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On the flight from Christchurch to Auckland which preceded the flight to Fiji, I was sitting next to an old couple. I was tired and didn’t feel much like talking, but nonetheless decided it would be rude not to make polite conversation with them. I was engaged in light and pleasant banter with the woman for the best part of 30 minutes. Then the women stopped talking. I noticed she was now in a transfixed in a zombie-like state. Her husband asked if she was OK but she did not respond. Having recently watched “28 weeks later” I imagined her next move might be to eat our faces. I shuffled my body slightly closer to the window so that if this was how the flight was going to pan out, she would at least eat her husbands face first, giving be a chance to escape, obtain a weapon of some descript (possibly a plastic fork) and return to destroy her.

Her husband continued to try to get a response from her but to no avail. He called over the air stewardess (which I’m quite sure is not the politically correct term for them) and she instantly recognised the look on her face and encouraged her to be sick. Apparently there was a women further back on the plane who was in the same state.

There was no sick bag in her seat pocket, so her husband held out his bag under her mouth, She filled the first sick bag and showed no sign of stopping. The scene was now something between The Exorcist and Airplane! I was sure glad I hadn’t eaten the fish!

I fumbled around for my sick bag and held it under her mouth whilst she continued to vomit. Once she’d filled that one, she still looked like she had more to chuck up and as we’d now exhausted the supplies of sick bags in our aisle, the husband had to ask the person behind for one. So I’m holding one sick bag, the husband is holding 2 sick bags and I just let my mind wander back to better days when I’d be flying Business class and wouldn’t have to deal with this shit. Where the hell had the ar stewardess fone? This woman was still throwing up and we were running out of hands.

Luckily the third bag was enough for her to get it out of her system. And with us holding little bags full of her vomit, she carried on talking like nothing ever happened.

The connecting flight from Auckland to Nadi international airport
In Fiji was thankfully without incident.

I stayed the first night in Nadi, a place where most people just stay for a night when coming in or out of Fiji. It’s not renowned for anything in particular, nonetheless, the Resort I stayed was excellent; great food, great accommodation, great people.

From Fiji

And the weather was beautiful.. As I watched the sun set on the beach, I thought if this is the worst of Fiji, I going to have a pretty amazing time here. That night I sorted out a weeks Kitesurfing which would begin the following day, in a place I had not heard of. I looked up Nananu Ira in the Lonely Planet guide, which to be frank, didn’t tell me a great deal.

The Lonely Planet is generally an excellent guidebook, but every once in a while, it’s commentary or lack thereof does a place a complete disservice and you discover a real gem of a place off the beaten trial. I remember this being true of Haad Yuan beach on Koh Phagnan in Thailand, which turned out to be one of my favourite places – probably ever.

It was true again today. The Fiji Lonely Planet has very little to say about the Island of Nanunau Ira. I would probably never have having given it a second look were it not for the fact that’s it’s the only real place in Fiji where you can learn to Kite-surf, but before taking the little motor boat over, I had no idea what to expect.

Suffice to say, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the postcard perfect beaches and reefs; a quiet unspoiled paradise.

From Fiji

From Fiji

From Fiji

And so began my week of Kite surfing. Having flown power kites before and having some experience on a snowboard, my instructor had high hopes for me. I was in the water ready to start riding in no time.

The first time I lost my board, before I had a chance to bodydrag myself back to it, a guy in a passing motor boat stopped and threw it to me, correction threw it at me. With my hands still on the kite bar, I didn’t have a chance to react before it hit me square in the face cutting up my eye and nose. Of course, I didn’t realise my face was split until I started seeing red and tasting blood.

A kiteboarder has never been killed by a shark which is attributed to the fact that the shadow of a 12’ kite is bigger than most things in the water so anything that could attack would have to be pretty ballsy. But even with this knowledge, as the blood flowed down my face into the sea, god I hoped the sharks weren’t hungry.

From Fiji

The first night and the guesthouse, the locals held a Kava party. Fijian’s can’t really take their alcohol but they drink a lot of Kava, a mildly narcotic drink that makes your lips and tongue go numb and with continued, consumption, your head and the rest of your body until eventually, you pretty much just fall asleep!

It was an excellent week kite-surfing and chilling out, but in hindsight, it was a bit of a rip-off. I spent more in my one week kite-surfing than transport, accommodation and all my tours in the 3 weeks I spent travelling up the east cost of Australia, The owner was trying it on with the single female guests despite having a partner and a kid also living at the house. The bus driver was making exchanges of little bags of white powder for cash on the way back (I’m not going to speculate) and I incurred a manner of “hidden” charges. Nonetheless, It set me up with Kite-surfing for life and I guess that’s the price you pay for a little piece of paradise.

I then went back to Nadi and spent a night at Smugglers Cove were I stayed on my first night in Fiji to meet up with Caroline, a girl I met on Fraser island, who had just flown into Fiji.