I arrived in Fiji, groggy from a night flight spent contorting myself away from the sweaty thigh of the rotund gentleman next to me and unsure what to expect. Worlds apart from the the stern Australian customs bureau that greeted me in Melbourne, I stepped off the plane to the sound of a live band and smiles from friendly airport staff, with cries of ‘BULA!’ (hello).

I was picked up by the friendly driver sent by the hostel to scoop me up, and on clambering into the minivan was told to slam the door multiple times until it finally clicked. Despite its rickety state, the driver seemed optimistic enough of its abilities to drive it like a rally car and nearly clipped a pedestrian on our right hand side. While this made me fear for our lives, it did make me feel slightly better about my own driving. He revealed to me that unlike many commonwealth countries, Fiji has a very favourable view of the UK and stopped to pick up the newspapers, swiftly realising that he had been so busy chatting that he had forgotten to pick up a passenger. He offered me a paper and took the other, while we waited for this poor passenger to catch up, before hurtling on towards the hostel, scooping up several local women coming to work at the hostel along the way, who boarded with a cheery ‘Bula!’

My first hostel was cheap but functional and the clientele of young travellers proved a welcome change to rattling around by myself in Melbourne. I did however feel rather homesick, perhaps due to the challenge of having to put myself out there and make friends from scratch, made slightly more difficult as the majority of the guests there had just finished volunteering together for a month and were keen to discuss their experiences together. However, I decided the only way to resolve this would be to strike up conversations with some strangers and I ended up meeting some lovely people- particularly my Harry Potter mad roommate who hailed from Switzerland.

The next day I caught the Yasawa Flyer to Beachcomber island, kicking off my island-hopping adventure and was greeted with singing as our little transfer boat to the island moored in the shallows. I was presented with a tasty welcome drink and shepherded to the large dorm in which I would be staying, complete with sturdy wooden bunks that required a fair amount of athleticism to scale- particularly after a night at the bar or an early wakeup.

The island was small, flat and breezy, with lush landscaped gardens and our accommodation in the middle. The beach was gorgeous but as I soon found out- deadly due to its coarse corally sand. Walking on what felt like lots of tiny shards of pottery totally removed any hope of a Bond-girl- esque exit from the water and for the first time in my life, I found myself yearning for the neoprene and velcro beach shoes that were mandatory under my mother’s footwear dictatorship on family holidays. At the age of 11 I had pronounced such shoes to be social suicide but perhaps what frustrated me more than now coveting such hideous shoes as I minced out of the water on stingy bare feet, was the thought of having to tell my mum that she had been right all along to make us wear them….

Renowned as the ‘party island’, Beachcomber highlights included learning the ‘Bula dance’ (lots of hip thrusting and shouting Bula) to be demonstrated on return at a function near you, uncomfortably being forced to ‘dance along’ while a Fijian lady concluded the karaoke competition with a breathy rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On’, and yelling a German song with a synthy chorus of DEPP DEPP DEPP JOHNNY DEPP late at night in the bar. For the first time since I had arrived in Fiji, I began to really relax and enjoy myself, not only as a result of the cocktails on offer but also due to the eclectic but wonderful bunch of people I met there, who provided many interesting conversations, jokes so bad they were good and a repertoire of questionable dance moves.

The next day, I reluctantly left Beachcomber, already missing my new acquaintances and was propelled on the Flyer to Naqalia, a family run lodge. Once again, we were welcomed with a song and quickly scooped out of the boat and embraced by Mary, Attu and their family, with exclamations of ‘Welcome home!’. We were told that we were now officially part of their family and joined them for a competitive game of volleyball and a whole family game of musical statues in the evening, along with learning an EXTENDED version of the Bula dance (friends you are in for a treat when I get back) and the Fijian macarena- faster version with more aggressive hip thrusts (spot the pattern emerging).

Here we were treated to more of the interesting food combinations prevalent in Fijian cuisine, such as fish, pineapple, spaghetti, rice and ketchup all on our plates. All our meals seemed to include triple carbs, heaped plates and have been underscored by Mary clucking at us and running round with a pan of omlettes exclaiming ‘EEEAT UP! More food! More food!’.

On our first afternoon we went snorkelling, which was fantastic due to the clear turquoise ocean and the reef teeming with marine life that remained seemingly unfazed by us paddling overhead. We also got to watch our guide free dive to the bottom of the reef for over 2 minutes to fish, returning to the boat with 5 rainbow bright fish impaled on his spear.

Perhaps the defining activity of this stay so far has been the Summit ‘Walk’, which really should have been renamed ‘Summit death trek’ to watch the sunset. Having expected a fairly significant but drawn out incline, I was horrified at the almost vertical climb that ensued and even more so by my fellow climbers ability to nimbly scale the rocks like mountain goats, while I plodded along at the back like a wheezy old donkey. On arriving at the summit I felt proud I had made it to the top and gazed out at the beautiful view of the island. However, this brief respite was shattered by the news that this was not in fact the summit and that we would in fact be climbing the point across the valley that was twice as tall as the one we had just conquered.

It was even harder going, made even more frustrating by our guide’s seemingly effortless ability to gambol up the rockface, letting slip he did this twice a day. I was becoming increasingly aware that we were lodging with a family of superhumans, who could not only smash a volleyball across a court or hold their breath for minutes at a time, but also ran up mountains for fun.

I reached the flat rock bed just below the summit, panting and consoling myself that if I did go into cardiac arrest, at least it would be within a picturesque surrounding. I heaved my aching legs up the last stretch, contemplating which version of ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ to play at my funeral and was amazed by what I found.

We had a panoramic view across the island, as the evening sky erupted in a display of pink, orange and purple (something that the pictures don’t really convey YOU JUST HAAAAD TO BE THARRR YAH) and we looked down on the tiny villages that were little dots of light below. We took the time to simply sit down and marvel (for me at the fact I had survived but also at the view) before making the treacherous descent to our lodgings in the dark, peppered with reggae covers of Queen on our guides’ phone and me falling over.

While we have had the odd gripe of bedbugs, mosquitoes, cold showers and paying for bottled water to dodge the local sources, this has fundamentally been a stay full of warmth, joy, dance and song. The more I see of Fiji, the more evident it becomes that here, hospitality is never a conscious effort it is simply part of everyday life. At Naqalia, our time has not been filled with the flash trips of a luxury holiday, but simply wonderful people welcoming us with open arms and showing us what they love best about this amazing place in which they live, which for me has made this trip all the better.

Will I get eaten alive by mosquitoes? Will I get killed off by another ‘walk’? Stay tuned for more updates from the islands!