Bula! Bula! Bula!

Bula everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good last few weeks. I'll try to sum up how my time in fiji has gone but it will be difficult. i'll do my best. (right now i'm at an internet cafe in sydney, but we'll get to that later) here it goes:

You can't go more than 15 minutes in fiji without hearing Bula! (boo-la) from someone. and i don't mean hearing it once in the first 15 minutes of fiji; i mean every 15 minutes of every day...all the time. it means welcome, kind of like hawaii's aloha.

The first day was a bit of a disappointment--hear me out on this one. for some reason i expected to land on an island that was just big enough to fit an airplane, had i done any research at all before arriving i would have known that the main island of fiji is a big one. i landed and saw no beach, went to the hotel i was staying at and still no beach. the nadi bay resort was great but really it could be anywhere that could support palm trees--although the little frogs that you could see jumping around definitely added to it.

Pauline and Laura from new zealand had arrived a few days earlier and stayed in the same hotel. they left a note telling me their fiji plans and the next day i was off to meet them at the smaller islands with a bula pass (bula really is everywhere) for the boat ferry service. The island they were at was booked up so i had to stay at a different one called Bounty Island. This was a very very happy day for me. everything that i imagined fiji to be was true and the disappointment from the day before was completely erased. On the boat ride to bounty someone said, "the water is so aqua." i think that sums it up nicely and is funny at the same time.

On bounty i was with two canadian girls who were very cool. we hung out all day: walked around the entire island (25 minutes); swam; snorkeled; swam to one of those platform things out in the water and napped on it; and played a lot of games (did you know that chutes and ladders is really called snakes and ladders for the rest of the world?). Highlights for bounty: an attacking crab on our walk (one of the funniest things i have seen on the trip so far), the biggest steak for dinner--huge!, and smiling all day because i couldn't believe i was in fiji.

The next day i got on the yasawa flyer (the name of the ferry boat) and it picked up laura and pauline from the next island. we went all the way to the top of the yasawa island chain to a place called safe landing. now the further away you get from the mainland, the less commercial you get, and we where the farthest possible in the direction we chose. Safe landing was an amazing place. originally we got a dorm but upgraded to a shared bure (hut) that was right on the beach--it ended up being only 5 fijian dollars more a night...roughly 3.50 us dollars more a night. You open the door and all you see is the beach; and a nice hammock tied right next to us. it truly was paradise. Ryan F., it is difficult to find a hammock that isn't tied between two palm trees.

We stayed at safe landing for only two nights but it was incredibly hard to leave because we got so attached to the people there. Hannah was a really nice girl staying in our bure and our swedish couple neighbors were the raddest people ever. Sebastion looks like cris carraba from dashboard confessional and his girlfriend Sophia was really cool. also, we really connected to the staff there. But we had more islands to see...

Otto and Fanny's place was the next stop and honestly we probably didn't give it a fair judgement because we were missing safe landing so much. the semi cool thing about otto's was that it was pretty much a palm tree forrest. i say semi cool because as we were walking to the beach we heard a deep thud from a coconut hitting the ground. it didn't take us long to imagine a scenario of one of them banging off our heads. another plus, was my first night ever (at least from what i can remember) of sleeping with a mosquito net. they creeped me out at first because they remined me of ghosts for some reason--at least a place where ghosts would hang out.

coconut bay made the trip amazing. it felt more like living within a village. there seemed to be a lot of people working (but really really more like living) there. they all tried to learn our names and would call them out whenever we ran into them--of course only after the bula!. everywhere we went though, laura was always the most liked. within a few minutes of getting off the boat we met moses, brooks, oscar, bel, and bill-the man who built everything at coconut bay and even wove us baskets. laura and pauline got purse looking things made out of palm leaves (i know its supposed to be frons but not sure on the spelling). i got a fijian man bag.

our first night there we learned the bula! dance, which has been described as the fijian maccarena. we also had a ballon dance, which i lost. it was hard. the next day was awesome. after breakfast laura booked a dive so we went along with her to snorkel around a coral wall while she dove. One of the guys from the boat went spear fishing and it was incredible to see him swimming around and getting the fish. pauline and i were also happy to stick with him because we would have easily gotten lost. It was fijian night that night so we had a ground cooked meal followed by a kava ceremony. kava is the fijian traditional drink. most people say it tastes like muddy water, which in a way it is. it is water run through a ground up powder of a root. i think it tastes more like medicine...probably because it is a medicine. it is a seditive that makes your tongue go numb (especially if you hold it in your mouth for awhile). it is the funniest thing to see a bunch of old fijians on the kava mat; they are the most sedate group you will ever find.

