The next day (Sunday 19th) we took it pretty easy. We read and wrote all day. Joe finished the Alan Alda book so we could pass it on, which was great for me because we could talk about the book together finally. We had the same reaction to it: for a "celebrity," he was very much like anyone's grandpa. Alda wrote about existential matters as anyone would talk about learning experiences.
For me, it felt like when I get to talk to people who are going through the early stages of depression. I've been there, done that, and continue to do it with fresh bouts of depression. It's scary, but it's bonding and validating to be able to talk to someone about the experiences. In that same way, talking about or thinking about existential matters (mid-20s crisis anyone?) is scary because it leads you down a road that is dark, but knowing there is someone else who has struggled down the same road is comforting.
I'm sure that my attachment to his character in M.A.S.H. had a big hand in my high approval of the book.
We visited Junior's house that evening to plan the next day. On the way, there are a few stretches without lights and on one particularly long one where there was a little bus-stop alcove, we heard noises that sounded human, but they would quiet very easily. Luckily we were just passing a little shop when this happened, so we backtracked until we felt a little brave. When the same noise of voices and then silence happened, we went back for sure. I was afraid out of my mind because my mind likes to make sure I am utterly alert and terrified. We stayed near the light of the shop until a taxi passed and we paid too much money for the last half mile. But honestly that money was well-spent to get there safely.
Early Monday morning we got on the purple and white, open-air bus towards town. When the bus passed Junior's house, Junior, Fazi, and George hopped on as planned. We got out ten minutes later at an unassuming store front with trinkets and treats and started walking on the road perpendicular to the main road. We passed a few houses, some with kids running around in various shades of undress, and some with chickens and pigs in the side yards and in cages.
Once we left the little town cluster, the road ran through the forest with lovely trees giving us their spare shade. It was a beautiful walk, up to the point when my ears picked up the following statement from George: "These woods can be dangerous sometimes. Sometimes men can get very drunk and hang out here by this road and sometimes will capture a couple walking past and tie the man up to a tree and rape the woman in front of him." Dude, what?! The eff did we get ourselves into?! George spoke it so calmly too, as if it were bad, but not altogether rare. We think now that maybe he was joking. We hope anyway. I could tell Joe had reacted the same way I had because he pulled the pocket knife from its case in his pocket just in case. And he walked a little closer to me.
When we got to "the farm," we were given a tour of all the things growing. They had kava, curry, taro, cassava, bananas, and coconuts. It is here that I learned a little better about land management in Fiji. I already knew that land ownership was very funky. Junior had told us that people don't really "own" land, but tribes of people own land, and citizens can get a 99 year lease of land from the government.
It's a little sticky as to who has the right for all this as well. Junior, born in Fiji but of Indian descent, had fewer land rights than his wife Donna, who is a "native" Fijian. All this really means, however, is that the immigration of her ancestors from Central Africa to Fiji happened BEFORE the immigration of Junior's ancestors from India to Fiji. But Joe and I found ourselves asking the question, who decides the arbitrary number of generations living in Fiji required to make one person native and another not? Donna and Junior were both born in Fiji, but only one had the right to own any land. If I understand it correctly though, they try to solve this grey area by offering citizens the 99 year lease.
Oddly though, people in Fiji don't seem to care much for ownership. If I were cynical or prejudiced, I might say that Fijians are a lazy people, but that's not right. It's weird because I come from a culture where time is money. Americans are an especially efficient people, definitely productive and ambitious, but I don't think I would call Fijians all the negative opposites. These days for Americans communication is instant and life rushes at a thousand miles per hour, and sure, we're great at getting shit done, but I don't think that makes us better. It took me a few days to adjust, but Fiji Time really is a life philosophy. Personal relationships are prized and nurtured in Fiji.
And I think that life philosophy must be carried over into all areas of life. Junior sits on his front porch talking with his children on land that isn't really his own with a house that doesn't consist of much because the concept of housing is much more fluid.
If I understand Junior correctly, people are pretty much free to live where they want to, and pretty much grow anything anywhere they want to. In America, I've heard the term "food insecure," which is the term for people who may not know where their next meal comes from. If Fijians were uptight and wanted to classify people using those guidelines, the majority of the population would be food insecure. The motion of life is wholly different. Food grows wild in Fiji and when Fijians start to realize they are hungry, they look around the property for a papaya, coconut, cassava, or eggplant that can be eaten. It happens in real time. I have the feeling the canning of food that we did this last summer would be totally foreign to Donna and Junior, in part because it would cost a good deal of money to own all the supplies, and also because everything grows all the time and there is no need to preserve anything. Plus, they have no refrigeration, so there is no point in making more than what can be eaten right away.
It's such a different life structure and the more I got to know it, the more I wasn't just appalled by it. As a Type A personality, the first few days were tough because I wanted to be moving efficiently and accomplishing things. The longer I stayed, the more I relaxed a little and went with the flow. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a strict Type A. But at least by the end of the Fiji experience I could sit around and drink kava without feeling like I needed to always be doing something productive. Life just moves at a slower pace.
Anyway, getting back to my point, the farm we visited was the farm that George worked on, and if I understand it correctly, it's basically like a co-op. Fijians share everything, including the workload, and I think then they share the subsequent produce. I'm not sure how the co-op is formed--whether it is with familial relations or something like that.
The farm was nice. We got to eat a bunch of ripe bananas, which oddly were very green. Maybe it was the variety, or maybe it is just that if they ripen while still on the banana tree, they stay green, while if they ripen in transit to, say, some wealthy consumerist country, they turn yellow. Anyway, the ripe green bananas were awesome.
The boys went to go swimming in the river, but came back because it was high tide, which apparently affects how high the river goes. We waited for it to lower. George's aunt made lunch and we all ate together on a tarp under a huge tree. We had dhal soup, cassava, taro, and naan bread. Soooo delicious. I decided to follow them to the river and I'm glad I did. They finally convinced me to come swimming with them--the water, as muddy as it was, looked cool and inviting, especially since it had no harsh salt in it. I zipped off my pant legs to make them into shorts and stripped to my sports bra. The jump in felt great.
The men (Ronnie from the farm, George, Junior and Fazi) were going for the swim with a plan. Ronnie had a bucket and they started diving for fresh-water mussels. The trick was to find soft spots on the bottom of the river dig just under the top layer till you felt the rigid side of the shell. It was tricky. I kept trying to dig which would pop me right up to the surface again. There was no way I was going to open my eyes under water--it was probably bad enough for the rest of my body so no use getting the water in my eyes too--so I couldn't use sight. I tried for twenty minutes unsuccessfully, but then I sort of felt something that might have been the pointy part of a shell, I reached in, and I brought it up, taking a minute to look at it. George realized I had caught one before I did and started cheering. I did a fist pump in the air with the mussel.
I caught two more soon after, but then my luck ran out and so did my attention span. Plus, I was worried about getting burnt since I didn't have sunscreen on. I got out and made my way back to the farm.
I had a dry pair of underwear and a dry shirt and they gave me a towel, so I took off wet clothing and hung it on the line to dry. Then I sat under the big tree and read. By the time Joe came back, he had gotten 4 mussels. Our contribution to the mussel collection was insubstantial, but we were proud.
Shortly after, we packed up and started the walk back to town to catch a ride. When we got to the main road, Junior happened to spot the Muslim man's car and we bummed a ride from him to the Matintar intersection, where we went in to purchase supplies for the lovo that we planned to have that night. A lovo is an underground cookout. You would have to ask Joe about the process, because I really didn't pay attention, but if I understood it correctly, a pit is dug and a fire is started in the pit. Then it is covered with stones that get very hot. The food is wrapped in tin foil and put in between and under the stones and banana leaves are put on top.
Joe and I purchased the supplies because it was our way of saying thank you to our Fiji family. We were very thankful for the experiences we had with them.
After the supermarket, we caught a cab to Junior's house, where they started the lovo just as it was beginning to rain. They were able to keep it covered and went ahead with it despite the rain.
Then it rained harder! My plan had been to cycle back to the hostel as soon as we got to Junior's house so that I could change beds (oh, the joys of hostel dorms and bedbugs) and maybe shower, but the family bike was in use, and plus it was raining
I got the bed change done successfully, told the hostel about the bugs, and decided not to take a shower, as I would just get all wet by rain on the way back anyway. Here I should mention that the hostel actually was decent with their cleanliness. Most mornings we watched them change the sheets and treat or take out a mattress or two. Maybe this would make some people grossed out or mad at the hostel, but with the amount of people who go through that place--and especially the TYPES that went through like us, scallywags--I'm just happy they take it seriously and treat the affected areas. I have no complaints. The bites were not awesome (the sight of them really were the only bad part), but really it was quite manageable.
Next I raced back to Junior's, thankful that I hadn't showered because I was sopping by the time I got there. Donna gave me a few dry clothes and let me change. It was a touching moment when she took care of me like that.
Another person had joined our party. Ludig from the Czech Republic (who I had met the day before at the hostel kitchen) was talking to Joe as meal preparation was going on. He, like us, had been invited to come in out of the weather. He stayed for lovo and kava, and his face seemed to tell how lucky he thought he was for stumbling upon such a crowd as us.
They steamed the mussels and created a couple of sauces. The first was a coconut milk with onions, which is awesome. The second was a lime and chili sauce--my favorite. It was awesome and it was fun eating what we had dived for on the bottom of that muddy river.
Ludig walked home with us and on the way home, we sorta got the impression that he's a little nuts. He had gone to the Denarau marina earlier in the day to try to book a ferry ticket to one of the islands, not realizing that you couldn't just do that—you had to have previously arranged accommodations to do so. So he had booked accommodations and a ferry for the next day. His walk home was what led him past Junior's house, and his plan on the way back to the hostel was to just sort of sneak into one of the dorms at night, sleep, and then sneak out the next morning.
Also we learned that when he was in the United States, he was there without a work visa, but had been doing some work for a guy anyway. The guy had agreed to pay them (Ludig and his companion) $900 for a job, but once the work was complete, he only gave them $500 because he knew he could get away with it, since they couldn't approach authority about it.
So as vindication, they stole his car. They drove it almost all the way to Florida, killed the transmission twice, were stopped by cops but got away, and abandoned the car before leaving the country.
All in all, sort of a weird dude. Once we were in our beds, I saw him walk through our dorm looking for an empty bed, but there wasn't one. I wonder if he found somewhere to stay.
Our last full day in town, we got a few things done. We ate ice cream for the first time since being there. We bought Joe some clothes (handsome board shorts and some mellow Fiji tank tops) and shopped for a sari for me. I didn't buy a sari, but hope to make it to India where I can find the most authentic ones.
When we saw Mormon missionaries on the street, we stopped and talked to them. A co-worker (Mike) at Scientech has a son in Fiji and he had told me I should say hi if possible. The four missionaries knew his son, but said he was on one of the smaller islands. They agreed to tell him hello from his father for me! Hopefully the greeting reached Adam!
We ran to the bus stop because we thought it was coming, but ended up waiting longer because that bus was not our bus. While waiting, we met an Irish couple who were very cool. I wish we had had longer to talk with them.
