Fiji: Rafting, Sand boarding, Rainforest trekking and the end of our Trainers...

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Me sandboarding at Sigatoka

Kids At The School

With an apparent incapability for packing all that I own in to one backpack, I arrived in Fiji wearing most of my clothes, and immediately started sweating in the humid climate. Franny fared somewhat better and was gleeful at the musical reception we received from the colorfully dressed guitar players when we stepped off the plane. As with most tourists to the Fijian islands, we landed in Nadi (pronounced nan-dee, for all those of you who are uneducated in these matters!) and had the shuttle waiting for us to whisk us away to our resort. I realise I may have made this sound slightly more exotic than it was, but for backpackets like ourselves, it was quite luxurious. As with any other hostel, we were sharing with other people in our dorm, but we were excited to see that that within the resort there was all the facilities of a hotel, including two pools, two bars, three restaurants, a games room and a TV room. It was an extravagance we were just not used to, but one that could possibly grow on us.

The following day, we ventured in to town. Having been warned by friends that had already visited Nadi, that it was a bit of a hole, we did not know what to expect. I have to say, the town did not impress us much. Being that it was a Sunday, it was fairly quiet anyway, but we could not walk three steps without someone trying to sell us something. I am sorry, but I did not like it in Thailand and I sure as hell do not like it now. We stuck it out for a few hours, however, there was not that much to see, so we headed back to the resort, with the warnings of attacks on female tourists ringing in our ears.

Luckily, we were not to stay in Nadi for much longer. We had been so impressed at the Stray tour in New Zealand, that we decided to take a similar 18-30 style tour of Fiji called the Feejee Experience. The big green bus picked us up early the next morning, and after dumping our backpacks in the back, we climbed aboard to meet who we would be traveling with. After picking everyone up from their respective hotels, we discovered that it would be a much smaller group than on the Stray bus, but it was not really peak season in Fiji. We were introduced to our tour guide, Kem, and our bus driver, JP and then taught some basic Fijian vocabulary: ‘Vinaka’ for thank you, with ‘Vakalevu’ added to the end to say, thank you very much; ‘Senga’ for no; ‘Io’ for yes; and the most important word ‘Bula!’, which can be used for hullo, welcome, cheers and to bless someone when they sneeze.

After stopping in Nadi for supplies, we headed off into the wilderness. I was surprised how quickly the backdrop changed from the slightly dirty look of the town, to the beautiful views of the rest of the island. There were lots of schools where you could see the brightly uniformed children out in the fields and playing. The tropical wildlife was magnificent, as the scenes that whizzed by the window resembled those out of a travel magazine. There did not seem to be herds of animals on the island, but in the middle of nowhere, there would be a random cow or goat wandering around and minding its own business.

During the drive, we learned some of the history of the 333 islands that make up the Fijian archipelago. It was first colonised by South African cannibals ejected from their own country approximately 300,000 years ago. The cannibals kept explorers away until the 1600’s and 1700’s, when Abel Tasman, Captain James Cook and Captain William Bligh traveled the Pacific in the great bid to expand colonial empires. When Captain Cook was being told about Fiji by the Tongans, he apparently misheard the pronunciation of the main island Viti, and named the island Feejee, which is supposedly why the world now knows the country as Fiji.

We drove onto windy, unsealed roads that really did not appear to be bus friendly, but our driver had no fear and eventually we arrived at Natadola beach. Natadola, we were told, is ranked among the top 35 beaches in the world, along with Ipanema and Bondi. We could not really see the resemblance, but our eyes were screwed up against the winds that were whipping sand at us from every direction. We had some time to relax on the beach before being served a barbeque, that unfortunately came with free sand. It reminded us of being back on Fraser Island.

From the beach, we drove to a small village called Malo Malo. We had been taught the correct way to tie our sarongs, dependant on the wearer being male or female, and on arriving at the village we had to make sure our skin was suitably covered, as a mark of respect for the Chief and the village community. However, it was pretty deserted when we got there, apart from several cheeky little boys who enjoyed the attention from all of us. We sat in the Chief’s house and were taught by Kem about life in the village and the procedures to follow during a kava ceremony. In the village, the community drink kava, instead of going to the pub. It is a mildly intoxicating narcotic substance that is ground from the kava root and added to water. When drunk, it produces a numbing affect that starts in one's mouth, which spreads to the rest of the body if enough has been ingested. The kava ceremony is a highly social event, which encourages communication among the partakers. A portion of money from each Feejee Experience ticket was donated to Malo Malo, which to date has helped build a community centre, a kindergarten and health centre.

We left the village and drove to the Sigatoka sand dunes to try out some sand boarding. Here we each took a boogie board up a steep dune, positioned ourselves on it and careered down the dune using feet to brake and steer. It was a lot of fun, which could only have been made better if there had been an escalator up the side of the dune so that you did not have to climb it. Check out the video of me coming down at breakneck speed!

