Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2005
Edit Blog Post
With no job, a ridiculous shaggy haircut, and not a lot of money, I have very quickly become distant to my former life as an International Playboy. And the final remnants of my former existence ran out at the end of 2004 with the expiry of my British Airways Executive Club Card. It did, however, give me one last hurrah, as it gained me access to the Qantas lounge in Auckland airport during our 10 hour layover in between arriving from Tahiti, and flying out to Fiji.
With the Auckland rain dissuading us from a sightseeing trip around the city; we took refuge in the executive lounge, with free internet, luxury showers, and plentiful food, drink and newspapers. My Hawaiian shirt, board shorts and flip flops got the odd disapproving stare, and the lady who ran the place wasnt happy, but my card was good for 2 more days, so she was stuck with me...
Once we had arrived in Fiji, we quickly organised a few days in a beach resort. We were keen to get off the mainland, which, a few hill country villages apart, wasnt too highly recommended. The large Indian community here also gave a sharp
reminder of Goa. They dominate the shopkeeping and business communities here. Basically they are harder working and more pushy than the native Fijians, who now feel marginalised, and there is quite a bit of ethnic tension here. The shops were full with the sickly smells of curry and incense, Ganesh and Krishna looked down from all the shopkeepers doorways, and the familiar refrain of "my friend, my friend, come to my shop, I give you good price" was ringing in our ears.
Once we had our accomodation sorted, we got out of the main town, Nadi, and took a boat to the Islands. The 2 main destinations for tourists are the Mamacunas and the Yasawa ranges of island. These are dotted with resorts that offer palm trees, beaches, watersports.. you get the idea.
Our new year was to be spent at the Walu Beach Resort. This was a new, and well equiped place that was built last year for a reality TV show. Apparently, it was really bad, even for that quite appauling genre of TV show, and it was canned pretty quickly. The resort, however remains. Whilst their organisation was terrible, (everything running on "fiji time", running
water being temperamental, our waterskiing and massages never materialing), they did conveniently lose our bar bill, so we couldnt complain. It was a really good party atmosphere on New Years Eve, and we were treated to a great show of firedancing, songs and a Mr Fiji contest (that I modestly declined to enter.. even my dignity has limits - Rachael actually was a judge, and happilly, and on my instructions, the skinniest bloke there was the winner!, much to the annoyance of the posers who had entered)
The star of the evening, however, was the uber-camp entertainments guy at the resort, "Simon", who did a mean drag show.
We partied into the night, and saw in the dawn of 2005.
A couple of days later, we headed up to the more remote Yasawas islands. Things were less developed and even more relaxed here. We completed our PADI diving course, with some stunning coral reef dives, including one at the Blue Lagoon, where the Brook Shields movie was made. Our instructor actually also taught Pierce Brosnan how to dive a few years ago, but unforutnately, I couldnt match Pierce's $6000 tip.
One excellent afternoon we had involved a trip
to the local village. We were taken, by the Safe Landing Resort's own uber-camp entertainments guy, and we did the normal stuff of greeting the underwhelming village chief, giving him money (for no apparent reason), and being led into a handicraft ambush. This was all pretty standard, so I headed off, and joined a game of rugby with the local youths. This was going well, until the youths saw the uber-camp entertainments guy, and jumped him.. smearing his face and backside with an avocado type breadfruit, and giving him a few playful kicks in the ribs.
The uber-camp entertainments man laughed this off, but he was really fuming. He explained that it was a "new year tradition", but I'm sure we had seen a rare example of the old fashioned Fijian tradition of homo-bashing. The whole village thought it hilarious...
I stayed playing rugby with the villagers for a couple of hours, and they were seriously good. no wonder the Fijians are so good at 7s. It was like basketball at times, and they were quick, agile, with awesome natural skills. After a while, I was completely knackered, and virtually crawled back for a reshreshing dip in the sea..
The weather for the last couple of days was pretty rainy, but it didnt affect us too much since were diving a lot. We headed back to Nadi, and took our plane onto Auckland the next morning.
We have had an amazing time in the South Pacific for the last 3 weeks. Life is slow here, and it really has been just like all those daydreams that you have when you're bored at work. I really wish I could spend longer here, but glad for the oppurtunity to see these most remote of places on the other side of the world.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.17s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 81; dbt: 0.0997s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Marc
non-member comment
Lucky bastard;)
Hey there. Sounds like you had quite a trip! I'm going to Fiji next February and can't wait!