This day was the first day of school for Fijian elementary students after the summer months. On the other side of town, our bus picked up none other than Fazi and Wazi! :) It was very fun because we got to impress tourists and Fijians on the bus by greeting the boys familiarly, and the boys got to impress tourists and Fijians on the bus by greeting us familiarly. It was very sweet and brought us joy because we got to show off our Fijian family.
We said goodbye to them when we got off at the hostel, but told them we would see them later when we came by to say goodbye to everyone. We packed our bags at the hostel and then took a taxi to Junior's house.
Donna, Junior, Fazi and Shahana were all watching a movie together on the family laptop, but came out to the porch when we arrived. We took a while to chat and we also passed off our books. Shahana had given us two books to read, so in exchange we gave them two books. One was the Alan Alda book, the other was a physics book by Isaac Asimov. We drank tea and Joe repeated again and again how much they would like the physics book. :) Just a bit nerdy. We didn't get to see George to say goodbye. We said our goodbyes, exchanged information, and went home with happy memories and sad goodbyes.
Finally the next morning we would leave. We packed, ate lots and lots of papaya (we had three papayas; two from the island from Sara and Niko and one from George that he swam across the river to get at the farm), and made sure to catch the free shuttle that was going to the airport. The hostel provides a free pick-up from the airport, but they do not offer a free drop-off when you leave, UNLESS someone is being picked up from the airport already. So someone was arriving in Fiji at around 9:00 in the morning.
Once on our way, we realized we left a sulu (sarong) and Joe's swimming trunks. I have a pack towel, but the sarong is beautiful and very, very useful. And Joe first thought he wanted to leave his old swimming trunks, but then decided they would be handy to have around as lightweight lounge sort of stuff. But we left both items!
So our shuttle dropped us off at the airport and we asked her if she were coming back to the airport before noon. She didn't know if she would, but she said she would bring the things for us. We grabbed a bite to eat and watched the information desk where she was going to leave the items in case she couldn't find us. By the time 10:30 came, I was nervous, so I went to ask the desk and they already had our stuff! Turns out the shuttle driver had given them to a taxi that came to the airport. We were very happy campers.
We went through security, found our gate, had a cup of tea, and read until our flight was called. We were so thankful to be on the move again. Fiji was beautiful and definitely an adventure, but we were eager to get on with it. We stepped on the plane and out of the humidity. We were headed for New Zealand.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Fiji Part 3: Seeing Fiji the Local Way (i.e. How to Die on Vacation)
The morning of Wednesday the 15th, we stopped by our Fiji family's house and Junior, George, Joe and I set off to Lautoka on a bus. Most tourists here spend FJ$150-200 per person for a day trip to a waterfall. We paid for bus tickets and a rented truck (the local way to travel to the mountain--it is a small pickup with a covered bed where people sit, sometimes with a bench and sometimes without) for all four of us and spent maybe FJ$150 total. This was at least a 50% discount and we got to experience it the local way.
And boy was it ever local. The truck had no bench in the back and the driver was taking the very rocky road as fast as he could, meaning our brains were being bounced out of our heads. The only way we made it to the village was with 4WD to get through the rockiest parts and to ford streams that ran across the roadway. They told me to sit up front, but since I like the bed of pickups and I like my cultural experiences to be authentic, I sat in the back. Our crazy driver even realized a body can only be bounced so much, so we stopped and had a break long enough to stretch out.
Our driver was of Indian descent, and we got the impression that people in the village treated him a little worse because he was Indian. Not really like they were cruel, but they did seem to racially profile him and laugh at him a little more. A lot of people in Fiji are Indian, but most are second, third, or fourth generation. This guy appeared to not even speak Fijian. He appeared to only speak Hindi.
The village had a population of about 80 people, and Junior told us it had been the starting point of tours that were run by a Japanese company. He said that they had developed a setup for this eco-tourism and created some trails, but some time in the last 10 or so years, the company decided they had made enough money and pulled the program and went home. The village had had very little income since then, but subsisted the way they always had by farming and by the rare tourist.
We took 2 frozen chickens with us to say thank you, and paid the entry fee for the trails of FJ$10 each. While we were seeing the village for the first time, one of the little girls with a dirty little dress on came to hold my hand. It was so sweet how she attached to me and I wish someone had taken a picture. She smiled up at me and trailed beside me while we walked around the village to look. The village was little, but quaint and everyone knew Junior, who called most of them his brothers and sisters, though they were not actually related. The village reminded me greatly of the village of Cai Cay, Peru, only smaller.
We did a lot of hiking and made it to two waterfalls, as Junior and George as our guides. The truck driver came with us, but after the first waterfall, decided to wait for us at a junction, as he had a nice potbelly and wasn't used to that much hiking.
We swam in both waterfalls, got pictures, and tried to stay ahead of the storm that was coming through. All along the trail we ate these delicious little fruits that grew wild. I don't know their name in English, because I am not sure they exist in English-speaking countries. They had the shape of wrinkly pears, but had the consistency of an overripe peach, maybe, and they tasted sweet. We had lots and lots along the trail.
By the time we got back to the village, the rain had mostly passed, and a lunch with the chicken we had brought had been prepared for us. We were invited into one of the homes, which had a couple of small beds on one side of the house, and mats covering the floor, which was most likely dirt. Our table was a cloth on the floor, and we ate sitting on the floor and mostly ate with our hands. The curry and rice was delicious.
We drank kava and had short naps in a building used for events in the village before getting back in the pickup and racing down the mountain back to Lautoka. This time the driver did not give us a break part way through. Junior had even asked him to go slower, but I have the feeling it was the horse-on-its-way-back-to-the-barn type thing.
We stopped quickly for a snack from one of the Indian vendor carts at the bus station. It was this puffed rice stuff that was a little spicy, maybe with some turmeric or something like that in it, but it was just ever-so-slightly sweet. It was delicious and we've never found anything comparable since.
The whole day and especially on the bus ride back towards Nadi, it struck me how much like my brothers' relationship was the relationship between Junior and George. It's a beautifully fun relationship between two males who aren't weighed down by any drama. It's just silliness and entertainment and it is fun to watch. As we rode on the bus back to Nadi, the rain poured and the open-air bus had to have the vinyl curtains let down, which were flopping in the wind while Junior and George joked around.
Once we were back to the Matintar intersection that would take us back past Junior's house and then finally to our hostel, we discussed with Junior about the island. Come to find out later, a cyclone had gone right between Fiji and Tonga, which is where all the rain had come from. Junior decided to delay the trip out to the island for a day to allow for the weather to pass a little more, but we were invited to come to dinner with our family the next evening.
Thursday was a relax day, though it actually ended up being a little stressful. As often happens with couples, a fight broke out at exactly the inopportune moment. We eventually made it to the family's house together, but not without strife.
Before dinner was ready, we went with Junior to his friend's house where the boat was that we would be taking out to sea the next day. Junior was looking at his friend's television to see if he could fix it, which I suspect might have been the favor Junior was doing for this friend in exchange for use of the boat for the next day. This was entirely speculation, however. I never asked.
We went back to Junior's house, had some dinner and drank some kava. When it came time to go back to the hostel, the whole family got up and started to walk with us. Isaac got on his dad's shoulders and Shahana, Fazi, and Donna walked beside us.
The walk back to our hostel was fun. It was very touching that the family was walking and laughing with us. We felt like we had our own family in Fiji and it made the experience closer and more personal.
Donna and Junior are in a very interesting stage in their lives, because they have lived through a bit of trauma. Junior had helped start a number of good businesses in the area, including our hostel, which had turned into a pretty big business success. As I remember, the whole family was involved in the hostel. Donna was cooking and cleaning, and Junior was doing tours, drinking kava with guests, and helping out around the hostel. Somewhere in the mix, Donna had a stillborn baby and it rocked them so deeply that they realized they were killing themselves and missing out on their children's life.
So they stopped. They slowed down and worked on getting back to life as a family. I admit that at first I was suspicious of the family. They seemed good, but I was suspicious of Junior because he didn't seem to work. That seemed fishy, like they were just waiting around for a couple of tourists dumb enough to trust them and then pouncing. I admit that I am cynical, having learned to be overcautious in my travels because letting your guard down meant a scam, or just plain theft. The laughter and fellowship touched me on the walk home from dinner, enough that I relaxed and started to trust more. It's difficult to fabricate fake love and tenderness for other human beings, and I could feel the love coming from our family.
They started to walk back home when they saw us safely to within a couple of blocks of the hostel. We waved goodbye and my heart was warm.
Early the next morning we were awake and packing and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Italian couple writing on a little piece of paper. It made me happy because I got the feeling it was for us. The Italians had also created a warm spot in our hearts. We had spent evenings together with them. Raffaella would talk and laugh and call me a sweet girl. Domenico, with his limited English, was all smiles and silly looks. He seemed like he belonged in a Charlie Chaplan movie.
The Italians made me happy for humanity because of the way they looked at each other. Their love story had been born out of heartbreak. Their fathers had both been in the same hospital at the same time, where they first met. Both lost their fathers, but had found each other. They had dated ever since. Raffaella looked older than Domenico (but by no means his lesser in looks--they were both very attractive). Domenico looked younger than me, but I thought I saw a few grey roots in Raffaella's hair where the dye had grown out just by a couple of millimeters. The ages are only a guess based on their personalities, though this is admittedly not a good way to tell their ages, since Raffaella's discussion of deeper matters made her seem more mature and Domenico's Charlie Chaplan manner made him seem younger and more care-free. These suppositions on age are probably very dependent on the fact that Domenico didn't speak much English and Raffaella did.
They made me happy for humanity because they would fall asleep spooning, even though they had been together for a while. In the morning, Domenico was an earlier riser than Raffaella, so he would get up, get dressed, and leave the dorm for a half hour or so. He would return with two mugs of tea, set them on the bedside table, and kiss Raffaella awake. It was the sort of thing that reminded me why I am so lucky to have Joe. While he doesn't do exactly those things, he instead holds my hand to remind me that he's protecting me and sends me flowers when he knows I'm afraid or nervous. Thank goodness for men like Joe and Domenico.
All mushiness aside.
Raffaella came over to us while we packed and gave us their contact information on a slip of paper. They liked us enough to want to keep in touch--a very flattering thing. At the end of the information they had written, "Buona fortuna." Good luck. We exchanged our contact information as well, a little sad that we would not see them again.
We locked our bags in the storage room so we could travel to the island with just a few things in our daypacks and went down to the bus stop. The Italians decided to join us, but we realized we had missed the one by maybe a few minutes and decided to take the chance asking for a cheap, cheap taxi fare. The Italians turned down a FJ$7 taxi offer, so we waited out in the hot sun. Finally we were able to stop a truck, and they allowed us to ride in the back up to the Matintar intersection.
It was the perfect way to travel. Adventurous and a great breeze. At the intersection we caught a bus the rest of the way into town. Once we got there and bought a few things and visited an ATM, it was time to say a final goodbye. It was sweet the way they hugged us and wished us well.
We finally made it to Junior's house and after a little bit of tea, we headed with Junior and Fazi to the Muslim's house (and I differentiate him as Muslim not as a slight, but just because he was a president of the local Muslim tribe, or something like that--plus, I can't remember his name). We spent a couple of hours washing out the boat, filling up water bottles, and getting ready. George was supposed to be going with us, but he took a lot of time to show up. Once he did, Joe left with the boat owner to purchase gasoline for the boat, as well as bread and butter.
