Bula! (That's Hey!...Hello!...Greetings!....Aloha!, etc. in Fiji)
We have returned from a two week vacation to the beautiful islands of Fiji! It was wonderful, fascinating, restful, exciting and all those great descriptive words. I would definitely recommend it. This trip came about as a result of the passing of my Dad. He always wanted to travel when he retired. He planned to buy a sailboat and live on it and he never was well enough to do it. He planned well financially for his retirement and his children are now reaping the benefit of his investments. So I decided that I wasn't going to wait for "someday" to visit a South Sea island like I have always dreamed of (Hawaii doesn't count!) I wanted to go before I am too crippled up to enjoy it. So here are some highlights of our trip!
We went on a couple of day cruises to outer islands. This one is Robinson Crusoe Island, where we snorkeled, ate Lovo lunch (buried bar-b-q), watched dancers, and had crab races. It was a fun day.
This was our view from the beach in front of our bure every night at 6 o'clock.
One day we went to a "bird park" where they help many kinds of colorful birds re-populate the islands. We were actually inside most of the cages with them! They had some fruit bats that we saw up close. We had seen some flying while we were on a raft trip earlier. This is my new friend, Mr Iguana. Kind of funny that Curt wouldn't touch them!
One they same day, we also visited a local village that they call the Pottery Village because the women there make a living by collecting red clay from the river bank and make pottery to sell to the tourist. They held a Kava ceremony for us,which we didn't drink because it is a narcotic and probably against the Word of Wisdom. It is a REALLY big deal there, and you are supposed to bring some Kava to give to the village chief and partake with him before you are welcomed into the village. They gave a demonstration before showing us their things to buy. Curt couldn't buy just from one woman and not the rest, so we came home with enough little turtles and frogs for all our grand kids, plus a pot and a few other things.
These two little girls were there at the pottery village and they were SO cute! When we were done there we discovered our driver had a flat tire, so we got to hang out in the village longer while he got it fixed. The little children were so sweet. The little one in the red shirt, Angela, became my friend. She came to sit by me and kept putting her feet up where I could tickle them! Curt learned all their names and what grade they were in. I was wishing I had some candy with me!
On September 8th, it was my 52nd birthday. (I can't believe it!) We went on a sailing trip to a couple of islands. There are over 300 islands, some of them uninhabited. We left from Denarau Island Marina on a large catamaran. It is like a large water taxi because people staying at resorts on the smaller, outer islands get to and from on the catamaran. It stopped at several small islands where there was only one resort on the island and picked up or dropped off people. It doesn't dock at the island, people are transported by motor boats to transfer. When we got to Mana Island, we got off and transfered to the Sea Spray, a 83 foot sailing schooner. We visited Yanuya Island where there was another Kava ceremony and women selling lots of tourist trinkets. We had a delicious lunch on board ship and sailed to Modriki Island.
This is the same island that Tom Hanks filmed Cast Away. Doesn't it look familiar? We snorkeled for a couple of hours there, and walked on the beautiful beach. There is nothing there but beautiful surroundings!
One day we hired our usual taxi driver for the day to take us to Suva, the capitol city. We decided not to rent a car and try to drive. It is quite an experience! There is a narrow two lane road that goes around the island. They drive on the left. There are a lot of slow moving trucks and buses so traffic moves slowly with only occasional places to pass. It is probably about 50 miles to Suva from where we stayed, but took all of 2 hours to get there. We went to the temple after which Krishna dropped us off downtown for a few hours. We ate lunch at KFC (it was just like home! Unlike the KFC in China!) and did some shopping and site seeing. It was a great day! We had already attended church at a small branch in Sigatoka and met many of the local members and a few American missionaries.
This is our bure. We usually prefer not to stay in hotels. This resort was about 25 bures and ours was beachfront. We crossed a small lawn and were right on the beach! This picture is also our traditional photo of Curt on vacation... on the phone! We went into town the first day we were there and bought a cell phone so he could keep in touch with the office... but not too much. The bure was just a square with a porch cut into one corner and a bathroom inside on the opposite corner. Inside was a queen size bed and two twins. There were no windows, just slats over screens that opened on both sides to get the breeze, along with a overhead fan. On the backside was a solar water collector for our shower, not that you wanted much hot water in that heat!
We spent many hours at this great pool. That is our bure through the trees. The canopies were real thatched grasses. The one showing was 4 years old and about to be replaced. We watched them build two new ones while we were there. The resort grounds had banana, coconuts, papayas, orchids, cactus, and many other beautiful flowering plants. It smelled heavenly and looked it too.
The main activity that I wanted to do in Fiji was this white water raft trip down the Navua River. We have been on other white water trips with bigger rapids, but never scenery like this! This was class 2 and 3 rapids and about 16 miles of beautiful canyons and waterfalls. Just the trip to the river was an adventure! We had about a one and half hour bus ride from our resort to the drop off site. Then about a two hour drive on a 4x6 bus on logging roads through a mahogany rain forest. (these were not American logging roads!) From some of the peaks you could see the ocean below. It was beautiful! Then when we got to the river... the real adventure began...and if I would have known this part, I probably would have backed out, and then I would have missed a great trip. We had to hike to where we were
getting into the boats. This hike was almost
straight up, and straight down, straight up and straight down with steps cut into the dirt/mud with boards packed in to make stairs. I am not kidding... these stairs were the depth of my whole short, terribly out of shape legs! I had to hoist myself up each step and try to step down with out blowing out a knee. I had to step aside to let the young people go by me. By the time I got to the river, my thighs were shaking and hurting. (Curt too, to a lesser degree) I told the group that I expected some applause... and I got it! The raft trip was wonderful. Curt got out and floated through some of the calm canyon waters. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into the boat! We had lunch here beside one the many waterfalls. We had a couple of rain showers but it was always warm. I had to be careful walking on slippery rocks with my shaky, sore legs so I didn't fall and break a hip! (Here I am looking like a drowned rat, but I guess that's how I really looked!)
Curt is showing us one of the many bright blue starfish
We took an underwater camera and took lots of photos of fish and coral. The fish are incredibly bright colors.
Curt is feeding the fish!
