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Published: March 29th 2006
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Waterfalls
One of the falls in the Colo-I-Suva Forest Park Bula! (That’s Fijian for welcome don’t you know) Admittedly we are playing catch-up a little here as a it was a few weeks since we were there but time for a little round-up of our third and final Pacific Island Adventure.
Our first night in Fiji was spent sleeping at Nadi airport because our flight from the Cook Islands arrived at silly o'clock in the morning - don’t they all? - This was not a problem however as the tourist information at Suva airport is one of the best that we have come across, loads of information and friendly staff and best of all a number of comfy sofas on which to sleep until your bus/ferry/plane leaves. One of our fellow vagrants was a Planning lecturer from Australia who ended up giving Tom some business contacts in NZ for when he starts job hunting in Auckland so what with the sleeping and the planning it was turning out to be a pretty productive morning.
At 7am we jumped on the first bus to Suva, the capital city of Fiji and the largest city in the Pacific. After 4 hours on the bus (yawn) we arrived in Suva and stepped
out of our air conditioned cocoon into the serious heat of a pacific city. It was strange to be back in a place with so many cars, shops, restaurants and people. Suva (like much of Fiji) has a (very roughly) 50/50% Fijian/Indian population so there is a really interesting mix of language and people. Oh and the foods pretty good too.
Being a Sunday in the Pacific however everything was of course closed so we headed out of the city and into the rainforest which surrounds Suva.We were heading for the Raintree Lodge which had been recommended to us by our Fijian travel expert Marianne (who visited last year), having only one week in Fiji we weren’t taking any chances of turning up somewhere rubbish. Gold star to Marianne as the Raintree Lodge is a lovely place with dorms, bungalows and rooms arranged around a large lake, beautiful. The best thing about it is that it is right next to the Colo-I-Suva Forest Park which is full of rainforest trees, noises and smells. Lots of the trails lead to waterfalls which is rather fun so spent a hot couple of hours tramping around there - it says in the
guide book that people sometimes get mugged in the forest which is rather bizarre but no one seemed interested in getting the possessions of two sweaty “travellers”.
The next day we headed back into Suva to begin what would turn out to be a very long journey to Levuka, the old capital of Fiji on the island of Ovalau . When the bus to the ferry was more than an hour late we knew for sure that we were running on ‘island time’ and it was a bumpy 2 hours before we reached the ferry across to Ovalau. Our destination in Levuka was The Royal Hotel, another recommendation and well worth a visit for its grand (if a bit shabby colonial) colonial feel. It has a cool little garden with a pool and stuff which looked lovely, it was raining (of course) when we were there though, a bit of a theme with this trip you are thinking? Not at all!, well ok, maybe a little bit but being British its just possible that our overwhelming desire to include a weather report with every blog has lead to an overemphasis on the rainy bits, it was nice lots of
the time, honest!
One of the funniest things about Levuka is the old masonic lodge which was burnt down (only a couple of years ago) by some locals who thought that it contained a secret tunnel to the masons headquaters..in..Scotland! would have saved us a few bob in airfares.. We spent two nights at the Royal Hotel, we would have stayed longer and explored the rest of the island (but it was raining) so we decided instead to keep on moving and booked ourselves into the resort of Caqalai, a small island about 45 mins boat ride from Levuka.?We were picked up by a small boat a preceded to cross a very choppy sea in the rain to the island. The island is run by a community of Methodists who are wonderful hosts. Like so many of the people we had met in the Pacific the residents of Caqalai seem to all have a natural musically ability and take any opportunity to have a little sing song. The island is tiny, it only takes about 15 mins to walk all the way around the outside and we were 2 of only 7 guests staying so there was a real
community feel, especially as we ate our meals together. We were staying in the dorm which was pretty cushy since we were the only 2 people in there and it seemed to be the only place on the island that didn’t leak. Actually there was another girl in the dorm but she had decamped to the other side of the island so had 14 beds to choose from and a reading light which comes in pretty handy when it is too wet to go outside.. The island is another one of those pesky coconut groves which look GREAT until the wind picks up in one of those “it doesn’t normally rain this much” pacific episodes that you have heard so much about. Still it did make the run to the outside bucket toilet in the rain a little bit more exciting. In all honesty though, despite the rain, we spent one of the nicest weeks of our trip so far. Before arriving we had some very bad news from home and being unable to head home to be with the family it was nice to be somewhere so peaceful with nothing much to do but read, think and chat to
our new friends who shared the island with us. In particular our new buddies Andy and Dave who were some of the nicest most interesting people we have ever had the pleasure to be stuck on a small island with. Hoping to catch up with those guys soon as visiting NZ for a few months.
Anyway as we said before entertainment on the island was provided on the island by regular sing-a-longs aided of course (this being Fiji) by the consumption of Kava, which is the mashed root of something mixed with water to make a sort of muddy water cocktail. The effects of Kava apparently range from numbness of the lips, drowsiness, wanting to just think about life a lot or even resulting in religious visions. Not sure about the last one but it is certainly a relaxing way to spend the evening and a very sociable ritual as everyone drinks in turn from the same cup (half a coconut) which is passed around in the same order by one of the group.
The journey back from the island to the mainland was even more hair raising than the one there with some massive waves and some
rather scared looking folk but we made it in one piece, and guess what as soon as we left.. the sun came out! Fiji is a brilliant place to be and even though it didn’t quite look like the tropical paradise we were imagining (though the rain clouds and the wind the weather was somewhat more like Edinburgh) this gave us a chance to look beyond the beaches and we ended up meeting some of the nicest people. Fijians generally seem to be some of the friendliest people in the world and everyone we met was so welcoming. There isn’t time here to go into the political problems that are going on in Fiji - it is basically very unstable as conflict/tension between Fijians and indo-Fijians continues following the recent coups - and it really wasn’t that obvious during our visit, other than being the subject of debate amongst taxi drivers, but hope that they manage to find some sort of compromise so that everyone in Fiji is as happy as they deserve to be in their beautiful country, and so that lucky people like us can continue to visit Fiji, defiantly going back!
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