Tuesday, October 31, 2006

We found Nemo!

Hello there!

A lot has happened since our last entry, so there's a lot of catching up to do.


First though, we'd like to apologize for the lack of photos in our gallery. We have the photos and we're trying to post them, but it's a long process on the poor local internet connection speed, so please bear with us. They are coming, we promise.

Also, if you try to view this blog on Internet Explorer, you probably can't get in. So that means that you can't read this message and it doesn't help you anyway. But if you do decide to use Firefox or Safari, then congratulations! You can read this and know never to use Explorer ever again to view this blog.

Now to the latest news.

After our first weekend in Nadi, on Monday morning we got on a minibus (really just a minivan) that drove us on the Queens Highway at a racing speed to Navua, a medium-size town on the south coast. Lucky for us, as soon as we got out, the owner of the Lawaki Beach House, our new destination, was already waiting for us with his boat in the harbor, so we hopped on and crossed a very choppy sea to Beqa Island. Ryan and Sam were as cool as two cucumbers, but I was holding on for my dear life as waves were tossing us up and down.

But the ride was well worth it because as soon as we turned to the western part of the island, the sea got calm and we disembarked in a real piece of dreamy tropical paradise.

Lawaki Beach House is a little bit of cleared land nestled between the foothill of a lush rainforest mountain and a golden beach, lined on all sides with colorful tropical flowers and tall palm trees that constantly sway in a cool breeze. The whole "resort" houses 10 people at its full capacity and consists of a main "beach" house with a lounge, and 3 bures, which are simple huts with beds and bathrooms. When we arrived, there were only two other residents at Lawaki, the place was blissfully quiet and peaceful and we were immediately served lunch by the friendly Fijian staff and we felt like family coming home.

We pitched our tent about 3 feet from the beach and after that we immediately jumped into the two main vacation activities: Ryan hopped on the hammock with our Fiji book and I rented the snorkeling gear and went out to the coral. And that's what we did during most of our time at Lawaki Beach House.

Snorkeling in the crystal-clear water was excellent, and even if it wasn't my very fist time, I still would have been excited like a 6-year-old under a Chirstmas tree.
The coral was maybe not as grand as you might see it on National Georgraphic, but it was still pretty spectacular, considering that some of the pastel-colored mushroom corals were almost the size of my body and we floated mere inches above them. The hundreds of electric blue and green fishes hiding in the coral branches observed us, the awkward human fish, with great curiosity.

On our second day, Tuesday, we did a quick hike up the mountain, from which we had spectacular views of the sea, nearby islands and a neighboring bay, and afterward we jumped in the water again, despite the overcast and windy weather. I simply could not stay away from that amazing coral reef and made Ryan to go with me again. My other favorite past time on Tuesady was an experiment with the local hermit crabs. I desperately wanted to see a crab change its shell, so I found a few empty shells and kept following crabs around, offering them these pretty little new residences. I had two potential takers, but, alas, I did not succeed. They always just crawled away from me as fast as they could, I don't know why!


On our third day, the weather got a little worse again, and we spent most of our time lazing around the tent and the hammock, but yet again, despite my stern resolution to dedicate myself to relaxing in dry clothes all day, I could not sit still when I still had to find Nemo! (Apparently, I was the only resident of the entire island who somehow kept missing the patch of coral that housed a whole family of clownfish. Ryan and the other Australian residents of Lawaki had all found it already.) So I went in again and I found them at last, the whole family of Nemos, small and big, all hanging around a bush of bluish soft coral. One of the bigger Nemos kept charging at me and I couldn't tell if it was playing with me or if it was trying to scare me away to protect the family. Either way, it was incredibly endearing, since the cute thing was only a little bigger than my two thumbs. In the close neighborhood I also found a giant clam (this one was about 12" in diameter, a tiny one compared to the 3-5' they can apparently get to!). My hapiness was complete. I came out of the cold water blue and with my teeth violently chattering from the cold wind, but it was all worth it. Now I could finally relax.

Lawaki was fantastic - all meals included, peace and quiet, the beach and palms hanging over it...but it was a little pricey and on Thursday we had to get going again. Our next destination: Suva, the capital city of Fiji, where we are now writing from.

