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Published: December 2nd 2008
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Is this the beach?
Nadi Port located on the main island of Fiji We've been safe and sound back in the United States for almost a month now. With new job and apartment issues, and just basically getting settled into life in Syracuse (and not out of our backpacks), we've stayed busy enough to keep us away from the blog. But finally, we can catch up, and let anybody who may be still reading this about our last days on the trip.
It only takes three hours to fly from Auckland, New Zealand to Nadi, Fiji. Luckily, we had set up our plans for Fiji up ahead of time. Once at the airport, we got a transfer to our hotel, the Nadi Bay Hotel. This was only for an overnight before reaching our final destination, the Long Beach Resort on the island of Matacawa Levu. Fiji, rather than one island, is actually an archipelago of two main islands and scores of other smaller islands. At the Nadi Bay Hotel, we were shown to our rooms and after putting our things away and having dinner, we came back to realize that we had been given the wrong key to our room. We went back and were given a ring of keys to, apparently,
every room in the hotel. The lady at the desk told us to try them until one worked and then return them in the morning. This, we learned, sums up the laid-back spirit of the Fijian people.
The next morning, we boarded a bus that brought us to the marina where we boarded a catamaran ferry called the Yasawa Flyer (because it runs along the Yasawa chain of islands). It was about 80 degrees or more out and so sunny. The flyer stops at every island on the way to our stop (which was about the last stop on the chain) about 4 hours later. The first stops were at islands that are pretty heavily touristed or popular college party islands. By the time we got out to our island, things were much more serene and relaxed.
A long-tail outboard motorboat came out to meet us as a tender to our island. We zipped through the most amazing turquoise island that either of us had ever seen. The tender reached shore along a perfect white crescent of sand surrounded by several bures (traditional fijian bungalows). We were greeted by staff and shown to our bure which was spacious
with a hammock out in front.
We met at the dining building for lunch where we met Brian and Caroline, a couple from Ireland who, over the next couple days, we got to know and like very much. At one time, there were never more than about 7 other tourists staying at our resort (and thus the entire island of about three square miles). The rest of the day was spent, what else, lying on the beach and relaxing. On a walk along the beach, we were approached by one of the native guys, Mattias, whose family lives in a bure along the beach. He invited us to come to tea at 4:00 each afternoon, for a couple fijian dollars. Later on, we walked back down to their bure where they had a picnic table spread with cakes and tea. A few of the people from our resort were already snacking and chatting away. We met Mattias' wife, Sala, and found out a lot about life in Fiji. They were such friendly, laid-back people.
The next day, we joined Brian and Caroline on an outing into the village. It was about a kilometer guided walk inland through forested
brush (and a large makeshift rugby field) to the village. Along the way, every person we passed greeted us with "Bula" or "Bula-Bula" (fijian for hello). We made our way through the small village and to the village's school where we got to spend time in a classroom and talk to the soft-spoken teacher and see the kids at work. It is a catholic school (as was the whole island catholic), and all the kids were neatly dressed in their uniforms and very polite. When we left the classroom, we came upon a group of smaller kids on recess who posed with us for pictures. They went crazy over seeing ourselves on the digital cameras LCD display (not being used to digital cameras), so we kept taking pictures of them and then they all would crowd around us to see the pictures of themselves. It was really cute, and the kids were so friendly. We walked back to the resort and spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach.
Only one thing was accomplished on our third day in Fiji. A whole lot of lying on the beach. We got a lot of sun, did a lot
of reading, and just took it easy.
We were hungry for some more adventure, the next day, so we did another outing to do some snorkeling in the Blue Lagoon (yes, Brooke Shields fans, THAT Blue Lagoon). We took a longtail boat for a lightning-fast 15 minute ride out there. We got our snorkel gear on and spent a couple hours in the crystal clear water and reefs. There was plenty to see there. A lot of fish of all colors and shapes, sea cucumbers, on big puffer fish that looked kind of shy, coral and so much more. We were pretty exhausted by the end of the outing, and spent the rest of the day reading in the hammock by the waves.
The next day, we said our goodbyes to Fiji (mostly by lying on the beach). By early afternoon, a longtail boat whisked us out with our luggage to catch the Yasawa Flyer on its return route back to "mainland" Fiji. It was another four hour ride back, then to the airport. We got on a flight to Los Angeles that was over nine hours of torurous red-eye flight. Crossing the International Dateline on the way,
Sporting Fiji Water
Can you imagine drinking anything else? we ended up in LA on the same date that we left Fiji. We had about ten hours til our next flight, so Cosmina had the excellent idea of getting the cheapest nearby hotel we could find so we could catch up on the sleep we didn't get during the flight. We ended up in a Holiday Inn in Inglewood for an amazing (!) few hours of rest. Then it was back to LAX to catch our flight to Philly and then to Buffalo. It was so great to be back in the States and in familiar territory, we can't tell you. We spent the next few days catching up with our families and showing pictures and sharing stories. The last few months feels like a whirlwind and a dream. It couldn't possibly have been us doing all these things, could it?
We feel grateful to everybody who kept in touch with us along the way (even if we didn't get a chance to write back to everybody). Our parents had a huge hand in keeping things going for us in the US. Mom and Dad Nolan for taking care of our dogs and our finances. Mama Anca for
getting our Syracuse apartment for us. My little cousin Sean for writing all those comments and e-mails. Vanessa and Tony for the great hospitality in Singapore. John Bartlett for being a great help in South Africa. Thanks to everybody else who read the blog, commented, and sent their wishes to us ... it meant a lot to us.
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