Wednesday April 19th

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Wednesday April 19th

Bula from Fiji!

Rain Rain Rain!

Holy molly it rained last night and this morning… it rained like I’ve never seen ever before, I mean rain that flooded roads, did massive erosion to some of the beaches, turned all the water around this island a dirty brown colour. Unfortunately in the next village over from us a child playing in the river got washed away, and died  The rain started last night around midnight and didn’t stop until around noon today. When we got up we knew right away that we weren’t going diving today, although Kirk did. Our plans got cancelled cuz of the weather, but they started him on his padi open water course. The guys running the show down at jewel divers came by and picked him up around 9 in the morning, and dropped him off around 12:30. Kirk got to do his first dive over a nice reef here called rainbow reef. He saw a sea snake, lots of fish and coral while he did the requirements for open water certification. I wish Jason and I got to do the same when we took our courses. The weather let up early in the afternoon so we’re good to go diving tomorrow if the weather stays nice.

Maureen offered to do our cooking tonight, so today we went to a local town to do some shopping. Tonight we’re having chicken stir fry with rice and veggies. While we were in the village we stopped at a place that sold authentic Fijian carvings. There were all sorts of really cool things there. Jason picked up a type of club, and was informed it was a killing club, something used in the old Fijian days when warriors here battled others from different islands. Jason put the club and picked up another object and was quickly informed that it was a cannibal fork, something you use after you’re done with the club! Jason quickly asked if this was a new fork or used, and it was new lol. Anyhow we left the gift shop and went 2 doors over to the cannibal café, where Wes got steaks and eggs. This place was full of locals, so the food must be good. We’ve read in the journals here at Marau Vale that the Cannibal Café is a good place to eat, and prices are cheap. Wesley’s steak was only 6 bucks Fijian, which is around 4 dollars Canadian. It was infact good, so we may visit them again. We came back to the house, and on the way we saw the road washed out in many places, with mud and landslides everywhere. After coming back to the house we pretty much lounged around, Paulina now has the virus that has infected all of us over the last week or so. I’m finally feeling better, where I can eat again. I lost over 8 lbs since leaving Canada. Before dinner Jason and I went down to Audrey’s café and we ordered some chocolate tarts and an apricot cake, and one of her fresh brewed coffees. We sat and chatted with her for a little bit which was nice. It was also nice taking the walk down here and having everyone say Bula (hello) to you, infact one guy came up to us, said his name, said where he was coming from, told us where he worked, shook our hands and talked to us for a few minutes before we got to Audrey’s. The Fijian people are really warm and kind hearted, which is really nice to see. After the café we went down to a store to pickup some ice-cream for the kids and decided to walk back to the house via the beach. Talk about erosion overnight, a lot of the sides of the hills were down on the beach, and a lot of dead wildlife. Unfortunately we saw a turtle that died  Anyhow we got back to the house just before Maureen started dinner. So we sat and talked with her. Dinner was excellent. Anyhow we’re supposed to go diving tomorrow again, so we’ll see.

Here is a little recipe for some homemade Kahlua we got from Audrey. We tried it and it was nice!

Bring to boil 12 cups water
Add 7-1/2 cups sugar
2-1/4 cups instant coffee granules
Simmer for 2 hours
Cool and add 7-1/2 cups vodka & 7-1/2 cups of dark rum
Add 12 tablespoons vanilla extra

Mix and pour into bottles, re-cap and store in a cupboard for a month. This recipe makes about 6 liters of Kahlua.

Obviously if you don’t want as much ¼ the recipe

More tomorrow!

Lee

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