We arrived in some sort of a monsoon (Sam told us that hurricane rain was coming to us from the Solomon Islands) and so Suva was all wet, dark and busy, as it was a regular working day, and not extremely inviting - a pretty big contrast to the peaceful Lawaki Beach House. Although we were warned about the notorious aggressive sword-sellers in Suva, we weren't accosted by any street vendors and simply blended in immediately. The crowd here seems accustomed to whites and, really, Suva is a very diverse multiethnic and modern city. You see Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Chinese, Australians and New Zealanders and other Polynesians. Surprisingly, Suva is very western and there's great shopping and nightlife, apparently the best between California and Sidney. Also, we realized how shamelessly we got ripped off in Nadi, where the whole town prays on unsuspecting, jet-lagged tourists with prices triple and quadruple the prices we found in Suva!

We spent our first 2 nights at a budget hotel, the South Seas hotel, a charming place with an old-world Pacific feel, dark wooden floors, an enthusiastic Fijian receptionist and damp, musty smell that permeated everything (something we were to encounter more often in this permanently damp and rainy city). We started to realize that staying in hotels is sucking us financially dry, so we had to come to a decision: whether to stay and settle down in Suva or to continue on to Savusavu, a more idyllic but smaller town that we knew nothing about. So we gave ourselves one day - if we like it here, we stay.

On Friday, the sun came out and the dry streets made a completely new impression. We could finally look around, enjoy some cheap and yummy curry, check out the stores and take a walk on the shore. By the end of the afternoon, we thought that this place could grow on us after all, and that we should disregard everything other travelers have so far told us about Suva - 'that it's an ugly and boring dump of a place where you should never bother to waste too much time.' So in this pleasant state of mind and with thirst for some delicious Fiji bitter, we walked into "Traps", the legendary local bar that we found recommended in our travel book. And what a good decision it was! It definitely cemented our decision to stay here!

As soon as we walked in, we struck a conversation with the bartender Mary, who turned out to be the bar's manager and a senator's daughter, and who introduced us to her whole bar staff. When we told Mary about our situation, she immediately got on the phone and asked her friends around for a free apartment. This is a perfect example of the unspolied hospitality and friendliness that we've been coming across on this beautiful island. And this is in the big, mean, westernized city, mind you. Imagine the of people in the Fijian villages!

When we returned to the bar later that night, we made friends with Mary's niece, a producer at Fiji TV, and a local TV chef star Neil, not to mention the many other wonderful Fijians we met that night. And we saw how Fijians can party! Any last notions that Fiji might be some kind of remote backwoods in the middle of an ocean where we'll have a hard time coming across recent cultural trends were completely and definitely shattered in this bar, where people danced to the lasted American R'n'B and hip hop, drank western drinks and wore western clothes. But the nice thing here was that, unlike in a majority of comparable US bars, there was no meat-market sleaziness going on here, no uninvited humping of girls' backs, no belligerent drunk aggression. (Well, there MIGHT have been some of that, but the Traps bouncers were so fast that we never saw anything more than a guy being led out of the club.)

We had a fantastic time partying with all these friendly and genuine people and we wanted to go back. So the next morning, after we checked out from South Seas, we went to one apartment destination that was recommended in our book and rented a fully-furnished one-bedroom apartment for the whole month. It is located just a short walk away from the city center in a nice quiet neighborhood. With a little bit of airing out, incense-burning and laundry-washing, I think we'll even be able to get the damp, musty smell out and make it our own little place here in no time!

It continues to rain, drizzle, spit, down-pour or mist a few times a day here (Suva is located in a rainbelt created by the mountains to the north that trap the trade winds), but we've had a very sunny Saturday and a sunny Sunday and most of the time we're home when the rain comes in. Since we've spent the last few days settling in, we still have a lot of local exploring to do, like visiting the Fiji National Museum or hiking in the local rain forest Colo-i-Suva, which is supposed to have cool waterfalls and swimming pools. Also, we'll try to visit a local village and hopefully experience the more authentic Fiji way of life than what we see in Suva.

No matter what anybody says, Suva is really quite a cool city. The internet might be slow, but the curry and Chinese food is tasty and cheap, there's better shopping than in DC and there's a rainforest right at our doorstep. And the Village Cinemas play the latest movies for F$5 (US$2.50!) AND you can see a Bollywood movie, too! Now, who wouldn't want to see a cop thriller, in which criminals break into dazzling song and dance sequences? We did, and it was fun (-ny).

We'll be back soon. Thanks for all your comments and keep checking back.

For Scot: No, the women do NOT walk around topless. But the men DO wear skirts!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Bula from Nadi!