We didn't realize how long we had been in the sun between the ride to town, the walking in town, the getting the boat ready, and the walking to the ocean as the tractor pulled the rickety boat and rickety trailer down to the water. I started to realize just how hot my skin felt, and started to cover up because I was starting to feel the sun.
We got in the boat after wrangling it off the trailer, and we started to get a sense of the kind of adventure we were getting ourselves into. George took to the oars and paddled us out deep enough to start the engine, which took a while. The boat was wooden and old. They used an old, slightly rusted refrigerator and freezer as the cooler for food and water. They laid it on its back two-thirds of the way back in the boat. Our stuff was packed into the front of the boat, which had a top, but not much else for water protection. A tarp was over top of anything that stuck out, but I was nervous for our stuff.
The nervousness only mounted. We were heading to an island that was close, but the journey seemed like it would never end. I was very thankful that Joe came to sit next to me so that I could hold his hand and swear under my breath. The boat was not exactly high-tech and it seemed ready to tip over with every wave. Since the cyclone had just missed us, it had left behind a bit of wind. We were hitting the waves from the side, rather than head-on, making the boat roll over every swell and trough. I was scared we would flip over or at least start taking in water. I clutched Joe and tried not to let Junior, George, and Fazi know how scared I was, which is harder than it sounds because I had to keep my eyes from going wide with fear.
After what felt like forever, we made it to the island. We had sugar, flour, and rice to present as a sevusevu, which is a gift given to the chief of a village in exchange for the right to stay in the village. Going into a village as a tourist just feels chintzy, like the village is just smiling and accepting the gift to complete the image that the tourist wants to see. It makes me feel like I am cheapening their identity to complete a tradition that probably isn't even normally used anymore. But whatever. I just hope they don't feel constrained to a role they think a tourist needs to see.
So we gave that to the village, smiled, shook some hands and said thank you. Then we waited for our hosts to come back from spear-hunting. This is when the sunburn started to really burn. The sun was so hot and there was no wind. With humidity as high as it will go and no wind to cool the sweat, we were just panting. And of course I had to get a really bad sunburn the moment I leave a location where I can buy aloe or take a cold shower, or at least have non-salinated water. I was in pain and I could do nothing to relieve my body.
We laid under the edge of some scrappy trees trying to get a bit of shade. The sand was rubbing on my burn and the tarp we were on seemed like it reflected the heat. Sitting all five of us in the shade made me remember why many cultures do siestas, and why Fijian culture is so laid back--they know that they can't do anything else because it's just too damn hot.
This was the first time since the first couple of days that I had felt trapped in the heat and overwhelmed by it. Luckily Junior let me use some of the water we had brought to pour on my body and cool down.
Finally we decided to go to the other side of the island where we would meet up with our host. We took the boat around and it was almost pleasant to be out on the ocean again. We maneuvered our way through the reefs, dodging the shallowest of it until we could tie the boat to a mangrove tree.
Once we got out, we met Sara, who turned out to be one of the sweetest souls I have ever met. Maybe she was just being a good hostess to the tourists, but she seemed just sweet. She made tea for us and put out a mat for us to lounge on for a bit.
Niko never struck me as a super great human being. And I have the feeling the relationship might be an abusive one. Maybe I have it all wrong and these are definitely just wisps of impressions that I got, but there were certain things when said or done that could have added up to a not nice human being. Then again, he could be as sweet as the Dalai Lama for all I know. I don't think I got to know him well enough to pass judgment on his character.
We started to head back to the other side of the island, back to the village where the best snorkeling supposedly was. On the way we saw the improvements our host Niko (Sara's boyfriend) had been doing to his land. He had made two lanes perpendicular to one another with trees on both sides. Some of the trees were coconut and some were limes. In between were flowers and flowering shrubs. There was also a well, but it was not used anymore, thankfully, as there was a recently dead bird floating in it.
When we made it to the edge of the village, we looked around at a few of the men and women who were circled around something. There was a hush that fell on the village, and even though they still greeted us with, "Bula!," the customary greeting that wraps hello, welcome, and well wishes for your life all up into one little package, there was still an air of oh-shit-the-tourists-aren't-supposed-to-see-this. We said a quick Bula and moved on to the water with our snorkels, hoping we hadn't disturbed them too much. I am not one to pass judgments on other cultures, but the things I had seen were definitely grey area, at best. We ignored the thoughts and set out snorkeling instead.
There wasn't much to see, and while I was super buoyant and enjoyed it, there is still a part of me that gets scared. I was more adventurous in how far out I went compared to Fazi and Joe, but each time I would go out further and further bravely, and then hit a point where I got scared and had to turn back. I've always been frightened of the bottom of any body of water. Thanks a lot, Dave. When we were little and went swimming at Rigby Lake, he told me that a little boy had drowned in the lake in the last few days. I remember asking why he hadn't worn a life jacket like we were wearing, and Dave told me that the water had saturated the life jacket and the boy had gone under and drowned and was still down there. I've been afraid of what is on the bottom ever since.
It was fun to go out pretty deep, but I got too scared. The three of us snorkeled for a while and at one point were joined by a floating young girl from the island who seemed fascinated by these funny looking tourists. After a while, we got out and walked back to the other side of the island, where we had behind-the-bush, bowl-by-bowl type shower. Joe and I both realized how lucky we were. We were lucky both to have all the conveniences of American life back at home, and we were both lucky we had found the other person who would adventure and put up with total exposure, behind-the-bush, bowl-by-bowl adventuring. We came to the consensus that we were just a bit miserable--fried by the sun, dirty and sticky from swimming, and feeling generally exhausted by the Fiji adventures. I was glad we could agree on that, because it gave me hope that we just needed to make it a bit more in Fiji and then we could rest.
We spent the evening eating boiled fish and cassava, drinking kava and beer, talking, laughing, and consuming late-night fried liver and toasted bread and butter. Joe and I retired to the tent earlier than everyone else, but Sara and Fazi crept away soon after.
Sometime around 3:30 in the morning, we woke up to the wind whipping our tent. There was rain, and the wind was so bad that someone had staked our tent for us while we slept. We ran around frightened, looking for our clothing and tent extras that we had left out. I think I was only half awake and my need to hide my fear as a tourist slipped a little. Junior had already retrieved our things when the storm first started.
The wind whipped through so bad that we were afraid it might be a hurricane! Joe and I fitfully fell back to sleep.
When morning came, we learned it was just tidal wind. Apparently when the tide goes out or comes in, the weather can have a rapid change.
Joe went fishing with Fazi, Junior and George. I was feeling a little miserable still, and stayed behind in the tent. When I came out, sweet Sara told me she would have breakfast ready soon. She brought me out a silver platter full of delights! Tea with milk, coconut rice (soooooo good and impossible to reproduce, no matter how much we try), toast and butter, and fresh papaya, picked from their farm. Oh my goodness.
I was a happy camper, watching the men fish a little ways out, seeing the world change from a dim grey to a pink and light yellows and blues as the sun came up, drinking my tea and feasting on the best that the island had to offer, looking out at the beach and the water in this paradise of the world. I was burnt, tired, and dirty, but oh-so-happy. Sara came and drank tea with me and talked a little bit.
We packed up and Niko went to find a young coconut tree. He had recently decided to have each guest on his island plant a coconut tree so that they felt more attachment and warmth from the place. First Joe planted one, then I planted one. We took the last pictures by the lime trees and wild cucumbers and said goodbye, hugging Sara and letting her know what a sweet hostess she had been. They even sent me home with two fresh papayas!
We shoved off and George, Joe, and Fazi took the boat out, leading it until the water was up to their waists before jumping in. Junior then started the motor and we took off at top speed, which is to say, rather slowly because the outboard motor was far too small for the boat.
I took no chance with the sun and doubled up with sunscreen and clothing coverage.
The ride back was sketchy, but not as bad. Plus, I was no longer worried about losing my valuables should the boat capsize, since I had situated them in a small dry bag.
Once we got to the shore of the main island Viti Levu, we sat while Junior went back to the Muslim's house to get the tractor. Wrangling the boat onto the tractor just reminded us of how bizarre the whole Fiji experience has been. The tractor had no breaks, so Junior had to take the trailer off, back it into the water by hand, load the boat on it, then swing the tractor around multiple times until it was close enough that we could tug the trailer back up towards the tractor and hook it up. Then we road in the boat up to the Muslim's house.
Once there, we cleaned out the boat and got the fishing nets back into it for use in the near future. After everything was cleaned out and put away, Joe and I said goodbye until the next day. We had both agreed we were ready for some rest.
We checked back into the hostel, though we couldn't pay just yet because their card reader (EFTPOS) was not working. We decided to eat at the hostel's restaurant where they had a barbecue special. About midway through dinner, Mateo the Casanova and a new friend came to say hello. They sat down, but after a few minutes of only English, Mateo couldn't understand and left. Justin stuck around and within no time, we were having very deep conversation.
Justin was from Oregon, which made us nostalgic. The longer we talked, the more we liked Justin. He had been traveling for years working here and there as a dive instructor. His ideas on politics were similar to ours, which I can flatter myself by saying our ideas on politics are logical, practical, and humble. We talked for hours and at the end of it all, we said goodnight, knowing we would probably never see him again.
This oddity is a common fact of traveling. Many times the people you meet and have the best conversations with are the ones you never see again and don't even try to keep in contact with. Trying to keep in contact with someone you only meet once, even if the conversation is long and deep, would be difficult and even strange.
We went to bed exhausted and happy. Being exhausted is a sign of great adventure, I think. We were seeing Fiji as authentically as possible.
More tomorrow! Happy State of the Union!
And boy was it ever local. The truck had no bench in the back and the driver was taking the very rocky road as fast as he could, meaning our brains were being bounced out of our heads. The only way we made it to the village was with 4WD to get through the rockiest parts and to ford streams that ran across the roadway. They told me to sit up front, but since I like the bed of pickups and I like my cultural experiences to be authentic, I sat in the back. Our crazy driver even realized a body can only be bounced so much, so we stopped and had a break long enough to stretch out.
Our driver was of Indian descent, and we got the impression that people in the village treated him a little worse because he was Indian. Not really like they were cruel, but they did seem to racially profile him and laugh at him a little more. A lot of people in Fiji are Indian, but most are second, third, or fourth generation. This guy appeared to not even speak Fijian. He appeared to only speak Hindi.
The village had a population of about 80 people, and Junior told us it had been the starting point of tours that were run by a Japanese company. He said that they had developed a setup for this eco-tourism and created some trails, but some time in the last 10 or so years, the company decided they had made enough money and pulled the program and went home. The village had had very little income since then, but subsisted the way they always had by farming and by the rare tourist.
We took 2 frozen chickens with us to say thank you, and paid the entry fee for the trails of FJ$10 each. While we were seeing the village for the first time, one of the little girls with a dirty little dress on came to hold my hand. It was so sweet how she attached to me and I wish someone had taken a picture. She smiled up at me and trailed beside me while we walked around the village to look. The village was little, but quaint and everyone knew Junior, who called most of them his brothers and sisters, though they were not actually related. The village reminded me greatly of the village of Cai Cay, Peru, only smaller.
