http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2248589&l=bc385&id=61205739 (Leaving Kiritimati)
Fiji (Sabeto Highlands, Nadi, & Yasawa Islands)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2248590&l=bc851&id=61205739
After a rickety ride to Cassidy Airport balancing ourselves on the rear of a minivan, which would have claimed the life of anyone with osteoporosis, we arrived at Cassidy in plenty of time for the flight to Nadi, our next destination in Fiji – four hours early. We wondered why. But this soon became clear.
Unsure where all these people had arrived from, we arrived at the departures shed. 13 fisherman had already filled it to capacity. Clad in rustic brown attire these fisherman chaps were sporting expensive, full wrap around glare resistant sunglasses. Although I felt like pointing out that their holiday had come to an end and that the lagoon was over a mile away I tried hard to keep my mouth shut. But I couldn’t help it. I began a conversation with an Aussie chap who, as he was quick to point out, had caught a record 619 bonefish in two weeks. Although this conversation soon came to a rather abrupt end when I told him that I was an ambassador for VAF (Vegans Against Fishing).
The main departures terminal
The view out into the parking lot
After trying to avoid any further confrontation I then decided if I could cheat Cassidy Airport’s stringent security. Imagine this: into departures you walk and in front of you is a great pile of baggage being readily made larger with your own. After observing the departures process for a few moments you notice that there is no x-ray machine. Instead some bloke wearing a 1993 Lazio strip is hand searching every one of these bags - but not very well. Then throwing the bag back on top of the unchecked baggage.
I absorbed this massive security flaw, then turned my attention to the check in queue where I realised that the check in lady sat behind a decaying desk and on a three-legged chair was asking people to pick up their luggage from that pile then place it onto a trolley destined for the place on its arrival.
By this point it was perfectly clear that Cassidy Airport’s approach to security was the polar opposite to Heathrow, though ironically took about as long. The Lazio fan didn’t seem to think that separating checked and unchecked baggage was sufficiently important to warrant separate areas. Now if I was a terrorist, I’m not, Al Queda don’t pay enough, but imagine that I was, and bear in mind that I personally own roughly 2 brain cells, what I might do is put my bag down with the checked baggage, conveniently miss the security check, which 20 kgs of TNT would probably have gone unnoticed through anyway, then check that bag onto the flight.
After checking in our bags, which I did get security checked as Carly was starting to get annoyed with me, I was told that they had no boarding passes for us after running out in 1998. From there it was a 2.3-meter walk to the departures gate, through a mist of mosquitoes emanating from the bathroom and past immigration
[insert immigration photo here]
Before getting our “Kiribati departure stamp” we were reminded by the immigration officer (who was also the local green grocer and baker) that we had to pay our departure tax. I quickly reminded her that “technically” we hadn’t been told we needed to pay 50 AUS on arrival a week ago and therefore “technically’ couldn’t be “reminded” that we need to pay it now. This resulted in a rather sharp jab in the kidney from Carly was beginning to get rather annoyed behind me.
“Sorry sweetie, I just can’t help it, these people are idiots”, I winced.
I quickly paid, but couldn’t resist one last passing comment on asking the baker for the total:
“just name a price, though to be honest there is no upper limit to the $ I’d be willing to pay to leave your country.”
With a second bruised kidney I made my way through the metal detector, which was switched off, and into departures. After a quick browse through Chanel and Gucci I began to notice that two engineers with approximately one GCSE of engineering knowledge between them were starting to roll out a spare aircraft wheel from the rear of the departures shed.
Being rather concerned that these incompetent fools might be charged with replacing one of the 737’s wheels my heart rate quickly rose to as many beats. Though a few minutes later it was obvious that these two jokers couldn’t assemble a mouse-trap and gave up trying to affix the relevant parts of the wheel together. I wondered if this was their play-time.
An hour later I spotted our Air Pacific plane a few miles to the west and it made a fly past of the airfield, presumably to check the airfield was free of pigs and children playing hopscotch. Ten minutes later it made the most perfect of landings and was taxiing up to the departures shed. As last week, the Nadi bound passengers wondered where on earth they had stopped at and another shed load of fisherman departed. Twenty minutes later we ran aboard and after a twenty-minute delay, due to Christmas Island paperwork problems, my bet is they couldn’t write, 16 of us were on board complete with all bags and a spare wheel.
Five hours later, and a laptop written letter of complaint to Air Pacific ready to be printed and posted we landed in Fiji. I just can’t believe that they should think one cheese and ham roll is enough to sustain a growing lad like me for five hours. It’s outrageous.
We passed through security quicker than Ryanair can insult 100 passengers and were out into tout city. After screaming “bula” and no thanks to a thousand taxi drivers we found our courtesy shuttle to the Nadi Bay Resort Hotel. Oh how Durham boy Adam Stirk would be proud! With all our dosh still intact we checked into our $26 FJD fanless, air conless room, I mean who needs air con after Christmas Island? After an entire week of rice & fish for lunch and dinner it was nice to sit down and have a change with something wholly British: Fish & Chips.
On our first full day we made our way as far from the beach as was physically possible and booked ourselves into “The Stoney Creek”. A resort (everything backpacking on Fiji is based around a resort, an added bonus as a bed is just the same price as elsewhere) a few miles past the airport and in the foothills of the Sabeto Mountains – a needed retreat after 2 weeks of islands…
The first challenge was exiting the Nadi Bay Hotel laden with my 13kg rucksack while also carrying Carly’s 96kg suit (and make up) case and fending off the taxi touts eager to secure and lucrative equivalent of a £4 taxi fare.
