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Published: August 12th 2007
Jungle Mynah
Similar to the ones I was saying "OMG!" about at the airport. Photo by Israel.After arriving at the airport, we took a van to Suva. It was a 3 hour ride with crazy driving. The music was up at full volume (and a weird selection) and tail gating seems to be the norm here. Our driver would sit like half a metre behind a vehicle & as soon as there was a vaguely clear looking bit of road (not necessarily straight though) he would overtake. "slow down for villages" signs seemed to be ignored.
In Suva, we stayed at South Seas Private hotel. Suva is very dirty, it's kind of a shock after having only been in NZ/Aus. Rubbish is just dumped everywhere, Lonely Planet suggests this is from when everything was natural and biodegradable. There are so many buildings/hotels that looked like they were the height of grandeur in maybe the 70s or earlier... But it doesn't seem they were ever maintained. I like the idea of urban decay as an art form, so it's kind of interesting to see all the decrepit buildings.
I really like seeing all the different animals that aren't in NZ. I embarrassed myself at the airport by being like "Omg, look at that bird! It's so
cool!" later discovering that mynahs are common and there are millions everywhere.... But then there was the mudskippers in a drain in Suva, mongooses running across the roads, geckos in your hotel rooms... So awesome. I've played with 2 geckos so far.
After the first night, we took a public bus to Colo-i-Suva, which is a forest park 20mins outside Suva. We are staying at Raintree Lodge, which is really nice. There is a gecko in the room here too. There is a big lake formed in an abandoned quarry next to the restaurant. It's about 30m deep and apparently has 2 trucks & a bulldozer in the bottom. The lake is full of little Tilapia cichlids, an aquarium fish!! You can feed them from the restaurant. There are supposedly grass carps and eels in there too. There's a sign saying something like "take out our canoe and have a go at catching fish! We will cook them for free" so I thought "aw cool bro. I can have fish for tea". Turns out they do everything they can to stop you catching fish... The fishing line is some nylon wrapped around an empty coke bottle. There is no
sinker, so the hook floats on top of the water. The bait is bits of bread and the canoe is a wooden carved outrigger with holes in it. So I took their inflatable dinghy instead. And tied a rock to the line so it would sink. Still didn't catch anything, so we went to McDonalds in Suva instead, much to Israels disgust. He had 4 $2 cheeseburgers and was like "since I don't eat McDonalds at home, it's ok for me to do it while on holiday."
The first night was $15 buffet and movie night. They played Transformers which was both Israel and I agreed was a terribly bad movie with an awful plot, bad actors and annoying characters. Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
Also yesterday we went walking in the rainforest. That was cool. There were lots of ant lion holes to dig up. And giant millipedes fornicating on the trees. There were some awesome freshwater prawns in a pool below a waterfall. I named the big one Beady McLeggersons (photo coming soon, it's on Israel's camera.) There were lots of pretty birds but I'll leave Israel to talk about them.
There are fruit bats as large as pigeons flying about the place. They make squeaky screamy noises. Oh, and there are these plants that are weird about being touched. They are called Mimosa according to Israel. When you touch the leaves, they fold up & the the stem gives way so the leaves hang downwards.
On the walk today, we went to some pools in the river and I braved having a swim. It was cold at first but really really nice once I got in. Kinda scary not being able to touch the bottom though. I have aquired many mosquito bites from the black & white diurnal mozzies which spread dengue fever so I'll probably end up dying.
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