We did a lot of hiking and made it to two waterfalls, as Junior and George as our guides. The truck driver came with us, but after the first waterfall, decided to wait for us at a junction, as he had a nice potbelly and wasn't used to that much hiking.
We swam in both waterfalls, got pictures, and tried to stay ahead of the storm that was coming through. All along the trail we ate these delicious little fruits that grew wild. I don't know their name in English, because I am not sure they exist in English-speaking countries. They had the shape of wrinkly pears, but had the consistency of an overripe peach, maybe, and they tasted sweet. We had lots and lots along the trail.
By the time we got back to the village, the rain had mostly passed, and a lunch with the chicken we had brought had been prepared for us. We were invited into one of the homes, which had a couple of small beds on one side of the house, and mats covering the floor, which was most likely dirt. Our table was a cloth on the floor, and we ate sitting on the floor and mostly ate with our hands. The curry and rice was delicious.
We drank kava and had short naps in a building used for events in the village before getting back in the pickup and racing down the mountain back to Lautoka. This time the driver did not give us a break part way through. Junior had even asked him to go slower, but I have the feeling it was the horse-on-its-way-back-to-the-barn type thing.
We stopped quickly for a snack from one of the Indian vendor carts at the bus station. It was this puffed rice stuff that was a little spicy, maybe with some turmeric or something like that in it, but it was just ever-so-slightly sweet. It was delicious and we've never found anything comparable since.
The whole day and especially on the bus ride back towards Nadi, it struck me how much like my brothers' relationship was the relationship between Junior and George. It's a beautifully fun relationship between two males who aren't weighed down by any drama. It's just silliness and entertainment and it is fun to watch. As we rode on the bus back to Nadi, the rain poured and the open-air bus had to have the vinyl curtains let down, which were flopping in the wind while Junior and George joked around.
Once we were back to the Matintar intersection that would take us back past Junior's house and then finally to our hostel, we discussed with Junior about the island. Come to find out later, a cyclone had gone right between Fiji and Tonga, which is where all the rain had come from. Junior decided to delay the trip out to the island for a day to allow for the weather to pass a little more, but we were invited to come to dinner with our family the next evening.
Thursday was a relax day, though it actually ended up being a little stressful. As often happens with couples, a fight broke out at exactly the inopportune moment. We eventually made it to the family's house together, but not without strife.
Before dinner was ready, we went with Junior to his friend's house where the boat was that we would be taking out to sea the next day. Junior was looking at his friend's television to see if he could fix it, which I suspect might have been the favor Junior was doing for this friend in exchange for use of the boat for the next day. This was entirely speculation, however. I never asked.
We went back to Junior's house, had some dinner and drank some kava. When it came time to go back to the hostel, the whole family got up and started to walk with us. Isaac got on his dad's shoulders and Shahana, Fazi, and Donna walked beside us.
The walk back to our hostel was fun. It was very touching that the family was walking and laughing with us. We felt like we had our own family in Fiji and it made the experience closer and more personal.
Donna and Junior are in a very interesting stage in their lives, because they have lived through a bit of trauma. Junior had helped start a number of good businesses in the area, including our hostel, which had turned into a pretty big business success. As I remember, the whole family was involved in the hostel. Donna was cooking and cleaning, and Junior was doing tours, drinking kava with guests, and helping out around the hostel. Somewhere in the mix, Donna had a stillborn baby and it rocked them so deeply that they realized they were killing themselves and missing out on their children's life.
So they stopped. They slowed down and worked on getting back to life as a family. I admit that at first I was suspicious of the family. They seemed good, but I was suspicious of Junior because he didn't seem to work. That seemed fishy, like they were just waiting around for a couple of tourists dumb enough to trust them and then pouncing. I admit that I am cynical, having learned to be overcautious in my travels because letting your guard down meant a scam, or just plain theft. The laughter and fellowship touched me on the walk home from dinner, enough that I relaxed and started to trust more. It's difficult to fabricate fake love and tenderness for other human beings, and I could feel the love coming from our family.
They started to walk back home when they saw us safely to within a couple of blocks of the hostel. We waved goodbye and my heart was warm.
Early the next morning we were awake and packing and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Italian couple writing on a little piece of paper. It made me happy because I got the feeling it was for us. The Italians had also created a warm spot in our hearts. We had spent evenings together with them. Raffaella would talk and laugh and call me a sweet girl. Domenico, with his limited English, was all smiles and silly looks. He seemed like he belonged in a Charlie Chaplan movie.
The Italians made me happy for humanity because of the way they looked at each other. Their love story had been born out of heartbreak. Their fathers had both been in the same hospital at the same time, where they first met. Both lost their fathers, but had found each other. They had dated ever since. Raffaella looked older than Domenico (but by no means his lesser in looks--they were both very attractive). Domenico looked younger than me, but I thought I saw a few grey roots in Raffaella's hair where the dye had grown out just by a couple of millimeters. The ages are only a guess based on their personalities, though this is admittedly not a good way to tell their ages, since Raffaella's discussion of deeper matters made her seem more mature and Domenico's Charlie Chaplan manner made him seem younger and more care-free. These suppositions on age are probably very dependent on the fact that Domenico didn't speak much English and Raffaella did.
They made me happy for humanity because they would fall asleep spooning, even though they had been together for a while. In the morning, Domenico was an earlier riser than Raffaella, so he would get up, get dressed, and leave the dorm for a half hour or so. He would return with two mugs of tea, set them on the bedside table, and kiss Raffaella awake. It was the sort of thing that reminded me why I am so lucky to have Joe. While he doesn't do exactly those things, he instead holds my hand to remind me that he's protecting me and sends me flowers when he knows I'm afraid or nervous. Thank goodness for men like Joe and Domenico.
All mushiness aside.
Raffaella came over to us while we packed and gave us their contact information on a slip of paper. They liked us enough to want to keep in touch--a very flattering thing. At the end of the information they had written, "Buona fortuna." Good luck. We exchanged our contact information as well, a little sad that we would not see them again.
We locked our bags in the storage room so we could travel to the island with just a few things in our daypacks and went down to the bus stop. The Italians decided to join us, but we realized we had missed the one by maybe a few minutes and decided to take the chance asking for a cheap, cheap taxi fare. The Italians turned down a FJ$7 taxi offer, so we waited out in the hot sun. Finally we were able to stop a truck, and they allowed us to ride in the back up to the Matintar intersection.
It was the perfect way to travel. Adventurous and a great breeze. At the intersection we caught a bus the rest of the way into town. Once we got there and bought a few things and visited an ATM, it was time to say a final goodbye. It was sweet the way they hugged us and wished us well.
We finally made it to Junior's house and after a little bit of tea, we headed with Junior and Fazi to the Muslim's house (and I differentiate him as Muslim not as a slight, but just because he was a president of the local Muslim tribe, or something like that--plus, I can't remember his name). We spent a couple of hours washing out the boat, filling up water bottles, and getting ready. George was supposed to be going with us, but he took a lot of time to show up. Once he did, Joe left with the boat owner to purchase gasoline for the boat, as well as bread and butter.
We didn't realize how long we had been in the sun between the ride to town, the walking in town, the getting the boat ready, and the walking to the ocean as the tractor pulled the rickety boat and rickety trailer down to the water. I started to realize just how hot my skin felt, and started to cover up because I was starting to feel the sun.
We got in the boat after wrangling it off the trailer, and we started to get a sense of the kind of adventure we were getting ourselves into. George took to the oars and paddled us out deep enough to start the engine, which took a while. The boat was wooden and old. They used an old, slightly rusted refrigerator and freezer as the cooler for food and water. They laid it on its back two-thirds of the way back in the boat. Our stuff was packed into the front of the boat, which had a top, but not much else for water protection. A tarp was over top of anything that stuck out, but I was nervous for our stuff.
The nervousness only mounted. We were heading to an island that was close, but the journey seemed like it would never end. I was very thankful that Joe came to sit next to me so that I could hold his hand and swear under my breath. The boat was not exactly high-tech and it seemed ready to tip over with every wave. Since the cyclone had just missed us, it had left behind a bit of wind. We were hitting the waves from the side, rather than head-on, making the boat roll over every swell and trough. I was scared we would flip over or at least start taking in water. I clutched Joe and tried not to let Junior, George, and Fazi know how scared I was, which is harder than it sounds because I had to keep my eyes from going wide with fear.
After what felt like forever, we made it to the island. We had sugar, flour, and rice to present as a sevusevu, which is a gift given to the chief of a village in exchange for the right to stay in the village. Going into a village as a tourist just feels chintzy, like the village is just smiling and accepting the gift to complete the image that the tourist wants to see. It makes me feel like I am cheapening their identity to complete a tradition that probably isn't even normally used anymore. But whatever. I just hope they don't feel constrained to a role they think a tourist needs to see.
So we gave that to the village, smiled, shook some hands and said thank you. Then we waited for our hosts to come back from spear-hunting. This is when the sunburn started to really burn. The sun was so hot and there was no wind. With humidity as high as it will go and no wind to cool the sweat, we were just panting. And of course I had to get a really bad sunburn the moment I leave a location where I can buy aloe or take a cold shower, or at least have non-salinated water. I was in pain and I could do nothing to relieve my body.
We laid under the edge of some scrappy trees trying to get a bit of shade. The sand was rubbing on my burn and the tarp we were on seemed like it reflected the heat. Sitting all five of us in the shade made me remember why many cultures do siestas, and why Fijian culture is so laid back--they know that they can't do anything else because it's just too damn hot.
This was the first time since the first couple of days that I had felt trapped in the heat and overwhelmed by it. Luckily Junior let me use some of the water we had brought to pour on my body and cool down.
Finally we decided to go to the other side of the island where we would meet up with our host. We took the boat around and it was almost pleasant to be out on the ocean again. We maneuvered our way through the reefs, dodging the shallowest of it until we could tie the boat to a mangrove tree.
Once we got out, we met Sara, who turned out to be one of the sweetest souls I have ever met. Maybe she was just being a good hostess to the tourists, but she seemed just sweet. She made tea for us and put out a mat for us to lounge on for a bit.
Niko never struck me as a super great human being. And I have the feeling the relationship might be an abusive one. Maybe I have it all wrong and these are definitely just wisps of impressions that I got, but there were certain things when said or done that could have added up to a not nice human being. Then again, he could be as sweet as the Dalai Lama for all I know. I don't think I got to know him well enough to pass judgment on his character.
We started to head back to the other side of the island, back to the village where the best snorkeling supposedly was. On the way we saw the improvements our host Niko (Sara's boyfriend) had been doing to his land. He had made two lanes perpendicular to one another with trees on both sides. Some of the trees were coconut and some were limes. In between were flowers and flowering shrubs. There was also a well, but it was not used anymore, thankfully, as there was a recently dead bird floating in it.
When we made it to the edge of the village, we looked around at a few of the men and women who were circled around something. There was a hush that fell on the village, and even though they still greeted us with, "Bula!," the customary greeting that wraps hello, welcome, and well wishes for your life all up into one little package, there was still an air of oh-shit-the-tourists-aren't-supposed-to-see-this. We said a quick Bula and moved on to the water with our snorkels, hoping we hadn't disturbed them too much. I am not one to pass judgments on other cultures, but the things I had seen were definitely grey area, at best. We ignored the thoughts and set out snorkeling instead.
