Catching Up

We know it's been a while, so hopefully the pictures will make up for the fact that it's been almost 10 days since our last post. As you can see we've been busy. Suva was a fun town, too bad our camera didn't come until the day we left for Yanuca, otherwise we'd have some pictures. We did get to attend the temple there and it was a really neat experience. Wednesday was awesome, we went to a place called Loci-I-Suva with some sweet LDS kids we met. It was this park that had all these pools out in the middle of the forest that were connected by series of waterfalls. We went to the biggest, deepest pool there and it just so happened that there was a rope swing that hung from a tree-limb 30 ft. above the water. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun swinging off the rocks that sat about 18 ft. above the surface into the pool. Austin had the great idea of climbing all 30 feet of the wet, slippery rope to get up to the limb only to find himself exhausted by the time he got there. As he began sliding down the rope back towards the water, he had a bit of a bumpy ride at the end due to all the knots that were in the rope. He's in good shape, but he's still got some of the marks from his rough ride (the photos of which might be considered inappropriate by some). That night the family we were staying with took us out for pizza and it was the best we'd ever had- not because it was all that good, just relative to what we've been used to eating. Thursday morning we split up and Austin went back in Nadi to grab some surfboards while I headed into downtown Suva to get our camera from customs. Too bad they had to confiscate the beef jerky that was so thoughtfully inlcuded (thanks anyways, mom and dad), but we certainly enjoyed all the goodies and especially the camera.

We arrived on Yanuca late in the afternoon last Thursday. It takes about 30 minutes by boat to get to the island, and another 20 minutes to get from the island to Frigates. We welcomed the primitive living conditions- electricity only provided from 6-8 pm by a gas-powered generator and a cold water shower consisting of a 50 gallon barrel full of water attached to a spigget - upon finding that they provided us with much needed mosquito nets. After an amazing dinner (they fed us like kings at this place), we could hardly sleep with the anticipation of surfing Frigates Pass. As you can see, we had the time of our lives. We didn't take any photos on our first day out, but that was okay because the best day for surfing was saturday-which also means it was the most crowded day. Our camera's sweet because these pictures are really just frames from videos we took that you can pause and save as photo documents. Anyways, Sunday we resisted the temptation to surf and had an intimate little sacrament service, followed by a visit to the village where we went to the Methodist church. We received a warm (both in spirit and in temperature) welcome from the villagers and from all the flies. Monday we surfed for about 4 hours and then came back to pack up and head back to the mainland. We missed you out there Steve-O, it was just us and one other guy that was staying at the same resort as us. We then hopped on a bus to Sigatoka (SING-ah-TOE-kah) where we heard there was a beach break. That night we stayed at a home-stay dorm in the local village with our weed-smoking buddy Chongs. We went to surf tuesday, but it wasn't very good and after 45 minutes we'd had enough. They had these cool sand dunes there that we regretfully didn't get any pictures of. Then we hopped on a local bus to go back to Nadi. Too bad we didn't know it wasn't an express bus that takes a straight 1 hour course over the paved highway and ended up having to take the 2 hour course that goes over all the dirt roads through all the local villages between Sigatoka and Nadi as if we were on some off-road safari. It was a fun experience though, and somehow the boards made it without getting too dinged for them to charge us any extra. Now we're just hanging out in Nadi and we'll be leaving for Auckland, NZ on saturday. Well, until next time, we love you all. Take care.

PS- Brit, your emails crack me up! Keep them coming!- Austin