The rainy season just kicked in, so we moved to our new accommodation just in time, since now we have a TV, CD player, radio and DVD player with a good supply of pirated DVDs from local shops (DVD piracy is an institution in Fiji!) to pass the time indoors while it rains...
Last Monday we settled into a cozy little holiday bure on the hillside property of Hans, a German ex-pat and an interesting fella, with whom we spend hours talking on the veranda while the rain pounds the coconut trees outside. Hans' Place, as his place is called, is about 100 yards from the sea and a 10-minute bus ride to town. The whole property is practically one large tropical garden with two visitor bures and Hans' own house on the top of a hill so steep that half-way up the hill your heart starts pounding heavily, and by the time you reach the top, you're drenched in sweat and out of breath (and we're in good shape!). But as Hans says: "Once you get up here, you know why we do it." Namely, it's the breathtaking view of the surrounding lush green hills, the blue bay and distant cloud-covered mountains.
Compared to our modest and musty Suva apartment, we're enjoying amazing comfort and luxury in our little cottage here - we have a stove to cook on, toaster, bathroom that's not a breeding ground for unidentified fungi, a fan and all utensils we need to cook up some real Pacific delicacies (cookbook also provided). We have a veranda, privacy and even a kitty named Bogie who comes to keep us company or chew on our feet. And no obnoxiously loud mynah birds waking us up at 6:30 every morning, as it was their custom in Suva...
We went back to Nasinu village to witness Vika's 21st birthday party, which was a huge celebration. Preparation for it took 2 days and involved the entire village: women fried meet, made curry and braided flower salusalu (Fiji ceremonial leis), men made lovo food (baked in a traditional Fiji earth oven lovo) and children decorated the ceremony area with braided coconut palms. There were crowds of people and heaps of food everywhere. In the evening, Vika was dressed in a traditional dress made from painted masi (also known as tapa, cloth made from the bark of mulberry tree) and Ryan and I, as guests of honor, were also "leid" with salusalu and sat next to Vika at the head of the table during the ceremony, which included speeches, prayers and the delivery of a "key to life" to Vika. This key, hand-carved from wood, is a symbol of freedom and responsibility for her own decisions, now that she's officially an adult. After that, the village ate the heaps of food (and let us tell you, Fijians know how to eat!) and went back to its relaxing mode: women sat around and talked and the men grogged till the wee hours of the morning.
A few nights ago we had a bit of excitement when a brush fire reached Hans' property and we feared for a few moments that we will be smoked out... Thankfully, the fire burned itself out before it reached any house, but it was awesome to look at... Another excitement here is snorkeling. We finally bought our own gear and every other day we walk down the road to "Split Rock", a piece of massive coral-covered rock that sits about 100 yards from shore. The coral is maybe not as colorful as the ones we saw at Beqa, but the reef fish are spectacular. There are these little striped guys who like to come close and nibble on us, Ryan even took one painful bite in the side! No Nemos, though.
That's about all the news for now. We hope we get home dry today. We'll eat another pawpaw (papaya) from the garden, watch a movie and make a plan for the holidays. For Christmas we're thinking about getting pampered for a day at a local resort before trekking over to the 180th meridian on the neighboring island of Taveuni in time for New Year's. We'll be among the first people on Earth to welcome the year 2007. Yay!
Happy Holidays!
Monday, December 18, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
'The Creeping Coup'
This is the name under which the recent Fijian coup should go down in history: The Creeping Coup. Something along the lines of "The Velvet Revolution" of 1989 in Czechoslovakia (of course, nobody knows that the Slovaks called it "The Gentle Revolution"...)
The latest and fourth in the series of Fijian coups took a whole month to unravel and just when everybody thought that it was averted, it happened: on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 the military commander Frank Bainimarama peacefully removed the democratically elected government in Suva and took over the operation of the country.
I think it's fair to say that this gives Fiji the unique trait of being the easiest country to have a coup in. In 2006, the entire Fijian army is backing the Commander's actions, but in May 2000 it was only 7 armed men who walked into the parliament and took over the government!
This week's coup is really still an effect of the unsolved and undealt-with 2000 coup and the corruption that stemmed from it.