There wasn't much to see, and while I was super buoyant and enjoyed it, there is still a part of me that gets scared. I was more adventurous in how far out I went compared to Fazi and Joe, but each time I would go out further and further bravely, and then hit a point where I got scared and had to turn back. I've always been frightened of the bottom of any body of water. Thanks a lot, Dave. When we were little and went swimming at Rigby Lake, he told me that a little boy had drowned in the lake in the last few days. I remember asking why he hadn't worn a life jacket like we were wearing, and Dave told me that the water had saturated the life jacket and the boy had gone under and drowned and was still down there. I've been afraid of what is on the bottom ever since.
It was fun to go out pretty deep, but I got too scared. The three of us snorkeled for a while and at one point were joined by a floating young girl from the island who seemed fascinated by these funny looking tourists. After a while, we got out and walked back to the other side of the island, where we had behind-the-bush, bowl-by-bowl type shower. Joe and I both realized how lucky we were. We were lucky both to have all the conveniences of American life back at home, and we were both lucky we had found the other person who would adventure and put up with total exposure, behind-the-bush, bowl-by-bowl adventuring. We came to the consensus that we were just a bit miserable--fried by the sun, dirty and sticky from swimming, and feeling generally exhausted by the Fiji adventures. I was glad we could agree on that, because it gave me hope that we just needed to make it a bit more in Fiji and then we could rest.
We spent the evening eating boiled fish and cassava, drinking kava and beer, talking, laughing, and consuming late-night fried liver and toasted bread and butter. Joe and I retired to the tent earlier than everyone else, but Sara and Fazi crept away soon after.
Sometime around 3:30 in the morning, we woke up to the wind whipping our tent. There was rain, and the wind was so bad that someone had staked our tent for us while we slept. We ran around frightened, looking for our clothing and tent extras that we had left out. I think I was only half awake and my need to hide my fear as a tourist slipped a little. Junior had already retrieved our things when the storm first started.
The wind whipped through so bad that we were afraid it might be a hurricane! Joe and I fitfully fell back to sleep.
When morning came, we learned it was just tidal wind. Apparently when the tide goes out or comes in, the weather can have a rapid change.
Joe went fishing with Fazi, Junior and George. I was feeling a little miserable still, and stayed behind in the tent. When I came out, sweet Sara told me she would have breakfast ready soon. She brought me out a silver platter full of delights! Tea with milk, coconut rice (soooooo good and impossible to reproduce, no matter how much we try), toast and butter, and fresh papaya, picked from their farm. Oh my goodness.
I was a happy camper, watching the men fish a little ways out, seeing the world change from a dim grey to a pink and light yellows and blues as the sun came up, drinking my tea and feasting on the best that the island had to offer, looking out at the beach and the water in this paradise of the world. I was burnt, tired, and dirty, but oh-so-happy. Sara came and drank tea with me and talked a little bit.
We packed up and Niko went to find a young coconut tree. He had recently decided to have each guest on his island plant a coconut tree so that they felt more attachment and warmth from the place. First Joe planted one, then I planted one. We took the last pictures by the lime trees and wild cucumbers and said goodbye, hugging Sara and letting her know what a sweet hostess she had been. They even sent me home with two fresh papayas!
We shoved off and George, Joe, and Fazi took the boat out, leading it until the water was up to their waists before jumping in. Junior then started the motor and we took off at top speed, which is to say, rather slowly because the outboard motor was far too small for the boat.
I took no chance with the sun and doubled up with sunscreen and clothing coverage.
The ride back was sketchy, but not as bad. Plus, I was no longer worried about losing my valuables should the boat capsize, since I had situated them in a small dry bag.
Once we got to the shore of the main island Viti Levu, we sat while Junior went back to the Muslim's house to get the tractor. Wrangling the boat onto the tractor just reminded us of how bizarre the whole Fiji experience has been. The tractor had no breaks, so Junior had to take the trailer off, back it into the water by hand, load the boat on it, then swing the tractor around multiple times until it was close enough that we could tug the trailer back up towards the tractor and hook it up. Then we road in the boat up to the Muslim's house.
Once there, we cleaned out the boat and got the fishing nets back into it for use in the near future. After everything was cleaned out and put away, Joe and I said goodbye until the next day. We had both agreed we were ready for some rest.
We checked back into the hostel, though we couldn't pay just yet because their card reader (EFTPOS) was not working. We decided to eat at the hostel's restaurant where they had a barbecue special. About midway through dinner, Mateo the Casanova and a new friend came to say hello. They sat down, but after a few minutes of only English, Mateo couldn't understand and left. Justin stuck around and within no time, we were having very deep conversation.
Justin was from Oregon, which made us nostalgic. The longer we talked, the more we liked Justin. He had been traveling for years working here and there as a dive instructor. His ideas on politics were similar to ours, which I can flatter myself by saying our ideas on politics are logical, practical, and humble. We talked for hours and at the end of it all, we said goodnight, knowing we would probably never see him again.
This oddity is a common fact of traveling. Many times the people you meet and have the best conversations with are the ones you never see again and don't even try to keep in contact with. Trying to keep in contact with someone you only meet once, even if the conversation is long and deep, would be difficult and even strange.
We went to bed exhausted and happy. Being exhausted is a sign of great adventure, I think. We were seeing Fiji as authentically as possible.
More tomorrow! Happy State of the Union!
Monday, January 27, 2014
Fiji Part 2: The Characters We Meet
The next few days were a blur, and definitely a busy blur, with many people moving in and out of our experience. The morning after our arrival, we took the recommendation Junior had given us and headed to the bus station to catch a bus to Sleeping Giant, the mountain whose profile looked like a giant's face turned to the sky while sleeping. Unfortunately, we had missed the bus that would take us there, so we decided instead to go to Natadola, a beach we had heard touted by locals as the best on the main island Viti Levu and one of the top in the world.
The bus took us to an intersection where we would need to catch a cab. We easily found one and were at the beach within 15 minutes, but were surprised at the condition of the beach. There was still garbage everywhere and, while the sand was a light color, it wasn't the white sand you think of when you think of Fiji. There were half-dead vines growing on the beach and trash was hidden in these vines. The swimming was warm and salty, but there was gross seaweed that would get in your suit when you caught a wave. We swam a lot and then laid out in the sun. Apparently our sunscreen was not waterproof though, and I got a nice sunburn on my shoulders.
We took the same cab back out to the intersection and took a bus going back to Nadi. There we bought fish and fruit, and on the way back to the bus, we met with Junior's wife, Donna, who invited us to come visit and eat lunch. Donna, Isaac, Shahana, and I caught a cab together.
They fed us lunch, and then we went to sit under the guava tree while George (Junior's “cousin-brother”) wrapped the fish in tin foil to cook them over the fire. We shared kava together and relaxed on the tarp for quite a long time.
We learned about the kava, the traditional Fijian drink/cultural experience. Kava is the root of a pepper plant, ground up into powder and then mixed with water in a basin so it looks like a basin of muddy water. This is scooped out with coconut shells and passed around one shell-full at a time for each person. The person claps once and accepts the shell. While the person drinks, the others sitting around the basin say "Bula," or "Welcome," and clap their hands twice. The person drinking hands the shell back and claps three times. This is repeated for every person and for multiple rounds.
The kava does not taste very good, but it is also not very bad either. The experience is more cultural than anything, as it brings people together to talk and drink and laugh. Kava is supposedly a hallucinogen, though we have never experienced that. I would say that getting a lot in you makes you feel somewhere between drunk and high, though not in a super strong way. It also makes your tongue go just a little bit numb when you drink it.
Kava apparently can be a problem because people drink it too much. People drink it all night the way people drink alcohol all night in many places in the world. We have even heard that it causes many people to lose their appetite and therefore forget about the appetites of their children. We don't know if this is true, but it does appear that almost everyone drinks kava multiple times per week. And the people who drink it do seem to exhibit perhaps an addictive need for it, though this is only a possibility. It could just be a very ingrained practice in the culture.
While we were out under the guava tree, the littlest boy Isaac found a kitten in the bush. The kitten was young, but scrawny as could be. Isaac came to show me and I asked what he was going to name the kitten and he said he didn't know. I suggested Bushy, since he came from a bush. The name stuck, but so did Isaac's attachment to the kitten. All day while we were under the guava tree drinking kava and eating the fish, Isaac was dragging that damn cat around as if it were a rag doll. I'm surprised the cat lived. Isaac would pound it down on the ground, smash it against his two puppies, and drag it around everywhere he went. As an avid cat lover, I was worried.
Eventually we needed to go home, especially since I needed to soothe the painful burns I had gotten all over my body. We said goodbye, but promised to return later in the evening for more kava.
We showered and went down to eat some dinner at the kitchen, where we met Raffaella and Dominico, the Italian couple from our dorm room. Raffaella spoke some English, but Dominico very little, so we got to throw out our really quite awful Italian, while they gave us their choppy English.
Finally we headed back to Junior's house where we met a very drunk brother-in-law of Junior and Donna. It was pretty late, since we had talked with the Italians for a while. We had several rounds of kava and eventually met two of Junior's friends, Sam and a man Junior called Jack Sparrow. They two worked on boats with Junior and they did some fishing together. Sam and Joe got into a discussion about how natural it was for men to have more than one wife, of course.
Saturday we headed to Sleeping Giant. We caught a bus toward Lautoka and got off where a sign pointed to Sleeping Giant. Less than 10 minutes later, a New Zealand family of tourists stopped and offered us a ride in their car. We were very thankful, as it was very hot and we didn't know how long the walk would be. They even had air conditioning, a luxury we would not get much of in Fiji.
The first attraction we saw at Sleeping Giant was the gardens which was a beautiful tropical paradise, with 99 varieties of orchids, and a walkway system that just screamed the stereotype of colonial British era, when the wealthy British wore their safari caps and monocles and just drank tea in the middle of tropical rain forest. It was lovely! We climbed to the top of one of the hills to get a wide, wide view of everything.
We headed out of the gardens to the mud baths, another must-see at Sleeping Giants. We walked a couple of miles and stopped at one house when we were invited over for some shade. Ten minutes later back out on the road, another car stopped for us and offered a ride. The car was a taxi, but it was a taxi hired for the day by the tourists Johannes (Hungarian) and Susan (German). They took us the rest of the way to the mud bath and we were very grateful.
The mud bath was definitely a fun time. There was a hot spring that bubbled on one side of the complex at somewhere around 75 degrees Celsius (that's hot!), and on the other side was the mud pit, where delicious mud was pulled out to rub on your body. Joe and I got mudded up and then waited in the sun to dry.
Once dry, we washed off in the first warm pool, and then finished in the hot pool, which was a nice developed big pool with a soft gravel bottom and clean water that had been pumped over from the hot spring (and allowed to cool just a little in the process!).