“oh no we don’t Carly, the bus is the equivalent of 30p” I snapped.
“but Andrew the bus stop is half a mile away and we have all this luggage. Plus we need to make a change too”.
“yeh, but we save £3.20… come on I’m not giving into these Nazis.”
I think I won the argument, although I was starting to regret not applying the anti perspirent that morning.
At least 2 hours later than by taxi I struggled off the local bus, nearly giving one old lady and her chickens concussion when I attempted a 180 on board backpack laden. Knackered, I carried the bags up the 100m drive and into an oasis of calm and tranquillity. Quite a find.. We checked into the dorm, another steal at $27 FJD a night (about £8.50) and Lonely Planet were right, dorms were “highly reminiscent of train carriages.”
It turned out to be quite a find, just above the dorms was a little hill with a fine tree on top. Right next to the tree a seat. Sat on there, I finally finished Bill Clinton – My Life. Longer than the bible, and inherently more interesting I reflected back to the small bookshop in North Carolina where I made the purchase. I wondered whether Andrew Grimball, an American lad I worked with at Bryanston had found this bookshop after I mentioned that he might be able to find the work he wanted there. The hill offered panoramic views of the Sabeto mountains and provided the much needed relief from island exhaustion (hard life isn’t it Matt Hann, how’s it going in that office?).
It was also at the Stoney Creek that we met Keith and Rebecca, father and daughter from Middlesbrough travelling around Fiji together. After some late (well not that late) night Connect-4 & Ludo we arranged to visit a Fijian family that had insisted to Keith and Rebecca that they must visit, and after they did, made Keith promise to invite other people to visit them too. Those other people were to be us.
Unsurprised by their invitation to Keith and Rebecca, and now to us, we were becoming increasingly aware that the friendliness of Fijians extended beyond just everyone saying “bula, bula, bula.” Literally everyone wants to say hello, young, old, even cars just driving by. Even today as me and Carly were walking back to where I am writing this from tonight, a “bula” was launched from at least 200m away. With a crackin’ Geordie twang went a reciprocal “bula” in the other direction, “areeeeeett”…
Visiting Anil and his family the day after we had arranged it through Keith was quite an experience. After walking a half-mile up a dusty track towards the post office where we’d arrange to meet Anil (the man of the house) we heard this boys voice
“you must be coming to see Anil?”
“yes,” I replied.
“ah, he’s slightly busy right now, so I’ve come to show you the way”
It would later transpire that the little boy, Anil jnr, had simply wanted to greet us as he had been unable to meet Keith and Rebecca the other evening, and in fact, as his father pointed out later he himself was far from busy! We walked for 20 minutes or so with Anil jnr and found out quite a bit about his life and what school is like in Fiji and also how to fend off dogs. Although I’m partial to an injection of adrenaline and running like hell, in Fiji, as Anil jnr showed us, its best just to throw stones. It seemed to do the job, although I’m sure that if I had done it it’d simply have just made a dire situation worse. Anyway, we survived three dog charges and arrived at Anil’s house at the top of a small local village, nestled in and amongst three huge sugarcane fields. I thought to myself that this could be the solution to deprived areas of the UK, simply plant 12ft high sugar cane around all council estates – then no one sees them.
After being welcomed by Anil we were introduced to all of his family, his mother, his wife, brother, sister, three sons and two daughters. Their dogs could be heard growling outside quite aware that there were “strange people inside”. Visibly over the moon to have foreign visitors we realised just why native Fijians were so hospitable.
“you drink Kava?”
Completely aware that visiting Fiji and not trying Kava was like going to Middlesbrough and not trying heroin I quickly obliged and within a few minutes we were sat around in a circle with a bowl of Kava in front of us.
Carly was clearly worried that with Kava being outlawed in the States it was probably not a wise narcotic to try, but to refuse would probably have caused the utmost offence and before we knew it we’d tried our first bowl:
It didn’t do anything for me, although my tongue did go a bit numb. Anil seemed to relax heavily. Amazing what a crushed plant can do, after all the Fijians really do “hit it hard” and have some massive “Kava” nights. The conversation quickly picked up a gear and we heard all about the other travellers who had come to visit Anil over the years and by the end we’d promised to send photos of our lives back home to Anil and his family. In fact we’re incredibly grateful to Anil and his family for giving us our very first Kava experience.
HUGE whales! We saw these two during sun rise over the Pacific Ocean west of Nadi, Fiji. The biggest things to roam the ocean. Fantastic...
Over the next 2 nights and three days (probably not enough really) we took the Yasawa Flyer catamaran out to the Yasawa Islands and made a bit of an error in the accommodation we chose. I think I got rather distracted by the fact that the “Sunrise Lagoon Resort” was located ‘next door’ to the famous retreat of Britney Spears and other celebrities: “The Turtle Bay Resort”. In fact, it may have been only on the next island along, but the Sunrise Lagoon’s cold pasta, spider infested dorms, and rather pathetic beach meant we spent most of our three days over on the other side of the island at another resort that was right on the blue lagoon. Nevertheless, it was where I tried my first stint of scuba diving. And it was awesome! Going down to 12m on the PADI discover course was an experience I’d recommend to anyone. Being used to diving down only for a few seconds before having to come back up and blow out your snorkel makes for quite a change once you can actually breathe underwater. Nothing quite like looking up from the ocean bed and having fish right above you.
We fly onto New Zealand tomorrow… skiing awaits. But hang on, I’ve only got shorts and flip flops….
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