Tuesday only had ten hours for me on this occasion. Well, that's what the bloody International Date Line does for you! The plane left Nadi, Fiji on Tuesday morning (we just had time for a bit of breakfast before being whisked off in a taxi to the insanity that is Nadi airport of a morning) and arrived two hours later in Apia, Samoa, on Wednesday morning.

Apia was even more sultry and tropical than Fiji, which was quite a feat. Once again there was a band to greet us, but I have to admit I thought the Fijians were better. Although the Fijians didn't have someone playing the spoons, which was a nice touch. We grabbed our bags and then found ourselves in the arrivals hall airport, wondering how to get to town. I had nightmare visions, Moscow Sheremetyevo airport stylee, of hoards of gold-toothed criminals trying to make me pay through the nose for a dodgy taxi ride. It wasn't as bad as all that. Eventually we saw that there was a bus to Apia soon to leave.

It began to rain lightly as the bus pulled away from the terminal building, but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation. In fact it was like a concentration of humidity into drops that somehow felt better on the skin.

I was captivated by the sights that glided past me as I gazed out of the glassless window. We passed hundreds of fales - local-style houses open to the elements built in an oblong design, some roofed with corrugated iron, others thatched - each in a lush garden with tropical flowers and shrubs. Some of the houses had the graves of loved ones set in the garden in front of them. The fales were painted all different colours, and the people on the street were wearing sarong-type garments of many different colours & patterns. It must have been school home-time, because there were hundreds of kids in uniforms walking along in groups or alone.

The bus is laid on for tourists (but still cheap for all that), and in Apia it toured around a few different accommodation options. We had spoken with other people on the bus and settled on the Samoan Outrigger Hotel as our first choice. This was a budget place a little outside the centre of town, so we got to have a mini tour of town on our way there. In general I got the impression there isn't as much money in Samoa as in Fiji. Things were a little grottier and a little less intense than in Suva or even Nadi, but pleasant enough.

The hotel was lovely, with rich wooden floors and walls & a small pool table in the foyer. We dumped our bags, popped out for a bite to eat in a nearby small shop cum café, and then crashed for a mid-afternoon nap. Well, after all it was tomorrow, and that morning had been yesterday...

Argh! And double-argh! I awoke from my forty winks, chatted with Dan about our flights and then had the sudden realisation that I had made a mistake in my flight bookings! Bloody bloody International Dateline bloody! I had made subsequent arrangements to leave Auckland on Thursday week to fly up to Hong Kong in time to be at Wai-Chung's stag do on the Friday, but now I checked my Apia - Auckland ticket and discovered that despite leaving Samoa on Thursday at 4am I wouldn't arrive in Auckland until 8am Friday - only four hours later but that little bit further west to make all the difference. I immediately rang Air New Zealand in Samoa to see what could be done, and the woman told me to pop in to their office tomorrow.

In the evening we walked into town, reaching the main drag known as Beach Road and then turning left along the waterfront towards the centre until we reached the Clock Tower. The storm clouds building out over the sea were shaded from white through pinks and reds to black by the setting sun, and provided a dramatic backdrop for the many boats in the harbour. We saw many Samoans going about their business, and bloody hell are some of them huge! I felt positively svelte in comparison. No wonder the Aussies & Kiwis snap them all up for their rugby teams.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Rainforest Café, which is run by a German couple. And Samoa has Germany to thank for the taste sensation that is Vailima, Samoa's very own beer. Not because (as I had been told previously) the brewery was built by the Germans while Samoa was a colony of theirs from 1900 to 1914, but because it was built in 1978 by a German entrepreneur. We had a few of these before walking back to the hotel in the heat of the evening. A couple of games of pool and then to bed.

The following morning, as promised, we went to the Air New Zealand Travel Centre. Dan too had decided to change his travel plans, and head home a few days early - that evening in fact - to get his head together for the recommencement of his studies. Imagine my chagrin when I learned that the seat I had discussed with the woman over the phone was gone - she hadn't held it for me - and I had to go up a fare class to get on the Wednesday flight (arriving Thursday; it doesn't matter how many times I type it, it still doesn't fit in my head). But oh well, I said to myself, it's only money. And I couldn't miss the stag do.

Apia was hot that day. We walked from Air NZ to the city's main market but didn't fancy the look of any of the food there, so we backtracked and had an extortionately expensive fruit smoothie in a Western-looking street café before finding a cafeteria type eating area tucked away behind a motor garage which was thronging with people and had more acceptable food.