We got to talking with Johannes and Susan, who were very sweet and had the stereotypical German English accent. It turned out that they were quite the travelers and were staying in the hotel right next to our hostel. They invited us to ride back to Nadi with them. In fact, they invited us to join them at the Hindu temple just outside of Nadi. This was a beautiful temple, though perhaps mostly established as a tourist trap and money-maker. We put on temple appropriate clothing and had a tour around the bright colors and shrines to Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, etc.
The taxi took us and the couple back to the fruit market area, where we said thank you and goodbye to the couple. Our experience with them had been brief, but really, really nice. It was fun to tag along with them.
That night we stayed up late talking and eating and drinking with a German man (Maximilian), an Italian man (Mateo), and a Taiwanese woman (Wendy). There was much laughter and we went to bed very happy.
We felt a little trapped the next morning when we realized the bus didn't run on Sundays, but we decided to take it a little easy since we had had such a busy first couple of days. We spent the day reading and lounging in hammocks. Joe noticed a slight rash on his feet in the morning, but it didn't stop him from playing volleyball with some of the foreigners and the hostel workers. The game was fun to watch and we got to interact a little more with the Italians Raffaella and Domenico.
That night we learned about sand flies, and boy did we learn it all very well and very quickly. The rash Joe had seen on his feet started to itch, so he figured that, like mosquito bites, scratching them a little would make the itch go away for a while.
It turns out the sand fly bites are much more itchy than mosquito bites, plus the itchiness only intensifies with scratching. Joe was up doing research by early morning Monday to figure out how to beat the bites, because he thought he might actually lose his mind. I hadn't started scratching, so mine was only minor discomfort, but it was alarming to wake up to Joe's eyes wide in panic, asking for the key to the locked cupboard that held our cash so he could go see if he could find relief at a store. He bought the stick of itch-reliever, but this barely helped.
He asked the store owner what he should do and read about what he should do and bought some antiseptic liquid to soak in. He mixed a basin with hot water and the liquid and soaked some socks in it to put on his feet. His feet looked diseased and angry, with a hundred bites all over them, but the heat and antiseptic helped just a little--at least enough that he was able to calm down and stop scratching.
We stayed home that day (Monday) so Joe could try to recuperate and take care of his feet. Poor boy had nearly gone insane and I was very, very thankful that something had finally helped him stop itching and calm the anxiety he felt. Needless to say, we took protection from insects seriously from that point on. We bought repellent that was 80% deet from the store and used shoes while on the beach and out at night. Thankfully, our bites were fewer from then on as well.
The sand flies come out mostly at night and especially like the feet and ankles and a little bit of the legs. We had been warned by someone back home before we came about the sand flies, but we neither knew how to combat them nor knew just how terrible they were. Apparently the bites are much worse than mosquito bites and can take up to several weeks to go away. Luckily though, our bodies eventually get used to the protein that the flies inject into the body at the point of the bite, meaning even if we get bitten a lot sometime down the road, we probably won't have as hard of a time as those first few days. Which is comforting when we found out New Zealand has quite the sand fly problem as well.
The next day (Tuesday) we woke up hoping to go to town, but realized the buses didn't run because it was Muhammad's birthday. We couldn't go another day cooped up in the hostel, especially when we had distracting insect bites, so we paid for a cab into town. We headed to the cheap lunch place, but found it was closed for the holiday as well. So we found a nice Chinese restaurant on the second floor and settled in for a comforting meal of Chinese to boost our moods.
We bought fruit at the market and were headed to find a cab again when we found the single Italian Mateo, who we had spent the night talking to on Saturday night. We split a cab home and then later that evening walked to Junior's house to set up the waterfall and island trips.
More to come... thank goodness I'm getting it all down... there was a lot to write! Love!
The bus took us to an intersection where we would need to catch a cab. We easily found one and were at the beach within 15 minutes, but were surprised at the condition of the beach. There was still garbage everywhere and, while the sand was a light color, it wasn't the white sand you think of when you think of Fiji. There were half-dead vines growing on the beach and trash was hidden in these vines. The swimming was warm and salty, but there was gross seaweed that would get in your suit when you caught a wave. We swam a lot and then laid out in the sun. Apparently our sunscreen was not waterproof though, and I got a nice sunburn on my shoulders.
We took the same cab back out to the intersection and took a bus going back to Nadi. There we bought fish and fruit, and on the way back to the bus, we met with Junior's wife, Donna, who invited us to come visit and eat lunch. Donna, Isaac, Shahana, and I caught a cab together.
They fed us lunch, and then we went to sit under the guava tree while George (Junior's “cousin-brother”) wrapped the fish in tin foil to cook them over the fire. We shared kava together and relaxed on the tarp for quite a long time.
We learned about the kava, the traditional Fijian drink/cultural experience. Kava is the root of a pepper plant, ground up into powder and then mixed with water in a basin so it looks like a basin of muddy water. This is scooped out with coconut shells and passed around one shell-full at a time for each person. The person claps once and accepts the shell. While the person drinks, the others sitting around the basin say "Bula," or "Welcome," and clap their hands twice. The person drinking hands the shell back and claps three times. This is repeated for every person and for multiple rounds.
The kava does not taste very good, but it is also not very bad either. The experience is more cultural than anything, as it brings people together to talk and drink and laugh. Kava is supposedly a hallucinogen, though we have never experienced that. I would say that getting a lot in you makes you feel somewhere between drunk and high, though not in a super strong way. It also makes your tongue go just a little bit numb when you drink it.
Kava apparently can be a problem because people drink it too much. People drink it all night the way people drink alcohol all night in many places in the world. We have even heard that it causes many people to lose their appetite and therefore forget about the appetites of their children. We don't know if this is true, but it does appear that almost everyone drinks kava multiple times per week. And the people who drink it do seem to exhibit perhaps an addictive need for it, though this is only a possibility. It could just be a very ingrained practice in the culture.
While we were out under the guava tree, the littlest boy Isaac found a kitten in the bush. The kitten was young, but scrawny as could be. Isaac came to show me and I asked what he was going to name the kitten and he said he didn't know. I suggested Bushy, since he came from a bush. The name stuck, but so did Isaac's attachment to the kitten. All day while we were under the guava tree drinking kava and eating the fish, Isaac was dragging that damn cat around as if it were a rag doll. I'm surprised the cat lived. Isaac would pound it down on the ground, smash it against his two puppies, and drag it around everywhere he went. As an avid cat lover, I was worried.
Eventually we needed to go home, especially since I needed to soothe the painful burns I had gotten all over my body. We said goodbye, but promised to return later in the evening for more kava.
We showered and went down to eat some dinner at the kitchen, where we met Raffaella and Dominico, the Italian couple from our dorm room. Raffaella spoke some English, but Dominico very little, so we got to throw out our really quite awful Italian, while they gave us their choppy English.
Finally we headed back to Junior's house where we met a very drunk brother-in-law of Junior and Donna. It was pretty late, since we had talked with the Italians for a while. We had several rounds of kava and eventually met two of Junior's friends, Sam and a man Junior called Jack Sparrow. They two worked on boats with Junior and they did some fishing together. Sam and Joe got into a discussion about how natural it was for men to have more than one wife, of course.
Saturday we headed to Sleeping Giant. We caught a bus toward Lautoka and got off where a sign pointed to Sleeping Giant. Less than 10 minutes later, a New Zealand family of tourists stopped and offered us a ride in their car. We were very thankful, as it was very hot and we didn't know how long the walk would be. They even had air conditioning, a luxury we would not get much of in Fiji.
The first attraction we saw at Sleeping Giant was the gardens which was a beautiful tropical paradise, with 99 varieties of orchids, and a walkway system that just screamed the stereotype of colonial British era, when the wealthy British wore their safari caps and monocles and just drank tea in the middle of tropical rain forest. It was lovely! We climbed to the top of one of the hills to get a wide, wide view of everything.
We headed out of the gardens to the mud baths, another must-see at Sleeping Giants. We walked a couple of miles and stopped at one house when we were invited over for some shade. Ten minutes later back out on the road, another car stopped for us and offered a ride. The car was a taxi, but it was a taxi hired for the day by the tourists Johannes (Hungarian) and Susan (German). They took us the rest of the way to the mud bath and we were very grateful.
The mud bath was definitely a fun time. There was a hot spring that bubbled on one side of the complex at somewhere around 75 degrees Celsius (that's hot!), and on the other side was the mud pit, where delicious mud was pulled out to rub on your body. Joe and I got mudded up and then waited in the sun to dry.
Once dry, we washed off in the first warm pool, and then finished in the hot pool, which was a nice developed big pool with a soft gravel bottom and clean water that had been pumped over from the hot spring (and allowed to cool just a little in the process!).
We got to talking with Johannes and Susan, who were very sweet and had the stereotypical German English accent. It turned out that they were quite the travelers and were staying in the hotel right next to our hostel. They invited us to ride back to Nadi with them. In fact, they invited us to join them at the Hindu temple just outside of Nadi. This was a beautiful temple, though perhaps mostly established as a tourist trap and money-maker. We put on temple appropriate clothing and had a tour around the bright colors and shrines to Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, etc.
The taxi took us and the couple back to the fruit market area, where we said thank you and goodbye to the couple. Our experience with them had been brief, but really, really nice. It was fun to tag along with them.
That night we stayed up late talking and eating and drinking with a German man (Maximilian), an Italian man (Mateo), and a Taiwanese woman (Wendy). There was much laughter and we went to bed very happy.
We felt a little trapped the next morning when we realized the bus didn't run on Sundays, but we decided to take it a little easy since we had had such a busy first couple of days. We spent the day reading and lounging in hammocks. Joe noticed a slight rash on his feet in the morning, but it didn't stop him from playing volleyball with some of the foreigners and the hostel workers. The game was fun to watch and we got to interact a little more with the Italians Raffaella and Domenico.
That night we learned about sand flies, and boy did we learn it all very well and very quickly. The rash Joe had seen on his feet started to itch, so he figured that, like mosquito bites, scratching them a little would make the itch go away for a while.
It turns out the sand fly bites are much more itchy than mosquito bites, plus the itchiness only intensifies with scratching. Joe was up doing research by early morning Monday to figure out how to beat the bites, because he thought he might actually lose his mind. I hadn't started scratching, so mine was only minor discomfort, but it was alarming to wake up to Joe's eyes wide in panic, asking for the key to the locked cupboard that held our cash so he could go see if he could find relief at a store. He bought the stick of itch-reliever, but this barely helped.
He asked the store owner what he should do and read about what he should do and bought some antiseptic liquid to soak in. He mixed a basin with hot water and the liquid and soaked some socks in it to put on his feet. His feet looked diseased and angry, with a hundred bites all over them, but the heat and antiseptic helped just a little--at least enough that he was able to calm down and stop scratching.
We stayed home that day (Monday) so Joe could try to recuperate and take care of his feet. Poor boy had nearly gone insane and I was very, very thankful that something had finally helped him stop itching and calm the anxiety he felt. Needless to say, we took protection from insects seriously from that point on. We bought repellent that was 80% deet from the store and used shoes while on the beach and out at night. Thankfully, our bites were fewer from then on as well.
