty horrible to be honest, as much as I love my friends and family and the reunions were great, the point of calling somewhere home is that it’s stable and constant and nothing ever changes. This is exactly what has made being at home so difficult though, travelling is a world filled with new people and new places, spontanaity and freedom and having been a part of that for 5 months coming home feels tedious and constricted and like I said, nothing ever changes.

Week two has been a bit easier however, I’ve managed to get myself a new job waitressing in another restaurant so working crazy hours is keeping me occupied and the fact that I’m now earning money is definately a plus! The weather has been sunny since we got back and I finally had my hair done!.. Yet I can’t help still feeling like I’m terribly far away from somewhere I ought to be.

Holly and I often have withdrawal symptoms from not being with each other 24/7 but at least we’ve both had this experience and know that travelling is definately something we both have to look forward to in the future 🙂

So, right now it is all about making money, enjoying the British summer, keeping in touch with the great friends I’ve made abroad and preparing for University in September.

Thanks for reading.

I wouldn’t change it for the world, XXX

When we arrived we were overwhelmed with how welcoming and helpful everyone was. The Fijian people are genuinely and perhaps not suprisingly the most relaxed, friendly, warm, funny people we’ve ever come across 🙂 It’s so chilled out and everybody runs on ‘Fiji time’ – in other words, if you order a cab don’t expect it to a arrive for at least half an hour. haha

Our friends Eve and Maggie were on our plane and two of their mates from NZ were also staying in our hostel so that evening the 6 of us had dinner and cocktails looking out over the sea.

The next morning was an early start as we wanted to get the ferry off the main-land (Nadi) to one of the islands. There are loads of groups of islands in Fiji and what most people do is hop from one to the other but as we only had 8 days we decided to just do two – our first stop being Mantaray Island. At each place the resorts send out little boats and once you’ve got your bag everyone piles into the boat and you head off to the island. We had a welcome drink and then were shown around the resort, Mantaray is very relaxed – the staff are there for you anytime, whenever you wanted to do something other than lying on the beach you could find them playing volleyball, making coconut jewelry or just swinging in a hammock. The islands are all-inclusive so you get 3 meals a day included in the price but then the dangerous part is that you can just stick your bar bill on a tab and let me tell you – after your fourth cocktail (baring in mind its ‘Fiji-measures’) that tab just keeps growing! In the evenings they had people from the village doing traditional singing and dancing which was really fun as we all got to join in. The first few days were a bit stormy though so we did have to spend one entire day playing cards with our swiss and german friends.

The snorkeling in Fiji is the best I’ve ever seen, sooooo many different types of fish and sooooooo many fish in general, the colours were fantastic and we even saw an octopus…EW. Another thing about staying on the islands is that I didn’t wear shoes once. It’s pretty much sand EVERYWHERE and its so freeing to not even think about putting shoes on! haha

The second island we visited was Beachcomber. This resort is a lot busier and the staff have a lot more to take care of (theres a gift shop, large reception and bar area etc.) once again the people were brilliant though and every night we’d be dancing out on the beach 🙂 – once we even ended up in a ‘sea-water’ jacuzzi in the small hours of the morning! By the time we reached Beachcomber the weather was perfect and Fiji truely is a paradise. We spent our last night back on the main-land then had a whole day in the sun before showering a packing ready for our flight home at 10pm.

It was 10 hours to LA and then after dashing through LAX airport we were straight back on the plane for another 10 hours back to London Heathrow. Mixed emotions doesn’t even cut it – we were excited to see our family and friends again, to be able to put our food in the fridge without labelling it first and to get our hair cut!.. but on the other hand it was the best 5 months of our lives so far coming to an end, once we went through customs it was back to reality…

XXX

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