Fiji

The flight from New Zealand to Fiji is 4 ½ hours north and, after the cold of the south island, I am looking forward to moving into warmer climes. I check into a pleasant hotel by the beach at Wialoaloa, but unfortunately I am not very well for my first few days here and spend a lot of time dozing in a hammock and looking up at the palm trees. Fiji is a good place for resting and taking it easy – the temperature is about a very pleasant 25, the people are very friendly and English-speaking and the pace is relaxed. The smiling greeting from everyone, to everyone is, ‘Bula’ and the women giggle and laugh easily. I take a look at my new Fijian currency and am amused to see that even the Queen looks relaxed and smiling. Bula, Queenie.

Fiji’s Smiling Queenie

Sunset at Wialoaloa Beach

Also in my room is a young German woman, who is due to fly home in a couple of days. She says it will be a surprise for her parents, who are not expecting her until October. She wakes up in the night also feeling unwell. The next day she is worse, with a pain in her stomach and feeling sick and dizzy. She thinks it might be something she has eaten. As well as feeling ill, she is now also worried about her flight. She has very little money left, as she is right at the end of her trip. I lend her the small amount of cash I have and she goes to see a doctor. She has appendicitis and is admitted to hospital and has the operation. Her boyfriend arrives from Australia to be with her and help her with her flight and medical insurance etc. Thank goodness for friends to help; modern medicine and the money to access it when it is needed. 

I make friends with an Australian woman and her two young daughters and one evening we wander up the road together to a nearby hotel where there is a local dance performance. A troop of young men with well-defined oiled and tattooed torsos perform energetic dances and juggle with knives and fire. Two willowy young women with bare midriffs, jiggle and rotate their hips in an impressive fashion, while moving their long arms gently in wave-like movements.

Fijian Dancers

The next day I visit the main town of Nadi (pronounced Nandi) in search of high speed internet to catch up on uploading my blog. I have missed keeping in touch with everyone via my blog and receiving the comments that people send back to me.

My guide book tells me that the town is made up of roughly half and half Fijians and Indians. There are many shops selling Indian clothes and I have my lunch at Indian restaurant, where local Indians as well as a few tourists are eating.

Downtown Nadi

Curry Lunch

I visit the fruit and vegetable market and here it is mainly Fijians buying and selling their produce. The stall holders make small attractive piles of their wares, like mini games of jenga. There are stalks of a root vegetable tied together in bunches that I don’t recognise. This is taro, which is a potato-like crop.

Nadi Market

Taro

Behind the colourful fruit and vegetable section there is a whole area where piles of dried roots are heaped up on the counters and it is mainly men who stand clustered in small groups behind. Separate from most of the activity is one woman sitting on her own. She smiles at me and I go and talk to her. She tells me that this is kava. It is the dried root of the pepper plant, which is then ground to a powder and mixed with water to make a drink which is drunk socially, mainly by men and is important for ceremonies. I don't think it is alcoholic, but it must have some narcotic effect as I have heard that it causes drowsiness and makes your lips and tongue go numb.

Kava

The next day I leave the mainland for a trip out to stay on an island. The modern catamaran ferry leaves daily from the port and makes the trip out and back along a couple of groups of islands to the west of the mainland, dropping off and picking up passengers along the way. The passengers are almost exclusively very young Europeans. The first group of islands is the Mamanucas and they are tiny low-lying islands, with one resort a-piece. The smallest of these could be walked around in 10 minutes. They are popular for day trips from the mainland and some have a party backpacker reputation.

South Sea Island

After a couple of hours we arrive at the second group of islands; the15 volcanic islands of the Yasawas. These are bigger and rockier than the Mamanucas and being further from the mainland are less commercial. Myself and another girl get off the ferry at the second island, Waya Leilei, and we are helped to step down into the small tender that is bobbing alongside. A small welcoming party is on the beach to greet us and they sing us a welcome song as we step out of the boat into the sea and wade ashore and we are told by the boatman to shout back, ‘Bula!’ to show our appreciation.