The sand flies come out mostly at night and especially like the feet and ankles and a little bit of the legs. We had been warned by someone back home before we came about the sand flies, but we neither knew how to combat them nor knew just how terrible they were. Apparently the bites are much worse than mosquito bites and can take up to several weeks to go away. Luckily though, our bodies eventually get used to the protein that the flies inject into the body at the point of the bite, meaning even if we get bitten a lot sometime down the road, we probably won't have as hard of a time as those first few days. Which is comforting when we found out New Zealand has quite the sand fly problem as well.
The next day (Tuesday) we woke up hoping to go to town, but realized the buses didn't run because it was Muhammad's birthday. We couldn't go another day cooped up in the hostel, especially when we had distracting insect bites, so we paid for a cab into town. We headed to the cheap lunch place, but found it was closed for the holiday as well. So we found a nice Chinese restaurant on the second floor and settled in for a comforting meal of Chinese to boost our moods.
We bought fruit at the market and were headed to find a cab again when we found the single Italian Mateo, who we had spent the night talking to on Saturday night. We split a cab home and then later that evening walked to Junior's house to set up the waterfall and island trips.
More to come... thank goodness I'm getting it all down... there was a lot to write! Love!
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Fiji Part 1: Fiji Time (Day 1 was the LONGEST)
On January 7th, I hugged my mom and dad goodbye and put my backpack into my Uncle Dorsey's sweet, tricked out Chrysler minivan. Joe and I left San Clemente and I cried at the separation from my parents. It was not a moment of I-am-too-weak-to-adventure-without-my-parents. Rather, it was a sad, sad cry at the end of another happy part of my life. Transitions tend to make me really sad. But I think you could count that as a happy cry.
We were caught in only a minor bit of traffic on the way to the airport. We parked, gathered our things, left a note, and headed into the international terminal. Checking in was smooth, except for a moment where I worried the man wasn't going to let us check in, but we flashed him our itineraries and New Zealand visas, and that seemed to appease him.
Our travels had started.
The plane was smooth sailing for the most part. We took mild sleeping pills to make sure we got enough sleep, but all it really ended up doing for me was make me wide awake once it had worn off. That and I ended up sleep-watching the one movie that interested me for selection. Once I was wide awake again, I decided to watch it again while I was conscious.
Also, apparently we flew through a thunderstorm. Joe woke up terrified because there was lightning all around the plane. I must have been asleep for this part.
When we arrived in Fiji, it was 6:00am January 9th. Having crossed the International Date Line, we had skipped January 8th entirely. We went through customs, got our baggage, pulled money from an ATM, and got our luggage scanned for bio-hazardous materials. Fiji, as islands and distinct ecosystems, is strict about animal, plant, and food products brought into the country. An innocent apple brought as a snack on the plane, could carry a disease that could ravage fruit production, vegetation, animal life, etc. We've heard New Zealand takes it even more seriously.
Ben from our hostel (Bamboo) was waiting for us. We hopped into his vehicle and got on our way (on the left side of the road, to be specific). He made a sales pitch for a package that took tourists out to his island where his village was. We would learn later that pretty much everyone would do the my village sales pitch thing. He also told us he thought the exchange rate was around USD$1 to FJ$1.
The hostel turn-around time didn't happen until at least 10am when guests were asked to check out, however, they had a couple of beds open in the room in which we were staying, so we locked up our valuables in one of the locking cupboards, stored our bags in their luggage room, and headed out walking.
Our hostel is located right on the beach, so we took off on the sand. Right off the bat, a man approached us and told us a story about meeting another couple just like us, for whom he had climbed the nearby coconut tree and retrieved a coconut. We smiled and talked and got pulled into following him toward the coconut tree, but before we got very far, Joe turned to me and muttered what I had already been thinking: this smells like a scam. Joe was able to politely decline, to which the man seemed deflated, but he backed off and we continued our beach walk. This man, we would later learn, scammed all the tourists by luring them into the coconut scam and then asking for money.
This walk opened our eyes quickly to some subjective opinions about the island. It was dirty. The trash was unnecessary and extensive. We were dodging pieces of glass, tires, and old clothing that was hanging around in the sand. There were scrappy, scraggly looking dogs trotting around. By the time we got to the river that met the ocean, which turned the water into a dull brownish-black color (an effect we would later learn was how that area of the island got its name--Wailoaloa, which means black water), we were both silently pondering the hour or two we had been in Fiji.
Our nerves were already running a little high with the stress of traveling, but the right-off-the-bat sales pitch, the almost instantaneous coconut scam, and the garbage and stray dogs were a sobering snap back to the reality of traveling. It's not all glamorous good times. We had both been away from traveling for a while and had come to view traveling as an ideal--a state of life were everything is beautiful, cultural, and inspirational.
The first walk down the beach was a heavy reminder of some of the experiences that lurk in the darker side of the nomadic life. At some point we were able to talk about these doubts we were having. What had we gotten ourselves into? It was comforting for me to know that Joe was having the same doubts and I could walk through feeling a little scared with him by my side. And I felt validated knowing that I wasn't alone in my fears. Were we just crazy to take advantage of the stopover in Fiji to stay a couple of weeks? Were we ready to handle all that for two weeks? And an even more important question—were we ready to handle the uglier side of youthful travel? This what-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into thought would become a thread weaved into the fabric of many of our traveling experiences.
Eventually we found a little dirt road (with plenty of trash) that wound behind the beach through a grove of palm trees. This led to a road that ran perpendicular to the beach. We walked up it and found the intersection where it met one of the main roads we had driven on to get to the hostel. We walked away from the hostel direction hoping to find a store where we could buy water. Nothing. We decided to walk up to a curve in the road to see if there was anything. There were few cars on the road because it was still early morning. We did not find a store and decided to turn back. We later discovered that around one more curve was an intersection with many stores on it.
On the way back to the hostel, we met a young man who was pouring sweat. He was very friendly, and plugged “his village” just a little, but didn't even tell us his name. The memorable take-away from the conversation was a phrase that we heard several times later in our trip: “Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?”
We went back to the hostel, asked about buses, and then walked out to the road we had just been on to wait for the bus. And we waited. And waited. Here we started to realize just how much the heat and humidity of Fiji stuck to you, smashing into your body and feeling inescapable, like a hot and dirty fog.
A taxi drove past several times, asking if we needed him. We said no and that we were waiting for a bus. After an hour or two with only a handful of cars and no bus, the taxi came back and said, okay, I will take you Nadi for $10. He said this as if he were offering us the service at a very discounted price, as though we should be grateful for his generosity. He proceeded to tell us how generous he was with tourists because he had a soft spot for them, and said he would give us a small tour of Nadi "on my tab"--again insinuating that we were getting the better deal out of the transaction because his tour was out of the kindness of his heart.
Ten dollars was a rip-off and we never paid that much again.
The taxi had introduced us to a restaurant that had a good deal on food--$2.50 for a small plate of a number of tasty items. I got Chilie Chicken, Joe got a curry plate. Mine was delicious, but very hot. I did my best to not let the heat show on my face, since I didn't want the Pakistani family to think Americans were pansies. I had tears in my eyes.
We started to walk in the direction the taxi driver had said the marina was. The sun was hot, but we saw very beautiful trees and cows and so we started to feel a little more comfortable with our travels, especially because our bellies were full.
Part way down the road to the marina, it started to get very hot. The sidewalks ceased, so we were walking on baking pavement going somewhere that we had no idea how far it was. At one intersection a man in a full size shuttle van waved us over. He told us he would take us to the marina. We didn't want to be scammed again, so we resisted and asked how much. He said he would takes us for free because we looked very hot and he was going that way anyway. We gladly hopped in to the air-conditioned vehicle and were glad we did when we realized our destination was 5-10 miles away and we would have been walking all day.
We were thankful and gave him a tip when he dropped us at the marina, just because it was so nice of him to offer assistance to us just because he could. He even told us which bus to catch to go back to Nadi.
The marina was an odd experience. We are budget travelers and everyone walking around at the marina were wealthy tourists who bought last-minute sunglasses and floppy hats at outrageous prices just because money was no object. Anyone who does marina or airport shopping probably has too much money.
While there, we got sucked into a sales pitch. An androgynous male/female called us over to tell us that they were running a special. The day cruise normally cost FJ$189 per person, but the special would be two people for FJ$20. What? How does that work? The salesperson joked that we would have to swim back, but then in all seriousness asked how old we were. When we said 25 and 26, s/he said, oh sorry, the deal is for people 28 and above. So s/he let us walk away without even trying to continue selling us something. We walked away very confused.
Then we hit the supermarket and the fruit market. We purchased a few fruits (star fruit, the ripest pineapple you ever saw, and a paupau (round papaya). The supermarket stressed us out when we realized bottled water (and everything else) was super expensive. As far as we knew, tourists drank only bottled water.
We found a bus that went back in the direction we needed it to go--the bus driver reacted positively when we told him where we needed to go. We were frustrated again when he dropped us off at an intersection that was still 2-3 miles away from our hostel. We were unreasonably hot and I was retaining water so that every step was just a bit painful on feet that felt swollen. We were pretty miserable, trying to carry the bottled water we had shelled out so much money for.
On one stretch, someone yelled the Fijian greeting "Bula!" and invited us to come up to their porch for a rest and some water. Joe, being sociable, agreed and started to walk that way. I, having had a few bad experiences during my travels in the past, thought the idea of walking into some unknown person's house was a risky and frightening idea. I muttered to Joe that I didn't like the situation, but he had already accepted the offer and was headed up a slight hill and toward the small house.
As it turned out, the experience was nothing but positive. Joe was able to ask about a number of things that had been bothering us--how to catch a bus, what we should pay for a taxi, how to get the best experience out of Fiji without getting trapped in a tourist trap or scam or paying a lot of money. Junior, our new-found friend, seemed to be very open and honest, one of the first people we encountered who was not hoping to make a buck off of us. He mentioned a couple of things that he might be able to help us do, but never pushed anything on us.
Junior and his wife Donna gave us water to drink from their tiny little metal home (we learned tap water is safe to drink), and we were introduced to their 17-year-old daughter Shahana, their 12-year-old son Fazar (whose older brother's name is Wazad--they are Fazi and Wazi), and their youngest (4-year-old) son Isaac, who was very cute, but very shy. (Side note: not sure on the spellings of names.)
We were even given food! Donna brought us each a plate of spinach mash (for lack of a better name) and cassava. Still feeling a little nervous about the whole situation, I shared Joe's plate and left the other for someone else, but no one else was eating, which at the time felt fishy.
We left feeling cautiously happy about the experience. We hiked in the hot sun back to our hostel by way of the beach again, only this time when we reached the river that met the ocean, the tide was at high tide and the river was up to our waists. Going the other way around the road would have meant adding a good 3-4 miles onto our walk at that point, so we had to just hike up our clothing (for me a skirt, for Joe shorts) and walk through the dirty river.
That night we ate a little dinner with a couple we met from Colorado (Ryan the female, and Elliott the male!). It was awesome to get to talk to them because they helped us understand Fiji a little better and helped us feel more secure in our travel plans. They too were headed to New Zealand from Fiji, though for a shorter time. They even had the same Fiji stories as us--spending time in Fiji because the plane stopped here anyway on the way to New Zealand, the coconut scam man on the beach, and the grocery store bargain shopping to stay alive.