There are military checkpoints set up around the capital and other main cities to prevent rioting and looting and the media is full of very negative "national crisis" coverage, but here in Savusavu the change in government hardly affects the daily life. Even in Suva the life goes on just like any other day and the deposed prime minister Qarase is already back in his home village grogging (drinking kava) with the chief and fishing. Most Fijians seem apathetic about the coup, but we heard some locals talk enthusiastically about the changes this will bring to Fijian politics. Nobody agrees with the way the Commander took over, but it seems that a good number of Fijians agree with his motives and hope that this will clean up the corruption in Suva.
So we'll see. Hopefully, the situation won't deteriorate - and even if it does, I don't think that Ryan and I have much to worry about. Our main worry now is to find an affordable apartment in Savusavu.
We arrived here last Thursday after a 12-hour ferry ride from Suva. On the boat, as we were picking up some stranded fishermen who were lost at sea for 3 days, I struck up a conversation with a 21-year-old Fijian law student Vika. She invited us to her home village that is just about a 30-minute ride from Savusavu, so we gladly accepted the offer. We spent the first 2 nights in a hotel and during the day we looked around the "Hidden Paradise" of Fiji, which is what the Fijians call the superbly lovely town and bay of Savusavu.
Savusavu is a really small town - just one main street lined with cheap Indian shops - that sits on the coast of the crystal-clear, torquoise-colored bay with sharp volcanic mountains looming on the distant shore. There are a LOT more palm trees growing on Vanua Levu than on Viti Levu and this gives the island an even more dreamy tropical look. This whole place just embodies relaxation and stress-free lifestyle - it's a place that even the unbelievably relaxed Fijians come to relax in! Savusavu is a place that all Fijians call "very Fijian."
After just a few days here, I cannot possibly imagine that anyone in this place is ever in any hurry to do anything. Aaaah, we finally arrived!
On our second day, Vika picked us up and we spent 3 wonderful days in her village Nasinu. We were excited to finally be able to experience the quintessentially Fijian way of life - the village life! Nasinu is a tiny village of about 30 houses (although I understand that for Fiji, Nasinu is a good size) sitting right at the bottom of South Pacific's largest bay, the Natewa Bay, which is miles long and nearly cuts Vanua Levu in half. Nasinu is so quaint, you wouldn't believe it. Vika's parents' house stands right over the beach and as we ate lunch in the kitchen, we had the killer view of misty rugged mountains on the other shore and of tropical reef fish swimming right below the kitchen floor - all straight from our table! With Vika's mom and gradmother cooking up a storm all weekend, we experienced the famous Fijian hospitality at its absolute best and we virtually didn't sop eating the whole time we were staying in Vika's house. We fittingly named it the "5-Star Village Resort."
Immediately, we drew attention from the village kids and as soon as we went for a swim in the bay, we made friends with about 20 of them. We ended up playing in the water for 2.5 hours, until we were burned red and almost remembered the names of all the little rascals. They were so cute - shy and curious at the same time, and well-behaved - that by the time we were leaving the village, we knew we were going to miss them.
Vika's family are Seventh Day Adventists, so the following day, Saturday, we were going to enjoy lazy relaxation of their sabbath, but the day was interrupted by two injuries that we had to attend to with our first aid kit (the only first aid kit in the village): Vika's grandfather's finger was nearly sliced off by a wire and just as Ryan was trying to clean the wound and somehow put the finger temporarily together, a horse brought another patient from the beach - a lady whose foot was pierced by a stingray. So we spent most of the afternoon running between the two patients, irrigating, bandaging, etc. and by taking them to the hospital ER, where, unfortunately, the cocky doctor didn't save grandfather's finger, which we felt a little bummed about because we hoped that he would. Anyhow, by the end of the day, the villagers called us "The Doctor and the Nurse."
On Sunday, we had the opportunity to attend a special church service, in which all the village's denominations (5) met together in one church and prayed and sang together. Luckily, we didn't understand the Fijian sermons, but the singing was beautiful and the hot chocolate and cakes that were served later were delicious.
We will be back in Nasinu next Monday and Tuesday when Vika will be belatedly celebrating her 21st birthday. In Fiji, this is a big communal celebration comparable to a wedding, so we're looking forward to seeing the traditions in action. And we're looking forward to playing with all the kids again. I'm sure they are, too.
