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Published: August 6th 2007
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Aloha!
My final few days in Fiji were a lot better than I'd expected. I met a couple of Scottish girls, Kate & Amy, and a few other people who I hung around with. I'd originally thought I'd be trying to waste those days away, but in the end I was having so much fun I didn't want to leave! As I left I found out that a few of the hostel staff thought my name was Charlie, which explained that confusion on Nacula.
I was severly lacking in sleep when I got on the plane and didn't sleep at all on it, so I arrived in Honolulu aiming to go straight to bed. The customs officers had other ideas, and due to "recent activity in your country" (aka attempted car bombings) I had to hang around in a room for an hour before being asked exactly the same questions they'd already asked me. Finally got out of the airport and onto a shuttle that was waiting right outside the door. Though I was sleepy I headed out into Waikiki for a walk, which turned into a six-hour trek around the city. It's a pretty entertaining place, it's weird
seeing people walking around a city holding a surfboard, everyone is either a blatant surfer or tourist. There were also loads of street entertainers (or street crazies depending how you look at them!) and it was really crowded even though it was a Sunday. As I headed back to the hostel at night, I spotted crowds of people on the beach watching fireworks being set off on a boat. I don't know what the occasion was but they were pretty spectacular. I spent another day just lazing around in Waikiki before heading up to the more relaxed Sunset Beach on the north coast.
The hostel here is cool, it feels like some sort of hippie-camp, with chickens and cats running around everywhere. I share a hut with Ron, a long haired ex-surfer in his fifties who reminds me a bit of the Big Lebowski. Been spending most of the time on the beach or snorkelling in Shark's Cove (there are no sharks there though!). Was going to try surfing again but there are very few good waves here at this time of year. I was suprised to find that it rains here nearly every day, even when it's sunny,
but it only lasts for about a minute and you dry off almost straightaway.
Going to hang around here for another couple of days before heading back south. Getting quite used to the Fijian/Hawaiian attitude, a cab driver back in Nadi summed it up: "no hurry, no worry!"
Edit: My last two days in Hawaii were made up of one bad day and one good day.
It had turned out that Ron was probably the biggest slob I've ever met and it got really annoying. So after being woken up at 2am by Ron's belching (no joke) and the rooster at 5, I wasn't in the best mood when I finally got up to find Ron feeding chicken to the cats inside our hut. I found it too hard to tell someone twice my age to sort his life out, so I went out instead. On the way to the supermarket I stepped on an upturned screw that went straight through my flops and into my foot. To top it all off, in front of me at the supermarket there was a fifteen year-old (probably) kid who was whinging at his mum to buy him pepsi, and
she was saying "no, it's dehydrating". He said "that's stupid, it's mainly water!". I felt like clipping him upside the head, telling him exactly why it was dehydrating and not to be so rude to his mother. But I didn't and soon enough my usual apathy kicked in and I was fine. Anyway, that day I headed back to Waikiki.
It seems to be becoming a bit of a trend that I meet cool people just as I'm leaving a place and the same happened in Waikiki. On my final day, at some point someone reminded me that all of Lost is filmed in Hawaii and I realised I hadn't seen anything! I looked up some locations on the net and hen caught a bus out to Kuatoa Ranch, where some had been filmed, but unsure if I'd be able to get onto a tour as I hadn't booked. The following won't mean much to people ho don't watch Lost but on the bus ride there alone I saw: The covention centre used as Sydney Airport, a church where Charlie confesses and the bank that Kate robs. I arrived at the ranch to find that a tour was just
Surfboard Cemetary
It's actually a makeshift fence, but that's what I thought it looked like! heading off, so I paid my $19 and got onto the bus which was only half full. The ranch is a 4000 acre site that has been used in loads of films, mainly because of the picturesque Kuatoa Valley. The tour guide showed us loads of spots where filming had gone on, the highlights for me being: the bit in Jurassic Park where Sam Neill and the kids run away from a stampede and....Hurley's golf course from Lost! I was the only person who got off the bus to have a look, and the bus driver said "there goes a lonely soldier" then found it hilarious to pretend to drive away. After the tour I headed back to Waikiki and left straight for the airport. Hawaii was great, I liked having the choice between the city life of Waikiki and the quiet beaches of the north shore.
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