Barefoot Manta

Ok so as I am sure you have noticed by now, I am a bit slow at getting my posts up on all of the things I am doing. I am doing so much that it hasn’t left me much time to update my site unfortunately.

Our last place that we stay in Fiji was the Barefoot Manta. This was our second favorite place, out of the 4 total places we stayed. This has a few big beaches that allowed you to snorkel right from the beach. It is amazing how much is hidden right under the water in front of you. There was a long sandy path under water and when you got about waist high on either side there was a coral reef as far as you could see. Now, I have traveled to a lot of places and done my fair share of snorkeling…..but this was amazing!!! Plenty of fish that I have never seen and coral that was stunning. It makes me really look forward to the amazing snorkeling that I will get to do in the Great Barrier Reef in a few weeks. The water was so crystal clear and if you swam out just far enough there was a huge drop and you could see 30-40 feet below….if course I stayed as far away from the edge as I could because I still think something is going to get me. Dam Jaws movie!!! LOL I snorkeled in the reef area for a good 2 hours and soaked up every minute of it. Hopefully my pictures and some videos depict what I saw for anyone who sees them.

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Back to the resort itself. We had a little bungalow on the beach that slept 4 people, it was only booked for 3 so that was nice. Each bed had a bug net around it. This time we had to use it at night because there were only 5 windows and if you closed them…..holy hot!! It was interesting sleeping in a bed that is surrounded by a net. I am someone who usually hangs a foot of the side of the bed or what not, but not this night. A. I didn’t want bugs landing on me, B. It wasn’t comfortable to sleep like that. We survived the night with no issues of bugs, so that is a success!

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The hotel served most of its meals at the Sunset bar area. The meals that were included in the price of the stay were really good! I do have to admit, most of the food in the places we stayed was good other than the Beachcomber…which I would suggest you stay away from and find better islands/resorts to go to. We only had one night here at Barefoot Manta but I would definitely go back and stay a few more, especially with all of the different areas you can snorkel to. We also had the chance to weave a hand bag from palm leaves while we were here, unfortunately because of customs we can’t bring a live plant back to Melbourne with us so we had to leave them behind, but we do have pictures.

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We departed to head back to the main island of Fiji via the big boat. We had about a 3 hour ride back which was beautiful BUT hot! There wasn’t much cover from the sun which made up put on long clothes and shield our shoulders and faces…..thank god we had a strong wind from the boat lol.

We end up back at the Smugglers cove for our last night in Fiji. We reconnected back up with a girl from England named Amy, whom we had met our 1st nights there. Talk about a hoot! Amy is such a wonderful person and we hope to meet up with her around Christmas in Melbourne since we will all be in the same vicinity. During our last day, we met Joe the activities staff member and had some nice long talks with him, during the process we mentioned how we had missed all the activities on any island related to coconut bracelets and rings. He made Mary and I each one, and I wear it each day because it is very unique and special. I will miss Fiji and look forward to the day that I can hopefully come back and visit all of the wonderful people that I have met along the way.