After Nasinu, we spent 2 days (and the coup) with our new friend Peter, a local whom we met at a bar in Suva and who was just vacating his house in Savusavu when we got back to town from the village. We hoped to rent his house, but at the end of the day yesterday, we got the bad news that more permanent renters beat us to it. It's very sad because for a few hours we already saw ourselves living THE LIFE in this beautiful house that sits just accross the road from the beach and is hidden from the road by palms and blooming bushes. Peter moved out of the house yesterday and we will be occupying it for the weekend, meanwhile we will try to look for a similar house on the same road to rent for a month or two. We will keep our fingers crossed!
The latest and fourth in the series of Fijian coups took a whole month to unravel and just when everybody thought that it was averted, it happened: on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 the military commander Frank Bainimarama peacefully removed the democratically elected government in Suva and took over the operation of the country.
I think it's fair to say that this gives Fiji the unique trait of being the easiest country to have a coup in. In 2006, the entire Fijian army is backing the Commander's actions, but in May 2000 it was only 7 armed men who walked into the parliament and took over the government!
This week's coup is really still an effect of the unsolved and undealt-with 2000 coup and the corruption that stemmed from it.
There are military checkpoints set up around the capital and other main cities to prevent rioting and looting and the media is full of very negative "national crisis" coverage, but here in Savusavu the change in government hardly affects the daily life. Even in Suva the life goes on just like any other day and the deposed prime minister Qarase is already back in his home village grogging (drinking kava) with the chief and fishing. Most Fijians seem apathetic about the coup, but we heard some locals talk enthusiastically about the changes this will bring to Fijian politics. Nobody agrees with the way the Commander took over, but it seems that a good number of Fijians agree with his motives and hope that this will clean up the corruption in Suva.
So we'll see. Hopefully, the situation won't deteriorate - and even if it does, I don't think that Ryan and I have much to worry about. Our main worry now is to find an affordable apartment in Savusavu.
We arrived here last Thursday after a 12-hour ferry ride from Suva. On the boat, as we were picking up some stranded fishermen who were lost at sea for 3 days, I struck up a conversation with a 21-year-old Fijian law student Vika. She invited us to her home village that is just about a 30-minute ride from Savusavu, so we gladly accepted the offer. We spent the first 2 nights in a hotel and during the day we looked around the "Hidden Paradise" of Fiji, which is what the Fijians call the superbly lovely town and bay of Savusavu.
Savusavu is a really small town - just one main street lined with cheap Indian shops - that sits on the coast of the crystal-clear, torquoise-colored bay with sharp volcanic mountains looming on the distant shore. There are a LOT more palm trees growing on Vanua Levu than on Viti Levu and this gives the island an even more dreamy tropical look. This whole place just embodies relaxation and stress-free lifestyle - it's a place that even the unbelievably relaxed Fijians come to relax in! Savusavu is a place that all Fijians call "very Fijian."
After just a few days here, I cannot possibly imagine that anyone in this place is ever in any hurry to do anything. Aaaah, we finally arrived!
On our second day, Vika picked us up and we spent 3 wonderful days in her village Nasinu. We were excited to finally be able to experience the quintessentially Fijian way of life - the village life! Nasinu is a tiny village of about 30 houses (although I understand that for Fiji, Nasinu is a good size) sitting right at the bottom of South Pacific's largest bay, the Natewa Bay, which is miles long and nearly cuts Vanua Levu in half. Nasinu is so quaint, you wouldn't believe it. Vika's parents' house stands right over the beach and as we ate lunch in the kitchen, we had the killer view of misty rugged mountains on the other shore and of tropical reef fish swimming right below the kitchen floor - all straight from our table! With Vika's mom and gradmother cooking up a storm all weekend, we experienced the famous Fijian hospitality at its absolute best and we virtually didn't sop eating the whole time we were staying in Vika's house. We fittingly named it the "5-Star Village Resort."
Immediately, we drew attention from the village kids and as soon as we went for a swim in the bay, we made friends with about 20 of them. We ended up playing in the water for 2.5 hours, until we were burned red and almost remembered the names of all the little rascals. They were so cute - shy and curious at the same time, and well-behaved - that by the time we were leaving the village, we knew we were going to miss them.
