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Published: February 1st 2007
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As we watched the luggage carousel slowly snake bags from the sterile confines of the tarmac to the awaiting passengers, Gina and I began to slowly feel a bit of anxiety as the trickle of bags ceased and only mine had surfaced - it was 2 A.M. We had just landed in Nadi, Fiji, half expecting a military entourage to escort our arriving plane due to their recent coup. However, the airport was deader than a door knob. A few minutes passed and the remaining bags emerged, including Gina’s. We shared a momentary sigh of relief.
Prior to our arrival I had meticulously filled out the Immigration and Customs arrival documents clearly declaring that we traveled with food. The Trader Joe’s dried fruit, nuts and an assortment of jerky had been our hunger stop gap for the previous few weeks and would likely serve a similar duty in Fiji. As our bags passed through the Customs X-ray, the Indian girl on the other end examined our documents and the bags’ contents. She immediately grabbed our food bag and motioned me into secondary screening. Yet another Indian woman began rummaging through our food and pulled out an unopened bag of beef
jerky. I knew deep down she wanted to find some reason, any reason, to dispose of my handy snack since the Hindi hold the cow as a sacred animal, but after several moments of examining what seemed the nutritional content of the meat, she waved me on with a brazen grimace. I kept my chuckle to myself.
We exited the Customs area to find several travel agent representatives meeting the arriving passengers. After a few inquires, we located the Fijian woman with our car and boat transfers to continue on to Oarsman’s Bay - now we just had to figure out how to kill the next 5 hours until our transfer arrived at the airport. We locked our larger bags in the travel agent’s office and began to explore the airport looking for a place to catch a few hours of sleep. It became very apparent by the people we encountered that Indians comprise a large portion of the Fijian population (later we learned that the Fijian Parliament speaks Fijian, English and Hindi).
Several uncomfortable hours passed until our transfer arrived. Our driver extended his hand with a hearty “Bula!” The generic Fijian greeting elicited a smile from
our faces as we climbed into his van and sped towards the marina. Along the way, the driver stopped and offered a woman waiting on the roadside a ride… oblivious to the fact that we had paid extra for a private transfer. Several minutes passed and we arrived at a guard shack that serves as the entrance to Denaru Island. Once through security, the scenery changed dramatically. We no longer saw the drab buildings that typically define the 3rd World, but instead a manicured golf course and very westernized development. For a moment we could have been in Maui.
Half an hour later we boarded the
Yasawa Flyer with an amalgamation of tourists and locals traveling to the outer Fiji islands. Gina and I opted for the confines of the main deck compartment hoping to find an air conditioned room for our 4-hour trip to Nacula (pronounced Na-goo-la). As we opened the door, we were overwhelmed with a stench - a mixture of body odor, mildew and rot. It was either this or baking in the sun for 4 hours above deck, so we decided to suck-it-up considering that the compartment was air conditioned. Or so we thought. Approximately
five minutes after we pulled from the dock, deck hands scurried about opening a hatch near the bow as the captain announced over the PA system, “The crew regrets that the air conditioning is broken and will not be fixed until tomorrow.” Convenient timing, we thought.
The boat skimmed along at a little over 20 knots as we headed first to the Manuca and then Yasawa islands, stopping at extremely small resorts along the way to disembark passengers. For some reason, I must have had the
talk to me bulls eye on my ass as I was approached by 3 different foreigners for mindless chit chat. I wasn’t in the mood and Gina was even less as the temperature rose inside the compartment.
We finally reached the rendezvous point for our shore boat at 1:30 P.M - nearly 12 hours after landing in Nadi. On our transfer to shore we conversed with the 5 others who had disembarked with us - 2 South Africans (Dave & Haley), 2 Aussies (Jeff & Scott) and an Estonian (Eva). We learned that Dave and Haley were vacationing while the 3 others were working on a public service documentary as part of
Jeff’s PhD. On our approach to shore, the
resort came into view and it became apparent things aren’t always what they appear on the Internet. For a moment, I recalled a
Far Side cartoon with 2 dogs in front of a computer, one saying to the other “No one knows who you are on the Internet.”
We had been duped.
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matt
non-member comment
wow, you are one crotchety, close-minded, arrogant bastard