It’s unbelievable how fast a month will go by especially when we’re not busy living in reality. (But then again I guess with kids along, there is no such thing as not busy.) We feel so blessed being able to be here and for such a great length of time, even if it feels like we just arrived a few days ago.

Greg and I have had a fondness for Fiji since we first came here during a week of our honeymoon. Not only did we fall in love with the tropical weather and warm ocean — I mean who wouldn’t want to dive in 82˚ water? — but also the wonderful people here. Fijians are super friendly. (I actually wrote a couple of blogs that mention Fiji and Fijians on my blog too… www.thistle-glow.com.) We haven’t been diving all over the world but so far Fiji is our favorite place to dive as the underwater world is vibrantly colorful and full of life. On this trip, we saw the usual eels, the occasional shark, a couple of turtles — I love seeing turtles underwater, one we saw I like to call Hurtle Turtle because of how fast he swam by; the other, well steady won the race right? — tons of fish and a couple of octopi. One octopus we took lots of pictures of as it was crawling across the coral and  changing colors, we’ll share on Reality Interrupted’s gallery.

I won’t bore you with details of our routine play days spending time in pools or playing on the beach. I’ll just share the highlights.

Day 2. We spent some time waiting in the taxi for Marnie while Mason learned to appreciate air conditioning as he was sweating his little hiney off. “God please let the wind come.” After shopping in the grocery store (if you could call it that) we went to the local “farmer’s market”. They had a very large area with families selling their goods. We only made it through half of the area and bought lots of fresh veggies and fruits. We took a break to cool off with a piece of fresh watermelon from one of the vendors then headed back to the boat.

Day 4. Ready head out. That is until Marnie decides to crash onto the dock, splitting open her head and falling into the “icky” water — as Siena called it. After Marnie got her stitches, we left the marina for Musket Cove. I didn’t realize Musket Cove translated into Malololailai island which is where Greg and I spent a week of our honeymoon. We are now lifetime members of Musket Cove for the whopping price of $5 Fijian — which roughly translates to $2.50 U.S.

Day 11. Depart NananuIa to head across Bligh water for leg three of trip to Savusavu. We were one hour in when Siena pukes. Not too much later Greg and Mason both puke same time, one bucket (it was a Kodak moment, if only the camera were close by). Then a cable snaps on the sail so we make a U-turn, head back to where we spent the previous couple of nights.

Day 17. Set off for Yasawa group. Almost made it to Waya Island when we happen to be on top of reef only 12 ft below boat. Oops! Computer GPS and charts say we should be in 100 ft. of water. Uncharted around us so we turned around and went around island the other way; end up yards from point where we turned around 2 hours earlier. We went into bay and anchor — beautiful clear water; can see bottom 30 ft below.

Day 18. Go ashore at Octopus Resort to take hike into village over the mountain, across to the other side of the island. Tour the poor village with ramshackle homes with thatch roofs and outdoor over wood-fire “kitchens”. The kindergarten students sang their English rhymes for us and played with Mason and Siena. The women set up goods they made for us to buy which probably sold for a days wage if they worked in the resort for the measly $3-4/hour.

Day 25. Awesome morning dive at Wilkes Passage where we watched the octopus crawl and change colors. Even master diver Mike who speeds through dives if there’s nothing much to see was impressed with this dive site.

All in all it was an amazing month. And although we want to go home for things like our own bed; we also don’t want to leave tomorrow. But alas, goodbye Reality Interrupted aka Shellette, here we go back to reality.