First View of Waya Leilei Island

Leaving the Ferry

Tender to the Island

The resort is made up of a collection of small buildings on several grasses terraces, with plenty of hammocks strung between palm trees. The other girl is a German called Bibi, and although we have both booked dormitory beds we are each given a private room with our own bathrooms, as the dormitory is being refurbished. Meals are served when they are ready, according to Fiji time and we are summoned to lunch by the call of a Fijian drum. The resort is run by and for the benefit of the local community and everyone is very friendly. It is very quiet here, with the staff vastly outnumbering the guests. At lunch there are only 6 of us; me and Bibi and the other 4 are leaving on the afternoon boat. It is hotter here than on the mainland and I digest my lunch while dozing in a hammock in the shade at the back of the beach.  

Waya Leilei Resort

View from my Hammock

Later in the afternoon, when it has cooled slightly I take a walk up the hill behind the resort with Solomon, a local guide. The path is used by locals to get to their small plantations and I ask him about the plants that are cultivated here. In small patches of ground cleared amongst the boulders the villagers grow cassava, yams and taro. From a lookout there are great views back down to the resort and over the nearest other island and then we reach an interesting almost lump of rock that wobbles slightly, called Sunrise Rock.

Solomon

Small Plantation

Sunrise Rock

Top of the Island

During the afternoon a couple of German friends have arrived; Nico and Lisanne and so there are 4 of us for dinner. One of the locals has a birthday today and after we have finished eating they gather to sit on mats on the dining room floor and share kava from a large bowl. We are invited to join them, but we leave them to it and all retire early to bed.

My second day on the island is a Sunday and guests at the resort are invited to attend the local church service. Bibi, Lisanne and I decide to go along and a guide from the resort takes the short walk on a sandy path at the back of the beach to the village. We are met by some friendly villagers. One man asks where we are from and when I reply, ‘England’, he nods and responds with the confirmation, ‘From the Motherland.’ 

Going to Church with Bibi and Lisanne

We leave our shoes in the church porch and our guide explains that the women sit on the left and the men and children on the right. We are offered seats in the front pew, next to two older women who cool themselves with palm fans. The choir of men and women file in and take up their positions in the pews perpendicular to us. The service is conducted in Fijian, but we visitors are welcomed in English. The hymns are rousing and the harmonies from the choir are moving. During the service a child carries a baby across the church and gives her to a young woman in the choir. The mother hitches up her choir robe and breast feeds the baby. A child of about 2 wanders across and sits in the end of one of the choir pews. She fiddles quietly with the ribbons on her dress and plays hide and seek behind the pew end with me and Lisanne.

 

The Choir

Children in Church

Congregation Leaving the Church

After the service our guide takes us further into the village to visit the Chief’s house. This is not where he lives, but is the village meeting house. There are four tribes in the village and the position of Chief is inherited by the males of the dominant tribe.

Inside the Chief’s House

I spend the afternoon snorkelling and swimming off the beach and reading in a hammock. The pace of life here is so slow and laid back that it is hard to summon the energy for anything very much. Any decision seems to require a little lie down in a hammock to think about it. Actually it is more like Pooh Bear says, ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.’

Me on the Beach at Waya Leilei

By the third day several more people have arrived and a group of 9 of us go off in a little boat out to a reef for some snorkelling. There are ‘friendly’ reef sharks here and the guide feeds them with bits of fish and they swim close enough to touch. The biggest ones are about a metre and a half long and their skin is rough to touch. Initially it is a bit disconcerting to be that close in the water to such a big creature that goes by the name of ‘shark’, but they obviously mean no harm.

Snorkelling Trip

Shark

The rhythm of the day is dictated by the drum that summons us to the next meal and at lunch today we are serenaded by three local men playing guitars and singing.

Lunch

After lunch we are invited to visit a small handicraft market and jewellery-making session run by the ladies of the village. I make a bangle woven from palm leaves and a necklace of small shells and my jewellery collection is tripled in the process.

Handicraft Market

Making a Bracelet

All that effort calls for a little lie down in a hammock and even reading seems too much like hard work. For my last evening on the island I share dinner with people from Poland, France, Germany and Sweden. We chat about the pace of life for the Fijian Islanders and compare it with life in Europe. We all wonder how we will adapt to ‘normal’ life back home. Then the Swedish boy tells us that Sweden has just won the Eurovision song contest and we have great fun discussing this greatest of institutions. The French boy and I agree that each of our countries will never win again, because no-one else in the competition likes us and won’t vote for us. Even our chances of collaborating and supporting each other are doomed, as there is  some historic animosity between our countries!