To the Yasawa Reaches

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Our boat leaves the harbour at 830am, which meant we had to be up for our bus ride to the harbour before that, and eating breakfast well before that. I slept hard in my air conditioned room, the last for a week. I was going to miss that luxury. It gets very hot and humid out on the islands. Smuggler's Cove breakfast was a buffet of random things like fruit and instant coffee. I hated drinking instant coffee in the Ireland hostels years ago- this is what that reminded me of. I normally drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day back home, so my one solid cup of coffee was being downgraded further lol. Oh well, when in Rome.

The big modern bus drove a hoarde of us to the harbour for our water taxi. We drove by adorable children being walked by parents to bus stops, I assumed on their way to school. I wondered if I'd get to meet any local children while in Fiji. Even before I had a child of my own, I've always loved interacting with kids from other cultures and languages. I still remember a feisty toddler repeatedly telling her dad "Nein!" on one of our long train rides in Germany- they were sitting facing us. Chris and I were just amused to watch the match of wills between father and daughter. We're planning on doing a Village Visit at one of the resorts if possible, so I was hopeful. Most of the surrounding buildings and homes were still small and decrepit along the roads, until right at the harbour. Suddenly we were driving through neighborhoods of larger, wealthier homes with manicured lawns that might as well have been mansions. It was a crazy stark contrast. Who lived here? Were these Fiji citizens or wealthy foreigners?

At the port we all hopped off the bus and were herded towards a very long line to exchange our vouchers for tickets. Chris dropped off our luggage to porters while I waited. We saw a lot of people with packs of water bottles, and we wondered if it wouldn't be wise to purchase our own ahead of time. I had thought water was included in our resort stays but so many people had packed their own that I wondered if we were making a mistake. Chris, too. So he finally went and found a shop while I waited in line, and bought some. This DID turn out to be a sound decision because even though the resorts provided free water, the water taxis did not. And also while we were away from the resorts doing activities and when we didn't feel like walking to the common rooms at the resorts to get water (especially at night), then we had water on hand available to us.

At the appointed time, we hopped onto the Cougar II, our water vessel for the next five hours. And what a miserably damned long five hours that turned out to be. It wasn't bad at first- the wind rushing by as we hopped from one resort to the next on various islands felt nice. We got to see all manner of resort sizes, from incredibly tiny (an island literally the size of a building... you could walk around it in ten minutes) to massive. I started to feel sick after the first hour. The worst portions were when we were parked and unloading, loading, passengers to and from an island. The boat would sway pendulously from side to side. I tried to focus on the horizon and listen to music on my ishuffle mp3 player (yeah- it's old school, as my siblings have pointed out. But when you're on an airplane or a remote are of the world without WiFi, it gets the music job done). I tried so hard to ignore it. That worked for a couple more hours. When I signed up for a five hour boat ride, I did not fully comprehend what that might mean had I turned out to be seasick the entire five hours. I'd only ever had two other episodes of seasickness- one was when I was pregnant and whale watching in Hawaii, and the other was in that storm in Alaska after our kayaking trip. Both legit reasons to be sick. Chris had his scopalamine patch on, so he just lied with his head down for the sheer majority of the time, waiting out the ride, and fighting a potential migraine. I think everyone except for Tony were in varying levels of sick. I continued to watch as the little boats loaded with people and luggage zipped out towards our larger boat, dropped off their cargo, loaded up again, and tore back off across the water. Why the fuck did I pick a resort that was five hours out?! As the main planner for a lot of our group trips, I started to worry about my friends as well. What if they really resented this? What if the resort wasn't worth five hours of misery BOTH WAYS? Eventually, my stomach couldn't hold on anymore. I dashed for the nearest bathroom because it was all coming up... and the bathroom door was locked. So was the one next to it. I looked over at the two Fijians manning the back of the boat (i think their job was organizing all the luggage stored back there), and they saw the panic in my face. We didn't need to speak the same language, lol- one of them rushed me to the side, and let me puke over the edge of the boat. My vomit went flying as I heaved and heaved. I was pretty mortified, even though this must happen alot to these guys. I doubted they were bothered. Every Fijian we met on the trip was incredibly carefree. They just laughed, handed me some napkins and I was on my way back up to the top. I preferred outside to inside because of the air. I lasted another hour before puking again, this time into a toilet. I managed to drink some Sprite in between puking, not that it stayed down. I was just worried about dehydration. Eating was out of the question. I thought this boat ride would never end.

But, eventually, we did make it to our stop alive, and I was off the boat as fast as possible. I was convinced the littler boat would be better because it wouldn't rock when it was speeding away. The employees of Coralview loaded all our luggage onto two boats with us. It was beginning to dawn on me how far civilization was from us. No planes, no helicopters. The closest city was literally five hours by boat in an emergency. I don't believe I've ever been that remote in my life. I'm sure it won't be the last time but it was just something that I was thinking about. While at the same time feeling utter gratitude for being done with the damned water taxi. We sped towards our little resort, and as we approached the shore, employees were welcoming us with guitar and song. We were offered juice from a platter, which I downed, because my stomach was already feeling better. After stepping on shore, the seasickness quickly disappeared. After an hour, it was like I had never been puking.

