"fiji" in Weblog

For anyone who doesn’t already know - I’m back in London. [sigh]. And back at work. [sigh]. I thought I’d finish up my holiday account rather than work…

Levuka on Ovalau was cool as hell. It’s the old capital of Fiji and hasn’t changed in 150 years - it looks like the set of a Western with all the wood-fronted shops and hand-painted signs! The island is an extinct volcano so there’s a ridge of hills surrounding a crater with the town on the coast and a village in the center. We spent most of our time there climbing up said hills. This has never happened to me before but I had an inexplicable urge to, er, climb stuff. We’d walk out of our hotel (this carzy old colonial place) in the morning and then pick the highest spot we could see and just start walking. We did a couple of these walks on our own and then we did a guided one over the crater and into the village in the center with this wacky little Fijian guy who I think might be a witch doctor or something in his spare time. But anyway… Nice place, good walk. We only saw about a dozen villagers. All the rest (that’d be 500 minus a dozen) were sitting in their houses listening to the rugby on the radio because the Ovalau team was playing Lautoka for their premiere league cup having only been promoted that season. Just as we were leaving, Ovalau won the match so all the way back to the hotel the road was lined with people cheering and banging drums… The celebrations could have been to congratulate us on a successful climb over the crater but I think it’s more likely that they were getting live for their team. Crazy stuff! Just about the most enthusiastic response I’ve ever seen to anything!

Last Monday we headed back to the main island to get ready for our shark dive. We had a day to kill so we went for a half-round of golf. As you do. I hadn’t played golf since the last time I was in Fiji (10 years ago) and my brother hadn’t played in about 4 years so we, um, no nice way to say this, were shit. I felt quite sorry for our caddy. He he he. And we had a golf cart! In fact, the golf cart may well have been the highlight of the day… I reckon it could get up to about 30kph downhill with the wind behind it. Back to the golf, I managed to par one hole though which I’m pretty chuffed about. Born lucky.

The shark dive was well cool. They take you down to about 30m and you cower behind this low concrete wall while they open a crate of 100kg fish-chum. As my bro said “you’re garunteed to see some big fucking sea monsters!” No kidding! We saw a couple of bull sharks (arguably the most dangerous fish in the sea, with many of it’s attacks wrongly attributed to great whites… nice), a dozen or so grey and white-tipped reef sharks, a nurse shark (allegedly), a 6ft grouppa and hundreds of 5ft trevellis. It was pretty nuts…

After the shark dive we headed back to Nadi to fly out, via Sigatoka to check out their sand dunes. We just missed sunset because the 1 hour Fiji-time bus took 1:45 real-time but man, these things were huge! Sand mountains they were. And again, we climbed them. The Fijian rugby team train there because running up and down sand dunes is about the most tiring thing in the world. And that was it. Back to Nadi and I flew back the next day… Made it through LA airport without getting searched once which is slightly bizarre. In fact, I didn’t get searched in Fiji either. I was just trying to figure out which part of the controlled chaos I was supposed to be engaged in when one of the airport security guys ushered me through without checking my bag. Er, not too sure why but I figure after my LA fiasco on the way out I was due an airport-security break.

I shook the last of the sand out of my shoe this morning. Expect to have photos plus commentary inflicted on anyone who strays too near to Hackney.

Right, I’m back near civilisation again (near enough for there to be an internet cafe anyway). Just got off the boat from Taveuni where we’ve been for the last week. I can’t believe how much travelling we’ve had to do to get around a place that looks so small on the map! Taveuni’s only a couple of hundred miles away but the only way to get there is by ferry and that takes 20 hours Fiji time (anywhere between 20 and 24 hours actual time)… Anyway, Taveuni was absolutely incredible. It’s also exactly the other side of the world from the U.K. as the 180 degree line passes right through it. Technically, while it’s Friday on most of the island, it’s Saturday on some of it. There’s one shop that stays open 7 days a week by having a door on either side of the line so when it’s Sunday on one side it’s Monday on the other!

We spent 4 days diving some of the best sites in the world, saw a bunch of sharks - apparently they were pretty small at 2 meters but I kept a close eye on my limbs, and just chilled in a fantastic little place (Susi’s Plantation) on the south west side of the island. We got invited to play volleyball with the local village (the guys here are all enormous so we figured we’d better accept volleyball before they offered rugby) which was cool too but we were soooooo out-classed. These guys play all day every day and I’d played once in my life. Luckily they’re patient folk. In fact, the people on Taveuni are about the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Everyone says hello and everyone seems genuinely interested in talking to you. London’s gonna be a bit of a shock!

After the diving we headed round to the other side to take a look at the rainforest and some of the waterfalls round that way. The best of the waterfalls was a 4.5 km hike and a short swim away from the village we were staying in so it was a proper mission to get out there! It wasn’t that big (maybe 20m high) with a smaller fall right next to it but the location was awesome. We figured it’d be kinda cool to jump off it so being the idjuts that we are we figured we’d just climb through the jungle, skirt the cliffs and hop off. Um. Well. Rainforest and all. We got bitten and stung by every little critter with a mouth or a tail but we soldiered on and eventually we emerged about an hour later by the smaller of the falls. Encouraged by this we figured that getting up to the high one’d be a doddle. Another hour passed and we emerged back at the lower falls again with added cuts, scrapes, bruises and stings. Doh! We gave up after that and just jumped from where we were… Still very cool but we felt a touch foolish and we did get laughed at by the locals when we told them.

We’d been advised to take some Kava (traditional Fijian drink that tastes very much like dirty dish-water but on the bright side it’s a mild narcotic) for the village chief since we’d be staying on his turf. We got invited to go drink the Kava with him so we spent most of that night drinking this Kava and chatting to a real-life chief while him, his brother and his son chain-smoked ‘Fiji tobacco’ joints (the marijuana industry here is bigger than the sugar industry apparently!) while they lectured us on Fijian politics. Proper Indiana Jones stuff.

Right, we’ve gotta go catch a bus to the ferry to Ovalau (the old colonial capital) but I guess I’ll catch you all pretty soon…

Easy

Mike (still the whitest white-boy in town)

Well, I’ve made it to Fiji… Just. I got searched 3 times coming through LA customs and as a result almost missed my connecting flight. Do I look that dodgy?! Don’t bother to answer that. My penknife was confiscated by some bloke who didn’t speak any English and couldn’t see straight. He definitely made me feel safer and restored my faith in American security. I bet it was the special Swiss Army hijack blade that did it. Yet despite three separate people searching me no one checked inside my wallet or in the pockets of my bag (only the main compartment) so for any of you intending to commit terrorist acts or smuggle drugs you now know where to hide your stuff. Also, the American visa application actually has a question asking whether you are involved in terrorism (or whether you were convicted of war crimes in 1945, incidentally) so don’t be caught out by that one either - just tick the ‘no’ box. Crazy bastards. Just had to get that off my chest.

Nadi airport employs four guys to sing and play guitar in the reception area while every flight arrives. My flight got in at 3:30am and these guys were still there playing their hearts out. How cool is that? Anyway, I suspect that I may just be the pastiest white man in town so I’m gonna go do something about it…