Thankfully, they clued us in on the exchange rate! It wasn't the one to one ratio the cab driver had told us. Actually, it was closer to USD$1 to FJ$2, meaning everything we had spent money on that day was half price compared to what we had thought! We suddenly felt like the day had been much less stressful. The cab had actually only cost us USD$5 instead of 10, the water was USD$1.50 instead of 3, and all the food was much more reasonable. In fact, lunch had cost USD$3 for both of us!
The couple was leaving the next day, and promised to leave us their Fiji book. Joe and I took a round of kava (more info later) and got two and a half earfuls each about a Danish girl's glorious and most likely expensive cultural experience out on the island of Taveuni. We exchanged contact information Coloradans and went to bed feeling much better about our travels.
Stay tuned for the next leg. This has only been day one, but boy was it a long one! By the end of it, our heads were spinning.
We were caught in only a minor bit of traffic on the way to the airport. We parked, gathered our things, left a note, and headed into the international terminal. Checking in was smooth, except for a moment where I worried the man wasn't going to let us check in, but we flashed him our itineraries and New Zealand visas, and that seemed to appease him.
Our travels had started.
The plane was smooth sailing for the most part. We took mild sleeping pills to make sure we got enough sleep, but all it really ended up doing for me was make me wide awake once it had worn off. That and I ended up sleep-watching the one movie that interested me for selection. Once I was wide awake again, I decided to watch it again while I was conscious.
Also, apparently we flew through a thunderstorm. Joe woke up terrified because there was lightning all around the plane. I must have been asleep for this part.
When we arrived in Fiji, it was 6:00am January 9th. Having crossed the International Date Line, we had skipped January 8th entirely. We went through customs, got our baggage, pulled money from an ATM, and got our luggage scanned for bio-hazardous materials. Fiji, as islands and distinct ecosystems, is strict about animal, plant, and food products brought into the country. An innocent apple brought as a snack on the plane, could carry a disease that could ravage fruit production, vegetation, animal life, etc. We've heard New Zealand takes it even more seriously.
Ben from our hostel (Bamboo) was waiting for us. We hopped into his vehicle and got on our way (on the left side of the road, to be specific). He made a sales pitch for a package that took tourists out to his island where his village was. We would learn later that pretty much everyone would do the my village sales pitch thing. He also told us he thought the exchange rate was around USD$1 to FJ$1.
The hostel turn-around time didn't happen until at least 10am when guests were asked to check out, however, they had a couple of beds open in the room in which we were staying, so we locked up our valuables in one of the locking cupboards, stored our bags in their luggage room, and headed out walking.
Our hostel is located right on the beach, so we took off on the sand. Right off the bat, a man approached us and told us a story about meeting another couple just like us, for whom he had climbed the nearby coconut tree and retrieved a coconut. We smiled and talked and got pulled into following him toward the coconut tree, but before we got very far, Joe turned to me and muttered what I had already been thinking: this smells like a scam. Joe was able to politely decline, to which the man seemed deflated, but he backed off and we continued our beach walk. This man, we would later learn, scammed all the tourists by luring them into the coconut scam and then asking for money.
This walk opened our eyes quickly to some subjective opinions about the island. It was dirty. The trash was unnecessary and extensive. We were dodging pieces of glass, tires, and old clothing that was hanging around in the sand. There were scrappy, scraggly looking dogs trotting around. By the time we got to the river that met the ocean, which turned the water into a dull brownish-black color (an effect we would later learn was how that area of the island got its name--Wailoaloa, which means black water), we were both silently pondering the hour or two we had been in Fiji.
Our nerves were already running a little high with the stress of traveling, but the right-off-the-bat sales pitch, the almost instantaneous coconut scam, and the garbage and stray dogs were a sobering snap back to the reality of traveling. It's not all glamorous good times. We had both been away from traveling for a while and had come to view traveling as an ideal--a state of life were everything is beautiful, cultural, and inspirational.
The first walk down the beach was a heavy reminder of some of the experiences that lurk in the darker side of the nomadic life. At some point we were able to talk about these doubts we were having. What had we gotten ourselves into? It was comforting for me to know that Joe was having the same doubts and I could walk through feeling a little scared with him by my side. And I felt validated knowing that I wasn't alone in my fears. Were we just crazy to take advantage of the stopover in Fiji to stay a couple of weeks? Were we ready to handle all that for two weeks? And an even more important question—were we ready to handle the uglier side of youthful travel? This what-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into thought would become a thread weaved into the fabric of many of our traveling experiences.
Eventually we found a little dirt road (with plenty of trash) that wound behind the beach through a grove of palm trees. This led to a road that ran perpendicular to the beach. We walked up it and found the intersection where it met one of the main roads we had driven on to get to the hostel. We walked away from the hostel direction hoping to find a store where we could buy water. Nothing. We decided to walk up to a curve in the road to see if there was anything. There were few cars on the road because it was still early morning. We did not find a store and decided to turn back. We later discovered that around one more curve was an intersection with many stores on it.
On the way back to the hostel, we met a young man who was pouring sweat. He was very friendly, and plugged “his village” just a little, but didn't even tell us his name. The memorable take-away from the conversation was a phrase that we heard several times later in our trip: “Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?”
We went back to the hostel, asked about buses, and then walked out to the road we had just been on to wait for the bus. And we waited. And waited. Here we started to realize just how much the heat and humidity of Fiji stuck to you, smashing into your body and feeling inescapable, like a hot and dirty fog.
A taxi drove past several times, asking if we needed him. We said no and that we were waiting for a bus. After an hour or two with only a handful of cars and no bus, the taxi came back and said, okay, I will take you Nadi for $10. He said this as if he were offering us the service at a very discounted price, as though we should be grateful for his generosity. He proceeded to tell us how generous he was with tourists because he had a soft spot for them, and said he would give us a small tour of Nadi "on my tab"--again insinuating that we were getting the better deal out of the transaction because his tour was out of the kindness of his heart.
Ten dollars was a rip-off and we never paid that much again.
The taxi had introduced us to a restaurant that had a good deal on food--$2.50 for a small plate of a number of tasty items. I got Chilie Chicken, Joe got a curry plate. Mine was delicious, but very hot. I did my best to not let the heat show on my face, since I didn't want the Pakistani family to think Americans were pansies. I had tears in my eyes.
We started to walk in the direction the taxi driver had said the marina was. The sun was hot, but we saw very beautiful trees and cows and so we started to feel a little more comfortable with our travels, especially because our bellies were full.
Part way down the road to the marina, it started to get very hot. The sidewalks ceased, so we were walking on baking pavement going somewhere that we had no idea how far it was. At one intersection a man in a full size shuttle van waved us over. He told us he would take us to the marina. We didn't want to be scammed again, so we resisted and asked how much. He said he would takes us for free because we looked very hot and he was going that way anyway. We gladly hopped in to the air-conditioned vehicle and were glad we did when we realized our destination was 5-10 miles away and we would have been walking all day.
We were thankful and gave him a tip when he dropped us at the marina, just because it was so nice of him to offer assistance to us just because he could. He even told us which bus to catch to go back to Nadi.
The marina was an odd experience. We are budget travelers and everyone walking around at the marina were wealthy tourists who bought last-minute sunglasses and floppy hats at outrageous prices just because money was no object. Anyone who does marina or airport shopping probably has too much money.
While there, we got sucked into a sales pitch. An androgynous male/female called us over to tell us that they were running a special. The day cruise normally cost FJ$189 per person, but the special would be two people for FJ$20. What? How does that work? The salesperson joked that we would have to swim back, but then in all seriousness asked how old we were. When we said 25 and 26, s/he said, oh sorry, the deal is for people 28 and above. So s/he let us walk away without even trying to continue selling us something. We walked away very confused.
Then we hit the supermarket and the fruit market. We purchased a few fruits (star fruit, the ripest pineapple you ever saw, and a paupau (round papaya). The supermarket stressed us out when we realized bottled water (and everything else) was super expensive. As far as we knew, tourists drank only bottled water.
We found a bus that went back in the direction we needed it to go--the bus driver reacted positively when we told him where we needed to go. We were frustrated again when he dropped us off at an intersection that was still 2-3 miles away from our hostel. We were unreasonably hot and I was retaining water so that every step was just a bit painful on feet that felt swollen. We were pretty miserable, trying to carry the bottled water we had shelled out so much money for.
On one stretch, someone yelled the Fijian greeting "Bula!" and invited us to come up to their porch for a rest and some water. Joe, being sociable, agreed and started to walk that way. I, having had a few bad experiences during my travels in the past, thought the idea of walking into some unknown person's house was a risky and frightening idea. I muttered to Joe that I didn't like the situation, but he had already accepted the offer and was headed up a slight hill and toward the small house.
As it turned out, the experience was nothing but positive. Joe was able to ask about a number of things that had been bothering us--how to catch a bus, what we should pay for a taxi, how to get the best experience out of Fiji without getting trapped in a tourist trap or scam or paying a lot of money. Junior, our new-found friend, seemed to be very open and honest, one of the first people we encountered who was not hoping to make a buck off of us. He mentioned a couple of things that he might be able to help us do, but never pushed anything on us.
Junior and his wife Donna gave us water to drink from their tiny little metal home (we learned tap water is safe to drink), and we were introduced to their 17-year-old daughter Shahana, their 12-year-old son Fazar (whose older brother's name is Wazad--they are Fazi and Wazi), and their youngest (4-year-old) son Isaac, who was very cute, but very shy. (Side note: not sure on the spellings of names.)
We were even given food! Donna brought us each a plate of spinach mash (for lack of a better name) and cassava. Still feeling a little nervous about the whole situation, I shared Joe's plate and left the other for someone else, but no one else was eating, which at the time felt fishy.
We left feeling cautiously happy about the experience. We hiked in the hot sun back to our hostel by way of the beach again, only this time when we reached the river that met the ocean, the tide was at high tide and the river was up to our waists. Going the other way around the road would have meant adding a good 3-4 miles onto our walk at that point, so we had to just hike up our clothing (for me a skirt, for Joe shorts) and walk through the dirty river.
That night we ate a little dinner with a couple we met from Colorado (Ryan the female, and Elliott the male!). It was awesome to get to talk to them because they helped us understand Fiji a little better and helped us feel more secure in our travel plans. They too were headed to New Zealand from Fiji, though for a shorter time. They even had the same Fiji stories as us--spending time in Fiji because the plane stopped here anyway on the way to New Zealand, the coconut scam man on the beach, and the grocery store bargain shopping to stay alive.
Thankfully, they clued us in on the exchange rate! It wasn't the one to one ratio the cab driver had told us. Actually, it was closer to USD$1 to FJ$2, meaning everything we had spent money on that day was half price compared to what we had thought! We suddenly felt like the day had been much less stressful. The cab had actually only cost us USD$5 instead of 10, the water was USD$1.50 instead of 3, and all the food was much more reasonable. In fact, lunch had cost USD$3 for both of us!
The couple was leaving the next day, and promised to leave us their Fiji book. Joe and I took a round of kava (more info later) and got two and a half earfuls each about a Danish girl's glorious and most likely expensive cultural experience out on the island of Taveuni. We exchanged contact information Coloradans and went to bed feeling much better about our travels.
Stay tuned for the next leg. This has only been day one, but boy was it a long one! By the end of it, our heads were spinning.
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