Vika's family are Seventh Day Adventists, so the following day, Saturday, we were going to enjoy lazy relaxation of their sabbath, but the day was interrupted by two injuries that we had to attend to with our first aid kit (the only first aid kit in the village): Vika's grandfather's finger was nearly sliced off by a wire and just as Ryan was trying to clean the wound and somehow put the finger temporarily together, a horse brought another patient from the beach - a lady whose foot was pierced by a stingray. So we spent most of the afternoon running between the two patients, irrigating, bandaging, etc. and by taking them to the hospital ER, where, unfortunately, the cocky doctor didn't save grandfather's finger, which we felt a little bummed about because we hoped that he would. Anyhow, by the end of the day, the villagers called us "The Doctor and the Nurse."
On Sunday, we had the opportunity to attend a special church service, in which all the village's denominations (5) met together in one church and prayed and sang together. Luckily, we didn't understand the Fijian sermons, but the singing was beautiful and the hot chocolate and cakes that were served later were delicious.
We will be back in Nasinu next Monday and Tuesday when Vika will be belatedly celebrating her 21st birthday. In Fiji, this is a big communal celebration comparable to a wedding, so we're looking forward to seeing the traditions in action. And we're looking forward to playing with all the kids again. I'm sure they are, too.
After Nasinu, we spent 2 days (and the coup) with our new friend Peter, a local whom we met at a bar in Suva and who was just vacating his house in Savusavu when we got back to town from the village. We hoped to rent his house, but at the end of the day yesterday, we got the bad news that more permanent renters beat us to it. It's very sad because for a few hours we already saw ourselves living THE LIFE in this beautiful house that sits just accross the road from the beach and is hidden from the road by palms and blooming bushes. Peter moved out of the house yesterday and we will be occupying it for the weekend, meanwhile we will try to look for a similar house on the same road to rent for a month or two. We will keep our fingers crossed!
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Chilling out in Suva
Ni sa bula, everyone!
Before I summarize our new andventures, I'd like to point out that new photos are up on our Flicker Gallery. (We finally found a decent internet connection in Suva and were actually able to load the 118 or so photos still within our lifetime...)
So, 2 weeks have passed by and I can say that Ryan and I have positively settled down here in Suva. That means that we have some food in the fridge, dish soap, an electric water kettle and TV broadcast of Fiji's Channel 1 (this luxury we acquired shortly after we moved in when our neighbor donated to us his old TV antenna, the TV set was already in our apartment). And we got aquainted with our local gecko who visits us every night and whom we call "Our Little Friend" because he eats the bugs in our apartment, if there are any. Ryan is a new owner of a sulu, a wrap-around skirt that Fijian men wear as casual and official attire for school, work and church (it looks pretty good on him), AND it looks like there is NOT going to be another coup in Fiji, despite the impasse between the government, military and police that has been going on pretty much since we arrived here. Fiji has had three military coups since 1987, the last one being in 2000, and the fear of another one is very strong, that's why there seems to be a strong effort on the each side to keep this only as a battle of words, not actions. But don't worry, all the past coups were non-violent and there isn't much indication that this current altercation will turn into a coup.
On a lighter note, we spent most of our 2 weeks in Suva shopping for supplies, settling in and relaxing, so there's not nearly as much exciting news to report on as there was last time (if you don't think that looking all over the city for 2 hours in search of a sink plug isn't exciting, that is). We got the musty funk out of our apartment, cleaned it up a bit, met some neighbors, went out a few times, got bored and few times - and we feel very much at home again.
To break the monotony of relaxing and listening to "Robinson Crusoe" in the evenings (I'm kidding, we're actually really busy with walking around and reading in our Fiji handbook), we visited the Fiji museum - one of Suva's main sight-seeing attractions that not many tourists seem to bother to visit.