We settled on the Chinese food counter. How crap is this? Here I was in Samoa, and I couldn't bring myself to eat any of the local food. But to be honest, it all seemed very lardy: deep-fried lumps of battered fish or meat; random cuts of greasy pig flesh; boney crap you'd hesitate before giving to a dog. Perhaps it was just the mood I was in or the weather or something. Anyway, the most familiar type of food was the one we went for - but at least with the Samoan twist of having bananas instead of rice. Which was weird. Then I had the juice of a yummy green coconut to cleanse my palate.

In the afternoon we went to the Palolo Deep Marine Reserve just east of town behind the wharf. It's a massive area of coral garden with a sudden sinkhole in the middle of it. The current was a bit hard going on the way out from the beach, but at least we got washed back into shore with minimal effort. There were loads & loads of fish, and I really enjoyed being able to point out species I recognised to Dan; all those scuba dives have taught me something after all.

Exhausted from our snorkelling efforts, we stopped on the way back into town for a quick beer at a nice-looking guesthouse. Well, one beer became two beers, and then our stomachs demanded chips, and then we had some toasted sarnies as well. These things happen. We got to chatting with one of the waiters, who it turns out was on a placement from his Hospitality Studies course. What a nice chap! He was so open & approachable I couldn't help myself: I had to ask whether Samoan men wear pants under their lavalavas.

Sorry, maybe I haven't mentioned that the traditional dress for men & women in these parts is a sarong-like wraparound material in bright colours, called a lavalava. Well, in fact they do. Wear pants, that is. Not like those Scots. But then again, the Fijians don't have the benefit of a sporran to hold things in place, so any gust of wind could lead to embarassment for this very conservative people.

We had got up to leave the bar and were about to walk away when we saw the two girls Dan had been talking to on the bus in from the airport at a table at the other end of the bar. We sat with them and spent a few hours chatting. Then we took our weary selves back to the Outrigger and had a few more games of pool (it's official: Dan whooped my ass something like 9 frames to 2). Dan went to have a sleep in my room (I had taken an outdoor fale, of which the Outrigger has four in its garden) while I went and had a shower and read my book.

At midnight I woke Dan. It was time for him to pack, because a taxi was coming at one to take him to the airport. I was pretty tired by now, but I didn't want to fall asleep until I had said goodbye to Dan. It was a shame to part company after only ten days, but c'est la vie. He went back into the hotel lobby to meet his ride, and I crawled under my mosquito net and was lulled to sleep by the nighttime sounds from the garden.

Sunday morning was a bit hectic. Dan woke me up with a solution to all our travel problems. Instead of waiting until the afternoon to be told we wouldn't be able to get on the Sunday flight because it was already full (which was a 99% likelihood), he had arranged boat transport back to Suva. The only thing was, we had to leave in the next ten minutes. We just had time to shovel in a quick breakfast before we walked down to the harbour with another couple from the Royal Hotel. We were in fact hitching a ride on their boat to the island of Caqalai (pronounced Thangalai), and would then go on from there back to the mainland.

Caqalai is a little slice of heaven! It is the textbook desert island, with smooth golden sands, swaying palms, azure waters and the sort of stillness where the gentle lapping of waves on the beach is a symphony. We had three hours to enjoy this idyll (including a superb lunch of Fijian specialities). And we did! Snorkelling in the hot waters, lazing on the sands, doing a complete circuit on foot in under half an hour. Then it was time to leave. We set off in another small boat, this time with some Fijian passengers. One of the crew looked like some sort of albino - at least, his hair was a really bleached colour and he had very Icelandic skin for a Fijian. I didn't think true albinos could have freckles though, but I may be mistaken.

We sped across the shallow coral sea under a sweltering sun, relieved only by the occasional splash of wake in our faces whenever we changed course. Then, all of a sudden, we were no longer on the sea but in a mangrove-lined river which twisted and turned at ninety-degree angles. Eventually we pulled up at a jetty below a bridge, unloaded all passengers and cargo, and waited for a minivan to bring us into town. A fellow passenger, a kind lady from Nadi who had been visiting relatives on Caqalai, told us what we needed to know about this form of transport. It seems there is an unofficial bus service in operation. The minivan we jumped into was picking up and dropping off at various points along the main road to Suva.

I was interested to see that some of the houses we passed had decorated their section of the roadway with what looked like upturned clubs (of the hit you over the head variety) reminiscent of weapons I had seen from Pacific Island displays in NZ museums. They seemed to be serving the purpose of edge-of-road markers, with white painted tops. When we reached the airport, the minivan stopped and we all got out. Luckily, by this time we knew where we were and we could get a taxi to the Raintree Lodge - but not before gorging ourselves on Indian sweets from a typical Fijian "bean cart" (a glass-panelled Indian sweet stall on wheels). Then we checked in, chilled out, washed some clothes, had dinner, played cards and went to bed.