Our hostel was at Mango Bay, a so-called flash packer resort set on the beach with amazing facilities and an even better view. Before dinner, we took part in the kava ceremony and had our first experience of the mouth numbing kava. It was all very relaxed, and followed by dinner and drinks, during which we celebrated one of the guy’s birthday who was on our tour (edit by Franny: it was Sexy Eddie's birthday to be precise!). After dinner they had arranged some international crab racing, where ten hermit crabs were introduced with different nationalities, and we bid for each one in hopes of it winning. The crabs were then placed in the centre of a circle on the ground and the first one out won. Franny and I had bid for the Scottish crab, but lost out to an English guy. The cheek of it, as McNab sprinted first out of the circle and won him $250. The Scottish winning streak continued with Franny winning the ‘pass the apple under the chin to your partner’ game, and then I won the limbo after the cocky yoga freak fell, leaving me to take the winning cocktail. Go the Scots! We then moved out to carry on drinking beside the bonfire on the beach, where Franny enjoyed showing off her guitar skills and singing harmonies. The night was topped off by a plunge into the pool, before everyone fell into their beds a little bit worse for wear.

After not having had nearly enough sleep, we left early and set off for the rainforest trek. Having felt better, Franny and I were swithering on whether we should go on the trek or not, but we felt the force of peer pressure as everyone else told us we had to go. There was one older couple on our tour that we had nick-named Mum and Dad, who were the only ones not to go on the trek. So we ditched the big green bus and were trundled off in the back of a chicken truck to the beginning of the rainforest. With our copious supplies of water and some stolen soggy toast from breakfast, we trekked off into the unknown. It was incredibly hard going, as we tramped through the jungle mud, the rain, the bugs and walked through streams, up and down hills for the next three hours. Not having proper footwear did not help. Franny and I only had our skater trainers that started off heavy, and ended up soaking up any water in sight and feeling like we were carrying around baby elephants on our feet. Triumphant, we made it to the other side, where we had lunch and floated down the river on rubber tubes, before doing some jumping off waterfalls and fighting killer currents. The rain came in on the long boat journey back to the bus, and we were happy to finally get some warm, dry clothes on and get to our hostel for the night. The meal that night was fairly sedate compared to the previous night, thanks to everyone’s tiredness from the trek and lack of sleep. After being entertained with some traditional Fijian dances, we were delighted to get to bed and rest up for the excursions planned for the next day.

Rested and revived, we drove to another village, where we donned our sarongs again to take part in a proper kava ceremony. We sat in the Chief’s house, where he handed out the kava and asked us all questions about ourselves. Then it was time for the women to leave the circle and try some bracelet weaving with some of the local village ladies. The men stayed on to finish off the kava and to chat to the Chief some more. The house was like an oven, so we were happy to get outside and on to our next activity: bili bili rafting. We were split up into teams and then were sailed down the river on three of the bamboo rafts. When we stopped, we played some games in the river with the Chief and some of the locals. Then it was competition time. We lined up the rafts and each team had to paddle as fast as it could back to the village. Our team (Team Wee, for obvious reasons) won. It seemed to be a winning trip for us Scots.

The next stop was a primary school. Franny and I both got a bit emotional watching each class as they told us stories and sang us songs. In return, we had to tell them about our lives at home and what it was like there. The kids were smart and managed to guess the correct capital of each of the countries we were from, until they got to Scotland, where they guessed the capital was Stockholm. Close, but no cigar.

From the school, the bus took us to our last hostel in the Voli-voli resort. It was another beautiful hostel set right on the beach, and we were able to swim in the sea and take out kayaks before dinner. We all got stuck into the cocktails and enjoyed the pub quiz and games put on for us by the resort. The night was topped off by another beach bonfire and Franny introducing yet more people to the drinking game ‘I have never…’

Thankfully we did not have an early start the following morning, so we were allowed to nurse our hangovers in the paradise by the sea. We left the hostel and went for a curry lunch. It was not a bad curry, but to be honest, Franny’s Mum’s curries are much better. The last stop was at the mud pools. It was a bit odd, but we all hiked into the middle of a field and jumped into a big pool of mud. Apparently people pay a lot of money for this treatment, but they tend to go to spas and not fields to do it. We covered ourselves in mud from head to toe and got photos taken, before washing it all off in a nearby hot spring. And when I say hot, I mean really hot. The kind of hot you expect it to peel the skin off your muscle, in a similar way that a tomato skin peels off when put in boiling water. Thankfully, we all left with our skin still on, and drove back to Nadi to drop everyone back at their hotels.

On their recommendation, we decided to go to a different resort with four of the guys from our tour, instead of returning to Nadi Bay Resort. Arriving there, we were glad we made this decision as it was even more luxurious than the first one. We were more than happy to laze by the pool with the guys for the following two days. On the Friday night, the hotel organized a pub crawl in town, which we went to. We experienced the night life of Nadi at it’s best, but were glad to have the chaperones from the resort there to keep an eye on us.

Fiji was an awesome place to visit, with the locals being as friendly as they come. Everyone was very welcoming and they enjoyed teaching visitors about their culture. It was definitely a good decision to take the tour bus, as we got to experience so much of the island that you would not get the opportunity to see when traveling alone. Everyone lived on ‘Fiji time’, with the same ‘manana’ mentality found in the Mediterranean. The scenery around the island was breathtaking, where you feel you have been dropped into paradise. We would have liked to have visited more of the islands, but with limited time and even more limited funds, it was not possible on this trip. I am looking forward to returning to Fiji and doing some island hopping. From what we heard, the other islands are even more beautiful than the one we visited, if that is even possible.

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