BULA Fiji!

The last leg of my journey just had to be Fiji. Despite the fact that it has been in the news quite often with military coups and terrible flooding, I still ventured to this South Pacific island.

I will start with the current events. The only signs of the coup I have seen are road stops with military men and big guns on the side of the road. I honestly don't think that they would harm tourists because we are the country's livelyhood. As for the flooding, yes, it is the rainy season here and we have seen rain nearly everyday. But we were lucky enough to be a bit ahead of the floods. So no delays in our journey.

I headed to Nadi from Aukland after skydiving in Rotorua, man that was amazing and I really wish I would have done it sooner. I waited in Nadi for Ed to arrive for about 3 days. To control my excitement I tried to keep myself as busy as possible. My first day I headed into town and got picked up by a man that owns a tourist shop. He took me to his shop and we did the traditional kava ceremony. Kava is a drink made of the roots of a tree that they drive socially. Then I got ripped off buying a peice of paper made by village children. Then I had lunch in a Fijian eatery where I shared a table with a rather portly Fijian man. We got to talking and I mentioned that I wanted to see a Fijian village, well he invited me to his. I said I didn't have time but he suggested we take a bus ride by it. I knew it was against my better judgement but I went anyways. I figured we would be on public transport the whole time, so if anything did happen to me, tons of people would be around. It turned out to be fine and i got to see a bit of local culture.

The next day I took a boat trip to Tavua Island in the Mamanuca group. It is uninhabited and quite nice. We got meals and drinks included, so basically we just hung out and swam around the island. I actually ended up hanging out with a Fijian family that had 2 little boys that were so cute. Finally Ed came. Man, it was good to finally see him after 2 months.

The next day we headed out on the local bus to Rakiraki to get to a little island called Nananu-i-ra. Most tourists will take tourist buses around the island. Going all the way around Viti Levu costs them $300. But going on local buses only costs $30 for the whole way around. So we saved a chunk of change mixing with the locals. Nananu-i-ra was beautiful. Just amazing. We were nearly the only 2 people on the island the whole time. We stocked up on groceries and made a little home there. It rained pretty much everyday we were there so we spent a lot of time playing cards. The first day we walked around part of the island and were followed around by a really skanky dog.

The rest of the time I decided to get my open water scuba certification. It took about 4 days of reading, testing, doing skills in the water and then doing my open water dives. I got to dive with Ed which was just amazing. So now we have a little something more in common.

After 8 days on the island we went through Suva to Pacific Harbour which is a nice little tourist town. It was great to have some A/C because on the island the power generator shuts off at 10pm and doesn't come on again til 8:30am, so you sweat lots while sleeping. We bought some souveniers there and then headed back to Nadi.

I will post some Fijian photos soon.