Sunday, Andy got up early to take sunrise pictures of my parents.  Much to my mom’s annoyance, my dad made it difficult to get a good photo of the both of them but there are actually a dozen or so good ones.  One of Andy and I’s favorites is a picture where my dad is coming towards the camera and my mom stands in the background looking annoyed.

I read a bit when I woke up and then did my daily walk on the beach.  I walked past a woman who asked how I was handling the heat being pregnant.  I told her that it was definitely hot, but manageable but I was very glad our hotel has AC.  She said that her hotel (the Uprising) does not and that it is killing her.  I mentioned that my sister is staying there as well and that every time I go down there, I get overheated.  She said, “oh is your sister the one getting married?”  (Everyone at the Uprising knows Anna and Derik).  I said, “why yes.”  She replied, “Oh we are all excited about the wedding, what time is it again?”  I told her that I was not sure, but thought it was funny that so many people are aware of the wedding.  I wonder how many people are going to show up.  Anna has told me they are only feeding eight people, but anyone who wants to can come.

After a mile of walking, I met up with my dad and we walked a couple more miles together.  We ran into the same woman again and chatted a bit more.  It turns out she is Welsh and is here on a round-the-world airline ticket for scuba diving.  I thought that our journey was long.  She traveled from the U.K. to LA before coming to Fiji.  Yikes!

For breakfast, I talked Andy into splitting some banana pancakes and eggs benedict.  They were both fantastic and we left breakfast singing the Jack Johnson “Banana Pancakes” song.

Sereana at the pool bar

We spent the morning in the best palapa in the world which Andy is now dubbing “the love shack”.  After a short nap, I hung out with Anna and then Vicky in the pool and Sereana, our daily pool bartender made me another of her signature fruit smoothies.  I had asked her for one a few days earlier and she asked if I just wanted fruit juices mixed.  I said instead that I would love it if she could use real fruit from the hotel.  The next thing I knew, she was walking around the hotel collecting fruit from the various restaurants for my smoothie.  She is such a sweetie and we found out yesterday that she actually requested to work while we are here and not take a day off until we leave.  We are hoping that she will be off work in time for the wedding as she now knows all of our family members by name.

At 2PM, Andy, my dad, Anna and I boarded a fishing boat which we were supposed to be on for an hour.  When we had not caught anything in an hour, Andy extended the trip to two hours.  At two hours, we had only caught one barracuda so he extended the trip until 5PM.  We still never caught anything that we could have the hotel cook up for us (barracuda are not edible) but regardless it was a wonderful trip.  We traveled all of the way to two of the other islands that we can see from our beach.  One is nicknamed “picnic island” and is a favorite for honeymooners since it is very small and has a white sandy beach.  The other island is very large and incredibly green and lush.  It houses nine villages and a couple of resorts.  We found out later that despite being so close to Pacific Harbour, Sereana has never visited this island and does not feel she could go without being invited.  The local customs and traditions still run very strong here. Net, the captain, drove our boat up to one of the American-owned resorts which you could barely see from the water.  I am very impressed with the fact that all of the resorts we have seen in this part of Fiji can barely be seen from the beach which they are built on.  There are not any large resorts that tower above the ocean. Besides seeing the other islands, the highlight of the fishing trip was seeing three large sea turtles and a school of fishing jumping in unison trying to escape their predator which we wished to catch, but didn’t.

One of the amazing things about the day was that there was no rain.  Anna is worried this is going to have negative repercussions for the weather for the wedding tomorrow.  Hopefully this is not the case.

My parents, Derik’s parents and Andy and I had dinner at the same restaurant in our hotel that we had eaten the night before, but it was Thai night so the menu was completely Thai.  I was so exhausted that I almost excused myself before dinner arrived and went to bed, but I stuck it out while listening to a lengthy full account of Derik’s brother’s ex-girlfriend from Vicky.  After dinner we collapsed in our bed.  Vacation is hard work.

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