August 18, 2006

Okay… I’m thinking something about Fiji. Can you guess what it is? It’s something about the weather. Yes! It’s raining again today. Rain and cold, rain and cold… *sigh*, at least we’re going on vacation today to Tavewa. I guess I better get geared up though. We need to go pull our sites up today…. I hate putting my wet suite on in the cold rain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We’re back! We went out to the channel and tried to snorkel to our sites. It was like trying to swim through grog (a.k.a kava, or muddy water). I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But we didn’t want to have to go back out again, so we sucked it up and started swimming towards out sites. I was leading and, even though she kept bumping into me, Amy had to keep sticking her head out of the water to see where I was. We finally gave up when we realized that we were swimming in circles. Literally. Fine then, on to vacation!

Once we got back from the unsuccessful snorkel, we had just enough time to throw some stuff together and catch a mini-bus to Sigatoka. It was sad leaving; Akisi almost cried. I hate sad good-byes, so we assured her that we’d be back on Tuesday night with pizza and rum. (That was a mistake, I’ll tell you why later). We made it as far a Sigatoka to find out that mini-buses don’t go to Nadi. Damn. We were waiting around trying to figure out what to do when an elderly man, who reminded me of James Earl Jones with loose, dirty, checkered pants, a sweater and white-rimmed sunglasses straight out of the 80’s approached us. He started saying something about “God” and “the Christian thing to do” blah blah blah. I like him though, so once he showed us his official ministry papers, Amy and I made a small donation. That was a good decision since ‘James’ then pointed out the bus that we needed to take to get to Nadi. Sweet! I didn’t even care that it was so packed I could only find a seat for one of my butt cheeks. We were off to Nadi for the night to meet the Yasawa Flier in the morning for our vacation. Yea!

Okay, so we officially found the most disgusting hostel in Fiji. It’s called Sunseekers in Nadi. Our room was scary. The beds were made up with a hodge-podge of strange linens that smelled like sour milk. In fact, the whole room smelled like sour milk. There was no lock on the door… at all, and the bathrooms were so foul it made me gag. There was no toilet paper in ANY of the bathrooms and when you asked for some, they’d put it in there, but it would disappear within a few minutes. I’m not sure I want to know what happened to it. Our room was lit by a lamp on the nightstand that had a strange green light bulb. I took a picture of Amy in the light and it looked like a scene out of Requiem for a Dream. There was also someone cooking a whole, freshly plucked, chicken on the patio adjacent to the bathroom. It kind of felt like I’d been transported into the Twilight Zone. Amy and I decided that people were actually living there. We think some of the rooms were apartments. Ech! I feel sorry for anyone who has to live there. I also felt sorry for Amy. She spent most of the night in the absolutely disgusting bathroom vomiting. I think she has bad reactions to kava. We ran into a group playing Fijian music and drinking grog (kava) on the back porch when we first arrived. They asked us to sit and join them and shared their grog with us. It’s considered very impolite to refuse kava, so we had a bowl or two. I try very hard to control my gag reflex when I drink kava. It’s not disgusting, but I had such a bad reaction to it last time I was here that my body remembers it. I think Amy is going to be the same way (if she isn’t already). Anyway, we endured, since it was only one night. But, we were both relieved to be leaving the next morning.

"Sucks to your ass-mar, Fiji!"