Natadola Beach

Sunday morning we took a minivan from Sigatoka to the nearby Natadola beach. It was the most beautiful beach I've been to.

When we got here in the morning, we were the only people on the beach. All the beaches I've been to before have been overcrowded and loud, so this was a very nice change. It was in a little bit of a lagoon with land stretching out on either side, but the waves were still decent sized. All along the stretch of sand, waves would fall in unison, 1 at a time. It wasn't like the beaches that I'm used to where you have layers of waves, so instead you'd just hear one loud boom as the wave crashed and then it got very quiet in between. It was a little unsettling, but mostly peaceful.

There were larger breakers about a half mile out from shore, so there must have been a coral reef out there. The sand above these rocks was filled with bits of coral and shells and tons of hermit crabs that couldn't get sucked back out into the surf. If anybody's spent time on a beach with me they know I love looking for little creatures and collecting seashells, so I had a ball with this.

So many shells! I picked up a few handfuls of really beautiful ones that are currently cleaned and sitting on my dresser now - I'm glad I've got some decorations in my room now. I've never found pooka or conch shells out on a beach before (mostly I just find scallop or clam shells), but there were lots of each kind here so I collected a bunch.

The boys built us a wall to try and fend off the creeping tide by where we were all laying out.

But unfortunately the sea eventually outsmarted the wall.

Following this side of the beach to the left, we found a really nice resort. We blended in with all of the Australians and New Zealanders vacationing there and walked right in, grabbed lunch (I've never been so happy to have a burger in my life, it was my first one here since I got in the country) and hung out in the very nice infinity pool overlooking the water. This was the first time since I got here that I hadn't felt like a minority, which was pretty weird since I think I've gotten used to sticking out when I'm in public. It was almost like we weren't in Fiji anymore.

Walking up to the point on the other side of the lagoon. I really suck at anything involving water - while trying to get out of the ocean (which is pretty easy considering that you get one wave at a time so it's easy to time when to get out) I got knocked over by one and tumbled around underwater, swallowing a ton of seawater and getting even more up my nose and temporarily losing my bikini bottom. Damn ocean.

On the drive back, going through lots of hilly farmland in the rural parts of the country.

Like I mentioned before, hermit crabs were everywhere on the beach. Since I spent a lot of time playing around with them, I took a few videos. Here are some just chilling out and scuttling around on their daily business. But, I saw a lot more interesting things. Two hermit crabs were fighting one another over a new shell that they both wanted, and neither would let go. I saw another one speed up to an empty shell, where it immediately jumped out of its old one and into the new one and then ran off with that one without a second thought. And then I got a video of these guys:

I want to call this a battle, although that might be a little dramatic of a description, but you can see that things got heated. These two were clinging onto each other and were rolling around and waving claws and legs and antennae around like crazy. I'm not sure what was going on exactly but it looked serious, so we left them to sort out their problems.

We eventually took the minivan back to our apartments (everybody passed out on the ride back), where I was more than happy to shower away salt and sand and cover my entire body in aloe vera (when will I stop getting awful sunburns in this country while using sunscreen?) For my first visit to the beach in Fiji, I was very happy, and I'm excited to go on more weekend trips.