(pronounced as Mbula and Nandi)

So we made it! Amazing, how easily you can get to the other side of the Earth these days! Well, relatively easily.

Beside the grueling, ass-hurting, 11-hour-long flight on Air New Zealand, our passage from Los Angeles to Fiji was smooth and uneventful. Now, we are in Nadi, the second largest city in Fiji and the country's western gateway with the only international airport and a well-developed tourist infrastructure.

It's almost a tropical paradise.

Well, really, it is a tropical paradise: the palm leaves rustle gently in the warm breeze, cool-looking birds sing unfamiliar tropical songs on the backdrop of rugged, volcanic tropical mountains reminiscent of "Lost," and you are greeted on every step by beautiful islanders with great smiles and flowers stuck behind their ears.

The reason why Nadi is an "almost" tropical paradise is something I discovered disappointingly after our first breakfast at our lovely little Aquarius Hotel. I was looking longingly toward the blue bay not more than 100 yards to my right and thought that people must be crazy not to be frolicking in the ocean. But as soon as we got to the water, it was immediately obvious why no one was in it. The brown sand of the Wailoaloa Beach of Nadi Bay, which is lined by small budget hotels like our Aquarius, makes a stroll in the calm tide seem like wading in Turkish coffee. In other words, no white sand and foamy waves here, folks. That's why, I realized, Nadi is only a gateway to the paradise experience everyone comes to expect from Fiji.

But let me tell you a little bit about our first few days of traveling: San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In San Fran, the airport shuttle dropped us off safe 4 blocks from our address - should've known this didn't mean anything good. We reserved a hotel room for $50 in one of the cheapest hotels in town and ended up in a part of town where streets smelled of piss and feces and are populated by ghostly shadows of people in various stages of crack cocaine intoxication. As soon as we checked in, I realized disturbed that this "hotel" (Pontiac Hotel, to be exact) serves as a dorm for many of the shady and drugged out individuals that we just saw down on the street. Our room had a strong musty odor, no bathroom and a stained mattress, but we established after the first night that, despite the lively drug trade below our windows,inside the hotel we were pretty much safe.

San Francisco is, of course, lovely, cool, hip and awesome, but here's how overblown expectations ruin first impressions: Since everyone I know loves SF, I thought that I'd immediately fall in love with it, too. But no, I didn't. I don't know what it was - maybe I felt not cool enough for this town, or I felt some pressure that this city has to constantly live up to its own image of utter hipness and coolness - and found it a little pretensious. Maybe it was all the filth and homeless people on our Minna Street (and apparently anywhere south of Market Street - don't go there) and thinking that these beggars probably just ran out of rent money in this land of impossibly expensive real estate. Maybe it was the overcrowding of houses and people. And maybe it was just the wind. The persistent, frigid fucking wind that buried chill deep into my bones.

But, most likely, I'll have to give San Francisco another chance. Because, let's face it, after two years in the bland Washington, DC, San Fran might just be too much flavor to take in all at once.

That was Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, we rented a car and drove down on Rt. 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, towards San Louis Obispo, a town Ryan picked simply because it seemed to be right in the middle between SF and LA. Unfortunately, we got to the best (and most dangerous) part of the road after dark. The Pacific was blue, benign and beautiful during the day, but at night it was dark and frightening. For 90 miles we were stuck on one side of a mountain range and zig-zagged on the side of a cliff, sometimes only inches away from a black void. Ryan kept his cool, but I had to hide total panic and couldn't wait to get off that goddamned cliff!

On Wednesday morning we took off from San Louis Obispo and arrived in LA. Amazingly, here we got a room for $50 directly on Hollywood Blvd, just a quick drive away from all the sights one can't miss in LA. Again, since most people I know dislike LA, I thought I'd hate it, too. But no, I didn't hate LA at first sight. Our Thai/Armenian neighborhood seemed laid back, interesting and inviting. Well, LA might be a pretensious, conforming and traffic-congested smog hell hole, but our 24 hours there were...RAD.

We did all our sightseeing in under 2 hours: the Walk of Fame, Kodak Theater, Mann's Chinese Theater and the Hollywood sign. Without a map! At the most beautiful movie theater in the world (I'm sure) we saw the best movie of the year 2006 (I'm sure): "The Departed." (You gotta see it, if you haven't already!)

And then, on Thursday, we took off from LAX on Air New Zealand (with impossibly small and hard seats!) to Nadi.