Our last full day in Fiji started with a pleasant breakfast by the side of the man-made lake which serves as a backdrop for the Raintree Lodge, itself grandly surrounded by the first stands of rainforest of the Colo-i-Suva forest. After checking out, we got a taxi into Suva and ran various errands (not least a hearty lunch of chow mein in the market area of town).

We weren't sure how to get back to Nadi, whether by bus or in a taxi, when someone in the internet cafe we happened to be in suggested to us that we take a Nadi-based taxi on its return journey. These congregate in one area of town and wait for passengers to fill them before setting off. We managed to negotiate a reasonable rate after some initial posturing on both sides, and shared our taxi with a medical student returning home to Nadi for holidays. He was a friendly chap who didn't have a trace of an accent - well, at least not a Fijian one. He sounded like a lot of the kids I went to school with in London: second- or third-generation British Asians who basically have no discernible Indian accent but still retain a certain something.

The journey back to Nadi along the south coast of Viti Levu (Fiji's main island) was resaonably scenic. Sadly we didn't have time to visit the famous sand dunes, but we did see mangroves, secluded beaches, and stretches of forest. Back at Nadi, we returned to the Nadi Bay Hotel for one night. We had dinner at one of the nearby restaurants and then turned in.

The trip to Ovalau island on Friday was groovy! We had found out the night before that we didn't have to get up at a god-awful hour because the flight was delayed by two hours. So we got a taxi from Motel 6 to the French bakery and stuffed our faces with croissants and Danish pastries, washed down with the nearest they come to fresh orange juice around these parts (it was a bit like Fanta). Then the same taxi came back and took us out to the airport, some 40 minutes north out of town.

Once there, we checked in our luggage at the Air Fiji desk. Then, horror of horrors, I was asked to step onto the baggage scales! I thought this was some shocking sizist discrimination, but in fact it was so they could balance the plane in terms of who sat where. When we got out onto the tarmac, I could understand why: it was a dinky 12-seater turboprop plane, not dissimilar to the one I had flown over the Banks Peninsula in NZ. The flight lasted all of ten minutes, consisting of a take-off, a bank to the left, a cruise out over the sea, and a bumpy landing on a grass runway in the middle of a load of rainforest. Oh yes, this is the tropics!

There was a minivan to take us into Levuka, the island's only town and the first capital of Fiji back in 1862 or so. Dan had arranged accommodation for us at the Royal Levuka Hotel, which is the town's oldest and most opulent. But don't get too excited, we're very much talking faded glory here. It was a great place, if a little shabby at the edges. There was a room with a full-size snooker table (the lights for which were controlled by a coin-operated mechanism that could have come straight out of a Frankenstein movie), a foyer with wicker armchairs, a small bar area and a sun-lounge at the front. The rooms were what must once have been splendid but were now tired, with balconies giving on to the road at the front or the garden at the rear. We dumped our bags and headed into town for a wander.

Well, it being Diwali and a bank holiday, there wasn't too much going on in town. All the restaurants were shut until evening, but we managed to creep into a shoe shop (I've never had a lock-in not in a pub before) for Dan to buy some sturdy walking shoes. Then, after a rather disappointing lunch at the hotel, we were joined by a Kiwi chap who is a sub-editor on the New Zealand Herald for a two-hour guided walk around town. Our guide was George, a long-time resident and ex-mayor of Levuka. What a lovely man! He had a gentle voice and a gentle sense of humour, and his smile reminded both me & Dan of our good friend H.

George took us off in another direction entirely, and it transpired we had missed out over half of town on our pre-lunch meander. We saw lots of churches, the tribal area at the edge of town, the school, the police station, the Ovalau Club and the wharf, where we found a group of local men huddled drinking kava. George explained that since the opening of the fish processing plant in the 1960s (our noses had already alerted us to its presence on arrival that morning), which tends to employ only women, there had been something of a gender role reversal in Levuka: now the women went out to work, and the men looked after the kids. Clearly, give men a chance to hang about and do nothing and they will quickly form social groups and start drinking. I didn't need to visit Levuka to learn that, but I found yet more proof of it here.

That evening Dan & I went to a recommended European style restaurant for dinner, then had a few games of snooker before retiring.

Saturday was a day of ups & downs. In the geographical sense, because we did a walk through the rainforest, and in the emotional sense because we ended up having a bit of fun at the airport. More on that later. The tour was good. It was a fun group, consisting of the two of us, two middle-aged ladies (one Brit and one Yank) who work in Suva, a nice young couple from Melbourne Emily & Pete, plus our Kiwi journalist friend.

