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Published: February 11th 2008
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a coconut tree
more people die from falling coconuts than shark attacks Even though Fiji just went through one of its worst cyclones last week it was still paradise. My first night was spent on the main island in Nadi. I fell into a pile of luck since there was a two hour dance ceremony that night. The fijian dance troup went through all of the dances of the pacific. There was knife throwing and fire dancing and the troup danced through the rain. At the end they asked if anyone was canadian and I put up my hand without thinking, it turned out that I became their first volunteer to learn some Fijian dances. Luckily one of the dances was just the electric slide with a native name, everyone thought that I was a natural. The next morning I headed out on the Yasawa Flyer to the outer island of Nanuya Lalai. The boat ride was 6 hours long and lots of people got sick. The resort I ended up at was nearly empty, just me and three other guests. One was a girl from Edmonton named Amber, but she was a real downer and was expecting a five star resort, I was pretty glad that she had to head out the
next day. The Sunrise resort is the only one in the Yasawa group owned by a Fijian family and they tried way too hard to impress the few visitors they had. At first one of the other girls was afraid to go to sleep because the family was so wierd. The main host was a ladyboy named Queen. He used to work on Turtle island serving Tom Cruise, Jessica Simpson, all those star type people. Turtle island was right next to our island and about eight times more expensive. It rained a lot for the first day so we couldn't do much. The second day I went on a tour of the underwater caves, it was pretty creepy at first because there was no way of knowing how deep the water was or what was in it. I was told there were only crayfish. The cave that I went to is home to one of the Fijian gods, a snake with 10 heads. In order to get to the second cave I had to swin through a tiny underwater passage, I didn't go down far enough though and ended up hitting my head which was really dangerous. Later that day
a couple more people came out to the island and we hiked across to the Blue Lagoon. The views were great, we passed the highest point on the island (not very high at all) and I took a tonne of pictures. We tried to hike back along the beach because it was low tide, but apparently it wasn't low enough and it took twice as long as it should have, we saw sea snakes and found a tiny pig farm in the middle of nowhere. That night we all chipped in and bought some kava and chocolate cake. Traditionally Fijians are not allowed to drink alcohol (most of them do now though) and kava was used as a tool to socialize. There is a process of clapping that everyone goes through whenever you drink kava and all of the kava you are given must be drank in one "skulling" (in other words chug it). Everyone has to stay until all of the kava is gone. It tastes terrible (kind of like muddy water) and it gives the same sensation as menthol, your tongue goes kind of numb. I found out later that most visitors aren't allowed to stay for an
entire kava ceremony, just one drink or so. The next day I went on the Wana Taki cruise ship which goes through the main islands in the middle of the yasawas. Everyday was spent snorkelling in the crystal blue waters of one lagoon after another. The last island I was on was called South Sea Island. It's the smallest island in the Yasawa group and probably my favorite one. The island takes a total of 4 minutes to walk around if you maintain a leisurely pace. It's surrounded on 3 sides by coral and has great views of the sunrise and sunset. There's a huge staff house on the island and about 4 people live there full-time. I have no idea what they do with their free time, the island is really small. I became friends with the scuba instructor and ended up going on my first dive. I had trouble breathing because I couldn't stop smiling so the mouthpiece kept slipping. There's so much more to see scuba diving. Later on that day I went sailing to the island that castaway was filmed at. It was hit pretty hard by the cyclone but still had a fantastic beach and
great scenery. The day sailing was great but I ended up getting heat sickness and had tiny blisters on my arms and hips from the sun roasting me. I decided to stay at the little island one more night instead of going back to the mainland. Myself and three people from Europe stayed up and watched the stars until 2 in the morning. There was a constant beach patrol on the island because the night before one of the islands next to us (a 5 minute boatride away) was raided by "pirates" so we were supposed to watch for strange fishing boats out in the water. I spent my last morning snorkelling and even saw a baby reef shark, it was too fast for me to take a picture though. I ended up missing my boat back to the mainland and was really worried about it. The manager of the island managed to arrange for the little island boat to take me to a close marina and catcha taxi to the airport so the crisis was averted. I spent a splended night sleeping in the Sydney airport before heading to Christchurch, New Zealand which is like Victoria with an accent.
Tomorrow I start my tour of NZ for the next 18 days...
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Colin
non-member comment
Ahhh... what happened to
pictures? Too much text make me eyes sleepy