We arrived at Nadi at 2:30 am, 30 minutes ahead of schedule, to the sound of "Bula!" and a traditional Fijian 3-man-band playing songs right at the arrival terminal (at 2:30 am!) and checked in to the Aquarius, where, by some mix-up, we got a more expensive, but a more comfortable room/apartment with the view of the bay and the neighborhood.

On our first day, still a bit dazed and confused from the long flight (but much helped by the wonderful New Zealand homeopathic product "No Jet Lag") we got an overpriced cab to Nadi town and immediately became victims to the overzealous tourist predators. As we were patting ourselves on the back for dodging a couple of overpriced traps (including a curry restaurant), we were cleverly lured into a handicraft store by a charming Fijian. We couldn't say no, because he offered us a piece of the Fijian culture - the kava ceremony - right there, on the floor of the shop. And the stop was worth it. The men who mixed kava in a solid-wood bowl in front of us seemed sincere and introduced us to "Fiji time!" We left F$20 lighter (for trinkets they hung on our necks originally as "gifts"), a bit more relaxed from the kava (although I noticed that I, a female, was getting a "low tide", barely a sip of the drink) and more prepared to deal with the onslaught of other sellers that we will certainly encounter elsewhere in Fiji.

And now to "Fiji time".

Yesterday it seemed like a cheesy cliche that natives repeat to tourists. But today, on our second day in Fiji, I'm starting to think that there is something to "Fiji time". Today, we got up, walked and took pictures on the beach, had breakfast, did laundry, had lunch, worked out our "plan of attack" for the next 2 weeks, took a dip in the muddy ocean, lazed around on hammocks for a while and by the time we returned to our room, it was just after noon(!!)

Maybe there really is "Fiji time" - a parallel space-time that runs just slow enough for you to enjoy your life.

Stay tuned for the next report. We will be leaving Nadi tomorrow morning by bus along the south shore of Viti Levu to Navua where we hope to hire a village boat to Beqa [Mbenga] Island where we will camp for 3 days before making our way to Suva, the capital, and then chartering a flight to the old capital, Levuka, on Ovalau Island.

Bula and Vinaka!

Monday, October 02, 2006

getting ready


So, in two weeks, Ryan and I are leaving the western and northern hemispheres to start a 7-month-long trek through the South Pacific, more specifically, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. I was almost tempted to say we are about to leave the “civilization,” but that would, of course, be incredibly insulting to the Polynesian nations, although not at all unusual to come out of a white Westerner’s mouth.

Yes, we are going to a place that has rain forest, deadly animals, typhoons (the southern sisters of hurricanes) and coral reefs. But we are not leaving the civilization, although that might actually be exactly what we want to do. But even though we are going to the other side of the world (in my mind, the direction of our trip looks like a diagonal on a globe, which must be some kind of a geometric illusion), we will be in touch via this blog that I am now laboriously trying to begin, wondering: how the hell does one begin a blog???

So maybe I’ll start with the question that we’ve been facing a lot lately:
Why Fiji?

And why not, we ask.

But there is an answer, too. Ryan has been dreaming about the South Pacific for the last 2 years and now that I finished film school, and we no longer have the need to stay in the sterile and impersonal world of dirty politics called Washington, DC – what better way to get from America to Europe, from temporary to settled adulthood, than taking the long way home via some turquoise-tinted tropical paradise? It’s not that we’re rich or lazy to start careers. We’re just dedicated to adventure. And what better time to start an adventure than now?

So we are packing, shipping, selling, discarding or donating our accumulated material wealth in order to move out of the country, yet leave only with two backpacks. If you think that’s a lot of work, you’re damn right. That’s why I revisited my anal-retentive side and started early, so that I don’t have to experience the pre-departure panic of “too much crap and too little time” and really enjoy the last weeks in DC in relative harmony.
But the stress is worth it. Or at least I hope it will be.

We’ll spend 4 months backpacking over the islands of Fiji, 2 months in New Zealand, 1 month in Australia and then 1 week in Thailand on our way home (with a brief stop in London to see our dear friends Marc and Eileen). That’s pretty much all we know about our trip at this time. Well, we know that we will probably spend some time on a beach, some in a rain forest, drink kava, wear sarongs, shear some sheep, and sight a kangaroo at some point or another during our trip. But if you want to know more, then join us on this journey and log on to this blog again. We’ll try to update it weekly together with new photos and adventures.