It is a decent little museum - very comprehensive and informative about Fiji's past from the beginning of inhabitation till the recent decades. The highlight of the exhibit is a massive drua, a a famous double-hulled type of canoe that made Fijians and other Polynesians such phenomenal seafarers. The other highlights were formidable hardwood war clubs, creepy cannibal forks and cool-looking whale tooth necklaces of chiefs. The double-horned mast tops that were used on the druas also look very intimidating. I could just imagine the cold chill of terror that must have gripped any opponent at the sight of these masts appearing on the sea horizon. Fijians were ferocious warriors - and all enemies were invariably eaten.
But do not fear for our lives. Cannibalism was eradicated in Fiji by the protestant missionaries in the early to mid 1800's and now Fijians are probably among the most peace-loving and hospitable people on Earth. Let us tell you a little bit about the Fijian people here: Fijian men are huge. Not necessarily in height, but in build - they all look like they work out 3 hours a day, (which has got to be impossible since there couldn't be enough gyms around for all the men - and we haven't even SEEN any gyms), they walk erect and confidently and they have the facial features and fierce look of former warriors. Simply, if you see an average Fijian man you might feel a bit intimidated. But that feeling only lasts until the moment the guy makes an eye contact with you, widens his mouth to reveal his perfect teeth in the most charming and disarming smile you've ever seen and shouts: "Bula!" He passes and you wonder why you ever thought this guy looked scary and you feel warm inside because you instinctively know that his smile was genuine. And this happens over and over again, all day long, every day. You learn to produce those smiles simply by saying "Bula!" to everyone - you will never fail to get that smile back.
Fijian women are curvacious and wear tight afros, the younger ones relax their hair and wear western clothes, but you never see them in very short skirts and only very rarely with bare shoulders, mostly at night, almost never during the day. It is a very modest and conservative culture here and the villages are the most traditional and conservative: both men and women have to cover their shoulders and knees while in a village, they can't wear hats or carry backpacks on their shoulders. When swimming outside, Fijian girls wear shorts and tank tops, since bikinis pretty much equal to nudity here. Western female tourists, I noticed, are most approachable by the friendly locals when they observe the local sensibilities and cover themselves modestly (when outside of their hotel resort). Fijians won't despise you if you're ignorant of their traditions, but they'll respect you more if you learn and do try to follow the few rules. In the Fijian society, everything is about mutual respect.
And for all the above-mentioned reasons, and more, Ryan and I agree that Fijians are among the most beautiful people we've ever met.
But Fiji is not only Fijians. Almost a half of Fiji's total population (of about one million) are Indo-Fijians, or people of Indian origins who were brought to Fiji in the late 18oo's by the British colonists to work on Fiji's plantations as indentured workers. About 60,000 were brought here, some came on their own and a lot of them stayed. For all these years, they have kept their language, Hindu religion, their traditions and clothes and altogether this forms a half of the whole culture of Fiji. They live in peace together, but there is some disparity between Fijians and Indo-Fijians: Indo-Fijians have only gained political rights in the last few decades, they can't own land and the two groups don't mix or inter-marry very much (we have noticed some of this in the nightclub). There seem to have been worries in the past about the traditional Fijian way of life being threatened by this arrangement, and the past coups have mostly been a result of these tensions, as well as of some people's private agendas. (It reminds me a little bit of the Slovak-Hungarian tensions in Slovakia. The details are complicated, but, overall, there isn't REALLY a problem of Slovaks and the Hungarian minority getting along. The problem is that some individual politicians use the issue to stir up trouble and create the tensions themselves for their own party interests. Seems to me like this is what might be happening in Fiji.)
So much about Fijians for today. On to the next adventures.
The other highlight of the last two weeks was a visit to Colo-i-Suva [tholo-i-suva] - the local rainforest. It's amazing that only 11km outside of the biggest city in the country, there is an unspoiled and genuinly wild rain forest. We couldn't believe our eyes - finally, we arrived in the tropics! The park is well-maintained with trails and picnic tables, but the flora is left amazingly wild - with the massive ferns, palms, fern trees, weaterfalls and deep-green swimming pools you might think that any minute you'll run into a dinosaurus grazing somewhere on a clearing. In a worst-case scenario, you'll run into a group of village kids splashing around in the pool that you wanted for yourself, but it's actually not a big deal, since you just have to walk up the river a little bit and find yoursefl another, more private pool. Which we did and it was awesome, although the water was a bit too cold and the "beach" too small to lie down. But, needless to say, we felt like Tarzan and Jane in this crazy place.