We were driven to the other side of the island, to a village up in the hills. Our guide lives in the village, and showed us around first in the village (including the chief's house, where we left our offerings of kava as thanks for being allowed in the village grounds) and then in the hills above. He explained the medicinal uses of almost every plant we past, and led us up to the top of what turned out to be a crater rim. The village sits inside the crater, and the sides of the crater are used to grow crops such as taro, cassava, sugar cane, breadfruit and other fruits.

We walked back down and stopped at a swimming hole before going back to the guide's house for a traditional lunch. This consisted mostly of root vegetables - kumala (sweet potato), cassava & taro - with some other dishes, such as fried aubergines and the Fijian speciality of palusami which is coconut flesh wrapped in taro leaves and baked. This was all washed down with tea made from the leaves of a lemon-flavoured plant steeped in hot water. It was most refreshing.

We had arranged to be dropped off not back at the hotel but at the airport, to catch a plane back to Suva. We had even had the foresight to ring that morning and confirm the departure time. And a good job we had, because the flight was going to be leaving half an hour earlier than the time on our tickets. So imagine our horror when we got to the airport in good time for the revised schedule, only to discover that the plane had left even earlier than it was supposed to! Without us! I was amused by the chaotic nature of Fijian timekeeping - which I have to admit I had expected to err always on the side of lateness, and never to be early. Dan was rather cross. His ire was not soothed by the amusement of our fellow tour passengers. But eventually we had to accept that it was done and we must needs go back to Levuka.

Thankfully, the Royal Hotel could put us up for another night. We went for dinner with the other guys from the tour at the Chinese restaurant. Lots of beer and good food helped put Dan in a happier mood, but he was exhausted by the day's events and retired early. I went on with the others to take up the invitation of a Fijian woman also staying at our hotel, who had before dinner suggested we join her at her nephew's house for a bit of kava. We eventually found the house of the nephew, next door to the police station. Opposite us the whole youth of the village was in the Ovalau Club dance hall, but we found some small boys to direct us.

We were admitted into the first room of the house, which serves as kava room, and the nephew was soon mixing up a bowl of kava for us. Quickly we were joined by drinking pals of his - some of whom were police officers, some of them on duty (but nothing ever happens, so why let being at work spoil a chance to drink kava?) - and chatting and socialising.

The kava was less hideous-tasting than I had been led to expect, but it was also less potent too. My tongue was slightly numbed by the eight or ten coconut shells full I drank that evening, but otherwise I was unaffected. Give me an intravenous shot of vodka every time!

The ritual aspect of the kava drinking was nice though. There was a strict order of drinking, with the rotation starting with guests, in this instance us, the whiteys. A round of drinking was only begun when the first person in the rotation (it was Emily) spoke a particular Fijian word (oh my God! perhaps it did have an effect after all - I can't remember the word now). The not-so-subliminal signal for Emily to say the word was when the local guys fell silent from their chatting and looked over at her.

After the word, our host would fill the half a coconut shell to either "low tide" (half a cup - for ladies) or "high tide" (a full measure) and then handing it to person whose turn it was to receive the kava. This person had to clap their hands once and say "cheers" in Fijian before downing the kava. Then everyone in the room (drinker included) had to clap their hands three times. Then the shell would be passed back to our host and the next person in the rotation would be served.

All the while, we were sat on the floor on woven mats, with our backs against the concrete walls for support, and ensuring our feet didn't point at anyone. The host's wife sat in the doorway to the next room, not quite with us but still participating in the conversation, and a couple of their kids were also observing from the doorway or an internal window. It sort of reminded me of when I was young and I used to half-participate in the grown-ups' talking & drinking out under the awning of my aunty Inge's house in Austria. Only here in Fiji there was no uncle Otto playing the zither.

It has been some time since I was travelling with anybody else. It seems ages ago that I was making my way round Southeast Asia with Frankie. In the intervening period I've basically been on my own, albeit visiting lots and lots of great people along the way. Now I was to start a new period of non-solo travel, because Thursday was the day that Dan was flying in to Fiji.

Right on schedule (well, the schedule of hastily-enacted Plan B via Oz) Dan appeared bright & not so breezy early on Thursday morning. He was knackered after his long detour and I was still half-asleep, but still neither of us could hide the enthusiasm of our reunion, with lots of giggling and general mirth. On this set of travels my homesickness - actually it's more people-from-home-sickness - isn't as acute as it was before the summer, but suddenly there was Dan and it was really exciting to be talking with someone from home. It made me realise that it's almost three months since I left the UK now.

