Fiji Day 8 - Saturday

OK.. so here it goes.. we get to Saturday - our "day off" our only full day of R & R and everything's good.. we have a island resort tour booked in.. we get to go snorkelling..have a bbq/buffet lunch.. get to swim in the clear blue waters and walk along the beautiful beaches of the Fiji Island.

All we had to do was be at Holiday Inn at 6.30am to wait for the bus...

BUT...

IT WAS RAINING!!!!!!!! the cyclone was back and the bus was delayed from 7am to 12pm. Oh no, that would mess everything up...cos it's an hour to Pacific Harbour and we still need to take a boat ride for 30 mins out to the island. and since it was raining so badly, we probs wouldnt be able to see any thing whilst snorkeling anyways.

Luckily the lady at the tour counter gave us a full refund cos there would be no point waiting till 12pm and then only play around for like 2 hours before we had to head back again. Dr Peter Chen and Winnie headed home to rest whilst the rest of us sought alternatives to enjoy the rest of the day.

The best Plan B was that we hired a mini van + driver who would still bring us to Pacific Harbour and be with us the whole day. However, we would only be going to a resort and probs could only do swimming and laze around there. Well, since that was going to be the best we could get out of the day.. BRING IT ON!!!!!!

So when we arrived, we realised that the massage (that the girls were looking forward to) was in a tent along the beach. Quite dodgy and rather expensive too. The boys were very keen on doing some water sports so we checked out the rate and booked in for 4 people to go tubing on the sea for 30 mins. We could take both the tube where you can sit up straight and the tube where you fly like superman.

It was so fun!!!! lots of arm strength to keep ourselves on board though. Grace CHoy and I were screaming non stop till everyone on the beach front could hear us. The boys fell off each time cos the guy was dragging them so fast!!! much faster than us girls. The second time we went.. the rain was pouring down and the speed that we were going at was so fast that it felt like we had little pebbles being thrown at our faces. We couldn't open our eyes. so just SCREAM.

it was over before we knew it. and we saw that the clouds had come in and we couldn't even see the islands and mountains across the sea that we had seen so clearly when we first starting tubing. that was scary.

We had a nice pizza lunch at the cafe and just chatted and relaxed a little before our minivan came to pick us up to go to the craft centre to do a little bit more shopping (nothing much) and then back to church directly.

The rain was now coming down non stop and we could see the water level rising in some of the low areas... when we had reached Suva city again, Hsien received a phone call from Dr Peter Chen advising that the road to Nadi was now flooded and we might not be able to travel back to Nadi for our connecting flight to Sydney by coach tomorrow.

They had proceeded with booking domestic air tickets for us and we had to go to the domestic airport at Nausori to pay and issue the air tickets. Poor Hsien and Dr Peter Chen went off with Pastor Herbert once we reached the church to go to get the air tickets (the airport is about 30 mnins drive away from the church) whilst the rest of us showered and got ready for our dinner appointment with our host family and another family from church.

They came back with the news that the atm at the airport wasn't working and they did not accept credit cards. The good news was that the tickets were confirmed and reserved though. So now we had the choice to Coaching it (if the water receeds) or Flying it.

We headed out for another chinese restaurant dinner....they ordered really nice food for us till we were so full!!! Of course not saying that Hu Die's cooking is not nice, just that at least we did not have to worry about cooking and cleaning up.

We were so tired that we all crashed into bed once we reached home.. knowing that there was church early tomorrow morning and we would have to prepare for all the kids' parents coming to watch them perform....