But even more exciting than the jungle was the trip home. In the village adjacent to the forest, we got picked up by a school bus full of rumbunctious Fijian kids on their way home from school. You should have seen the looks on their faces when two white adults got on the bus (I don't even know if were really supposed to get on it, maybe the Indian driver simply didn't have time to explain to us that we should wait till the next 'normal' bus). Since I saw the excitement on the bus, I pulled out our video camera and started taping the kids - and the bus went absolutely crazy. But you should have seen what happened when I flipped the LCD display toward them so that they could see themselves - the bus exploded in an uproar! It was the most excitement we've had in Fiji so far, I think. The bus eventually dropped off all the kids in their villages (the kids waived to us for a long time) and turned back around toward Suva and we had the bus to ourselves, enjoying the ride through the misty mountains and villages where people waived at us.
To be continued...
Before I summarize our new andventures, I'd like to point out that new photos are up on our Flicker Gallery. (We finally found a decent internet connection in Suva and were actually able to load the 118 or so photos still within our lifetime...)
So, 2 weeks have passed by and I can say that Ryan and I have positively settled down here in Suva. That means that we have some food in the fridge, dish soap, an electric water kettle and TV broadcast of Fiji's Channel 1 (this luxury we acquired shortly after we moved in when our neighbor donated to us his old TV antenna, the TV set was already in our apartment). And we got aquainted with our local gecko who visits us every night and whom we call "Our Little Friend" because he eats the bugs in our apartment, if there are any. Ryan is a new owner of a sulu, a wrap-around skirt that Fijian men wear as casual and official attire for school, work and church (it looks pretty good on him), AND it looks like there is NOT going to be another coup in Fiji, despite the impasse between the government, military and police that has been going on pretty much since we arrived here. Fiji has had three military coups since 1987, the last one being in 2000, and the fear of another one is very strong, that's why there seems to be a strong effort on the each side to keep this only as a battle of words, not actions. But don't worry, all the past coups were non-violent and there isn't much indication that this current altercation will turn into a coup.
On a lighter note, we spent most of our 2 weeks in Suva shopping for supplies, settling in and relaxing, so there's not nearly as much exciting news to report on as there was last time (if you don't think that looking all over the city for 2 hours in search of a sink plug isn't exciting, that is). We got the musty funk out of our apartment, cleaned it up a bit, met some neighbors, went out a few times, got bored and few times - and we feel very much at home again.
To break the monotony of relaxing and listening to "Robinson Crusoe" in the evenings (I'm kidding, we're actually really busy with walking around and reading in our Fiji handbook), we visited the Fiji museum - one of Suva's main sight-seeing attractions that not many tourists seem to bother to visit.
It is a decent little museum - very comprehensive and informative about Fiji's past from the beginning of inhabitation till the recent decades. The highlight of the exhibit is a massive drua, a a famous double-hulled type of canoe that made Fijians and other Polynesians such phenomenal seafarers. The other highlights were formidable hardwood war clubs, creepy cannibal forks and cool-looking whale tooth necklaces of chiefs. The double-horned mast tops that were used on the druas also look very intimidating. I could just imagine the cold chill of terror that must have gripped any opponent at the sight of these masts appearing on the sea horizon. Fijians were ferocious warriors - and all enemies were invariably eaten.
But do not fear for our lives. Cannibalism was eradicated in Fiji by the protestant missionaries in the early to mid 1800's and now Fijians are probably among the most peace-loving and hospitable people on Earth. Let us tell you a little bit about the Fijian people here: Fijian men are huge. Not necessarily in height, but in build - they all look like they work out 3 hours a day, (which has got to be impossible since there couldn't be enough gyms around for all the men - and we haven't even SEEN any gyms), they walk erect and confidently and they have the facial features and fierce look of former warriors. Simply, if you see an average Fijian man you might feel a bit intimidated. But that feeling only lasts until the moment the guy makes an eye contact with you, widens his mouth to reveal his perfect teeth in the most charming and disarming smile you've ever seen and shouts: "Bula!" He passes and you wonder why you ever thought this guy looked scary and you feel warm inside because you instinctively know that his smile was genuine. And this happens over and over again, all day long, every day. You learn to produce those smiles simply by saying "Bula!" to everyone - you will never fail to get that smile back.