We had a quiet day in and around the Nadi Bay Hotel, popping out for a bite to eat at a nearby eatery (which was below par to be honest) and a spot of late-night emailing at a neighbouring hotel. There were plenty of stories for the both of us to catch up on, and that we did with relish.

Friday was Remembrance Day, which the Fijians take quite seriously judging by appearances. We decided to make an early start (assisted in this decision by the brightness of the sun and the roar of jetplanes approaching the runway situated a stone's throw from our bedroom window), and grabbed a cab into Nadi proper. From there we took a coach along the south coast to Suva, the capital of Fiji and the biggest city by a long chalk in the whole of the South Seas. The transition from Thailand-style country highway to traffic-clogged smelly urban trunk road was a shock. And the landfill site with actual fires raging on it was a sorry sight indeed.

Suva was buzzing. Despite the grot it has a certain charm. The pavements were thronged with people going about their business. The bus station was a chaotic affair but quite central. We got out, donned our rucksacks and walked towards our chosen accommodation. But alas! the first hotel on the Lonely Planet list is no more! In its stead we found a fish market and lots of dodgy geezers trying to sell me weed.

So we headed up the hill to the second on the list, perspiring by this stage in the fetid heat of the exhaust fumes. But alack! the second establishment was also no more! We went up the stairs to it anyway, hoping the "Closed until further notice" notice was a figment of our imagination. Sadly it wasn't, but inside we found a couple of very helpful young Indian guys who pointed us in the direction of a motel, Motel 6 to be exact. A short cab ride (by this time we were bored of walking) took us there, and moments later we were checked in by extremely helpful staff.

We were both a bit peckish now, so after a quick de-luggaging & chill-out we walked back out into the heat towards the centre of town. With fresh T-shirts and minimal bags things were much more bearable. We made our way to a restaurant recommended to Dan that was on the other side of town, a little to the north of the centre. At first we weren't sure we'd found it, because there was absolutely no signage, but we walked in anyway and were greeted by a bizarre buffet of strange foods. The lady behind the counter was friendly & helpful, talked us through all the dishes, and talked us into eating most of them.

Ah! Fijian food! And two master pie-eaters to savour it! We set to the piles of food on our outside table with gusto, actually fighting over the best dish, a bowl of kakoda - marinated fish steamed in coconut cream and lime - like schoolkids. Other greats included weirdy crunchy bunches of "sea grapes" - some sort of seaweed seed pod - in coconut cream, and a lovely spicy lamb curry.

After our feed we booked some flights to Ovalau Island for the next day and then went for a walk along the waterfront. Once again I was offered drugs by passing youths - do I look like a pothead or something? - as we walked along. What began as a bit of aimless wandering turned into a nice twilight walk out north towards the lighthouse, where we hoped to find a bar recommended in LP.

It was pitch dark by the time we actually got there, and our feet were sore, so we ordered a couple of beers and sat on the verandah that was on stilts out over the sea. Of course I'd forgotten to put anti-mozzie cream on my feet, which were proving to be irresistible to the local bloodsuckers. (Funny isn't it, when there's only shite beer to be had - like here in Fiji - your mind convinces itself it's not as bad as all that. Must be some sort of self-defence mechanism.) We had the place to ourselves; the owner was busy painting one of the walls and there were a few waitresses floating about but that was it.

So, there we were sipping beer and chatting about all the shenanigans in the Solomons hospital Dan had been working in (I swear he's got material there for a whole series of piss-funny books), when all of a sudden about thirty police officers descend on the place! It was all very orderly, but there was no disguising it was a raid. We kept our heads down but eventually a policewoman came over to us and took down our particulars. Then another policewoman did the same a bit later. Meanwhile the other twenty-eight boys & girls in blue were busy opening cupboards, packing bottles into boxes and huddling in groups.

After a little while the owner's wife apologised to us for the inconvenience, and asked us whether we wanted to eat anything. We ordered fish & chips, and I made the mistake of asking for two more beers. She politely pointed out that under the circumstances she wouldn't be able to give us beer, so we settled for water. Then her husband came over and told us there was a problem with their licence. At least, the police had a problem with it. Apparently it's not uncommon for the police not to recognise newly-issued publican's licences; it had been issued only two weeks before. He was annoyed not so much at the inspection, but at the fact that he knew that this was the last he'd be seeing of all his stock, which would without doubt disappear into someone's private bar.

It was surreal chatting about this & that while police were scouring the place. It was like, by collective will, we could make the police dematerialise. A memorable night!