South Sea Island

Pushy sales tactics aside, the cruise itself was amazing.

It's run by a company called South Sea Cruises:

They had a few different cruises available, full-day, half-day, Finding Nemo and some island hopping one. The full-day includes a ferry ride from Port Denaru to South Sea Island and back, buffet lunch, snorkel, paddleboard and kayak hire, the opportunity to do the "submarine" tour, reef snorkelling, volleyball, and if you want to pay a bit extra, scuba diving and massage. There's also a pool on the island, but I didn't try it, as we had this wonderful beach to swim at! The half-day is the same, except you only get half of the day (from 12pm-6). The Finding Nemo tour involves travelling on a boat with a glass bottom, that lets you see the fish underwater. The island hopping one is a ferry ride around a heap of islands in the area, where you can hop off for a brief look at each island.

We were leaving Nadi that day, so we only had time for the half-day.

The island was really nice. It's not that big, you could walk around the entire island in about 5 minutes. The sand was a bit rocky, with bits of dried out coral in it, but mostly it was nice and soft. The water was amazing - nice and calm, really warm, and when we had the snorkelling gear, you could swim around seeing all the fish. My sister got some video footage of some fish jumping out of the water, but we didn't manage to find any of those.

It was my first time snorkelling outside of a swimming pool, and it's more fun than I thought it would be. I had my mask on wrong at the start, and my nose was exposed, so I ended up inhaling a heap of water, but once that was fixed, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I never quite managed to do that thing where you blow the water out of your snorkel when you resurface, but I just took it out of my mouth and upended it before returning under water. I'm not very good at being a fish. :(

Note: There is a limited supply of snorkels, so if you want to go on one of the reef snorkelling trips, it's a good idea to collect your gear about an hour before you go out. This also gives you some time to practice snorkelling on the shore if you've never snorkelled before, rather than making the same mistake I did and thinking I'd be fine out at the reef.

The most fun I had on the island was kayaking. I somewhat enjoyed canoeing while on school camps, but found it exhausting after a while. Now that I'm a lot more fit than I was back then, kayaking was quite enjoyable - a nice combination of active and relaxing at the same time. It was a bit imbalanced, as MrFodder is stronger than me, so we would never go in a straight line, but it was straight enough.

The buffet lunch included some BBQ meats, fried rice, vegetable salad, bread rolls, potato salad, and fruit salad. During lunch, they had a Fijian musical troupe performing some dances and playing songs. It was fun to watch. I think they like to mess around with tourists, as they came up to us and pretended to hit us with their weapons, stopping just short of making contact.

(He was right in front of me when I took that photo.)

It was fun to watch them dance, and I enjoyed watching their feet and how little sand they kicked up despite how fast they were moving and how much they were jumping up and down. Meanwhile, people were fleeing the island from the amount of sand I was kicking up when trying to move around with flippers on (someone eventually told me that it'd be easier if I just walked backwards).

The had hammocks around the island for you to nap in after eating a filling lunch, as well as some lounge chairs under umbrellas.

I thought the half-day was too short, as we only had time for eating, kayaking, a bit of swimming and snorkelling before we had to leave. I had a great time though, and it's definitely my favourite part of the whole trip.