Fijian women are curvacious and wear tight afros, the younger ones relax their hair and wear western clothes, but you never see them in very short skirts and only very rarely with bare shoulders, mostly at night, almost never during the day. It is a very modest and conservative culture here and the villages are the most traditional and conservative: both men and women have to cover their shoulders and knees while in a village, they can't wear hats or carry backpacks on their shoulders. When swimming outside, Fijian girls wear shorts and tank tops, since bikinis pretty much equal to nudity here. Western female tourists, I noticed, are most approachable by the friendly locals when they observe the local sensibilities and cover themselves modestly (when outside of their hotel resort). Fijians won't despise you if you're ignorant of their traditions, but they'll respect you more if you learn and do try to follow the few rules. In the Fijian society, everything is about mutual respect.
And for all the above-mentioned reasons, and more, Ryan and I agree that Fijians are among the most beautiful people we've ever met.
But Fiji is not only Fijians. Almost a half of Fiji's total population (of about one million) are Indo-Fijians, or people of Indian origins who were brought to Fiji in the late 18oo's by the British colonists to work on Fiji's plantations as indentured workers. About 60,000 were brought here, some came on their own and a lot of them stayed. For all these years, they have kept their language, Hindu religion, their traditions and clothes and altogether this forms a half of the whole culture of Fiji. They live in peace together, but there is some disparity between Fijians and Indo-Fijians: Indo-Fijians have only gained political rights in the last few decades, they can't own land and the two groups don't mix or inter-marry very much (we have noticed some of this in the nightclub). There seem to have been worries in the past about the traditional Fijian way of life being threatened by this arrangement, and the past coups have mostly been a result of these tensions, as well as of some people's private agendas. (It reminds me a little bit of the Slovak-Hungarian tensions in Slovakia. The details are complicated, but, overall, there isn't REALLY a problem of Slovaks and the Hungarian minority getting along. The problem is that some individual politicians use the issue to stir up trouble and create the tensions themselves for their own party interests. Seems to me like this is what might be happening in Fiji.)
So much about Fijians for today. On to the next adventures.
The other highlight of the last two weeks was a visit to Colo-i-Suva [tholo-i-suva] - the local rainforest. It's amazing that only 11km outside of the biggest city in the country, there is an unspoiled and genuinly wild rain forest. We couldn't believe our eyes - finally, we arrived in the tropics! The park is well-maintained with trails and picnic tables, but the flora is left amazingly wild - with the massive ferns, palms, fern trees, weaterfalls and deep-green swimming pools you might think that any minute you'll run into a dinosaurus grazing somewhere on a clearing. In a worst-case scenario, you'll run into a group of village kids splashing around in the pool that you wanted for yourself, but it's actually not a big deal, since you just have to walk up the river a little bit and find yoursefl another, more private pool. Which we did and it was awesome, although the water was a bit too cold and the "beach" too small to lie down. But, needless to say, we felt like Tarzan and Jane in this crazy place.
But even more exciting than the jungle was the trip home. In the village adjacent to the forest, we got picked up by a school bus full of rumbunctious Fijian kids on their way home from school. You should have seen the looks on their faces when two white adults got on the bus (I don't even know if were really supposed to get on it, maybe the Indian driver simply didn't have time to explain to us that we should wait till the next 'normal' bus). Since I saw the excitement on the bus, I pulled out our video camera and started taping the kids - and the bus went absolutely crazy. But you should have seen what happened when I flipped the LCD display toward them so that they could see themselves - the bus exploded in an uproar! It was the most excitement we've had in Fiji so far, I think. The bus eventually dropped off all the kids in their villages (the kids waived to us for a long time) and turned back around toward Suva and we had the bus to ourselves, enjoying the ride through the misty mountains and villages where people waived at us.
To be continued...
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!
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!
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.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
...fun for the whole family
Join Ryan and Nada as they brave treacherous seas, wild jungles and vicious cannibals in the most untamed corners of the South Pacific...
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