We checked into our bures- Chris and I had a beachfront bure which just meant that we were much closer to the water than everyone else. It cost a bit more but I chose it so I could listen to the ocean at night. In retrospect, I also wonder if it wasn't smarter simply because there'd be less mosquitoes because of the stronger breeze. Stonger breeze also meant cooler. Everyone else had garden bures set further back into the compound. We also had a private hammock strung out on our bure porch, which wasn't included in all of the garden bures. So our bure ended up being the downtime hangout between activities. There were also several other hammocks strung out along the trees on the lawn. The landscaping of this little resort was beautiful. The resort itself was very quiet, and the atmosphere ended up being campy and family-oriented. The staff wanted to be engaged with the guests, knew all our names by the end of the first day and if you looked bored for a second, they were offering everything they could think of to help out.

We had ordered lunch before settling into our bures. After changing clothes, we headed back to the common area- a large tiled pavilion attached to the kitchen and bar. Eli, the resort activities coordinator and pretty much the MC (master of ceremonies) for the trip, met us there to review what sort of activities we were interested in doing the next few days. Uhm- ALL of the activities! We wanted to do EVERYTHING. He laughed, surprised, and we started figuring out plans on what to do when. We ate our lunch, relaxed for an hour, and then set out for our first island adventure- snorkeling with sharks.

I hadn't swam in ocean water without a life jacket before- i later realized I didn't need one. I was a strong enough swimmer these days without it. So at this point I used a life jacket to paddle out to the "shark area" with everyone else. Eli was leading us and he seemed to know the coral in the water like we would know a backyard. He knew exactly where all the interesting clusters were and pointed them out as we went. We finally got to the area and we started looking around beneath us. We spotted them fairly quickly, swimming well below us. In total we saw four smaller Whitetip Sharks and one giant Reef Shark. Sometimes they'd dart by solo, others they'd swarm in a group. I'd never been this close to a shark in the wild! These are fairly tame sharks, I was told, so the whole experience was fairly safe. I was excited by then... suddenly I felt the five hours of nausea and puking were going to be worth it.

We headed back to shore and lounged around until it was "happy hour." We started drinking our giant beers, flowers in our hair (which Eli had collected for us), while Eli prepared the crab races. There's about twenty people staying at the resort this week, and about half of that was our group alone. Over the next hour or so we all gathered under the pavilion with our drinks. Daniel, a young kid (maybe middle school aged), was there on the island with his mother- he had gone to the effort to gather all the hermit crabs from the shore. They were numbered (supposedly with washable marker), and we spent the first chunk of the races enthusiastically betting real money on the critters. Chris and I ended up with four crabs, including the U.S. (which I refused to put my money down on until we could change his name from Tiger Woods to Burns- they were all named for a famous athlete from each country they represented).

Then it was time for the actual races. All the crabs would be dumped in the middle. We weren't allowed to make sudden movements or very loud noises (whistling was ok) because it would scare the crabs back into their shells. The first however many crabs to cross the line (which is to say, make it out of the drawn circle) would move onto the next round. We made it through the first two rounds but our last crab failed us! One of Linna's crabs actually came in first, though!

Dinner time was anywhere between 7pm and 9pm. This was our one major complaint the entire stay here. Even though you submit your dinner order at lunch time, somehow it doesn't all come out until several hours later. It's all on "fiji time." You get it when you get it, in no particular order. I found this endearing the first night but it got old quick. Mostly because we hadn't eaten since lunch, usually around 1pm. So we weren't eating again for up to 8hrs later after swimming and burning energy all afternoon. There really wasn't much in the way of snacks in between lunch and dinner- we hadn't brought any to the island with us, and they didn't sell any at the bar that I can remember. They have a small shop but the hours are limited and unpredictable. I think by the third night we realized we should order milkshakes during happy hour to stem off the inevitable hunger and energy crash while waiting for the meal. Once the food did arrive, it was generally really good! Every other resort on the islands in the region have a set dinner menu. You can pick out of a few different options. Coralview decided to be different and have a large menu that everyone can order something different off of. It gave people more choices but I think it really slows down the process. Shrug. Poor guys can't win. That first night I went with their cheaper preset menu of octopus (hella good), shrimp cocktail and cheesecake for dessert. Toki, Eli and rotating other staff played the guitar and sang with us as our food slowly came out. They tried really hard our entire stay to come up with songs we might know so we could all sing together but I think the generation gap was a big issue. One of the only songs was "What's Going On", a one hit wonder by 4 Non Blondes. I really didn't know the lyrics before this trip but we sang it multiple times every night so I knew it by the end of the trip, and it will always fondly remind me of our stay there.

After dinner we were exhausted and headed to bed, and we'd had a wonderful first day at Coralview.

"Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?

ooh, ooh ooh

and I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey hey hey

I said hey, what's going on?

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination."

-"What's Going On" - 4 Non Blondes

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

The cure
Glad you are feeling better