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!