the next day was the toughest day in fiji by far. we thought a trip to a local village was cool so we set one up for after breakfast, along with about 7 others. someone may have casually mentioned bringing water so i picked up a 1/2 liter fiji water; but what they really should have said was "prepare for a walk of doom up slippery rocks, through hot grasses...twice, and up and down a mountain" seriously, the walk itself wasn't too bad. the problem was that it took over an hour to get to the village and i easily sweated a 1/2 liter in the incredible humid heat...easy. and with my rationed water, it was tough because i knew we had to go back.

the village, however, made any walk worth it. we visited the chief's house but he was away so we just talked with his wife. the best part was a trip to the kindergarden. for 20 minutes the kids sang and danced for us (they were practicing for their singing and dancing tests which were coming up). there is so much life in the faces of the kids there. we also checked out the local hospital before going back on the trek of terror. i walked back with tim and a cool couple, rich and charlie. we couldn't go slow because the heat was killing us and we just wanted it to end. tim didn't bring any water at all for the whole walk so we shared the 200 mL that i had left (he's crazy).

it was not easy to leave coconut but it wasn't so bad because he were going to meet up with rich and charlie on a later island. wanataki cruise was the next nights place since we got it free with our bula! boat pass. i really enjoyed it for many reasons: sebastion and sophia were also on the boat that night, so it was good to have friends there; there was air conditioning!!; and it was a unique experience. laura and pauline were really exhausted from the village walk, but i thought it would be a good time to try out the kayaks. when i got back it was just in time for a quick ride in a small boat to a beach to play volleyball. now, fijians take everything nice and easy..except for games. i have never played such a serious game of volleyball. i wouldn't be surprised if they ever won the olympics in volleyball. i finished off the evening with jumping off of the big boat with sebastion and sophia. busy exhausting day.

the night was short because most of us got up at 6am to swim with the manta rays!! we took a small boat to a tidal current of water. they drop us off and all we do is float with the current. the guides stand on the boat and tell us where to float. and then all of a sudden in the water a massive massive ray appears and swims upstream right past you. we saw three and i got behind one and measured with my arms--it was bigger than my 6 foot armspan. we also saw a shark. a short break for breakfast and then back into the water for snorkeling. fish all over the place, another shark, (some saw an eel, but i was out of luck), and a blowfish. the real highlight of that swim for me was swimming with a school of little bluish greenish fish. at first they tried to get away from me but then they decided i was alright. ten minutes of good swimming surrounded by fish. one thing i found out--laughing with your snorkel mask on means water up the nose.

Octopus resort was probably the poshest place we stayed at and it was a good mix of everything. good people, good food, and amazing location. our first night there was movie night. it was a great setup: outside, under the stars, on a projection screen with quality surround sound. (see, posh) for some reason we thought it was going to be big fish, but it turned out to be 13 going on 30. i was bummed but 15 minutes into it i was hooked (i'm a nerd)...and then the dvd stopped working. the movie was changed to gothika and i promptly got up and left. only happy thoughts in fiji, not scary movies. No worries though, it was on the plane to australia...jenna does end up with matt after all.

Sebastion and sophia, the swedish couple, came the next day and we had a nice chill day. we played bouls a lot, which is some game of throwing heavy balls around the sand. We went to the village--thankfully this one was much closer--on sunday to go to church. the service was interesting but hard to stay focused. the heat was tough and the entire service was in fijian, which i don't know. We went back to the village the next day for a fijian ceremony and market. i got a bookmark for a dollar.

Laura had to go to america (and she's already in france now, crazy!) so it was just pauline and i for the last few nights. we went to Kuata and met up with rich and charlie. this was the worst place for a few reasons (don't get me wrong though...i'd go back there any day, its more like the least favorable island in fiji): since we were much more south it was becoming much more commercial, we didn't meet anyone that was fijian there; the setup of the place made it difficult to meet people, but really rich, charlie, pauline and i were happy to hang out alone; and (this is just a guess) we ate/drank something that made the rest of the trip much more interesting. the good thing was amazing snorkeling.

We all headed for south sea island for the last night. this is the closest island to the mainland and is tiny tiny. its about a five minute walk around the island with flip-flops on. since the beach was so full of shells and i'm such a weenie, it took about 15 minutes to get 3/4 around. the final day was sunbathing (in clouds unfortunately), bathroom breaks (stupid kuata), and snorkeling. the final evening was everyone preparing for the next travel destination: pauline, rich and charlie are now in the cook islands, and i'm in australia.

i feel like i've started traveling all over again. after going two weeks of seeing no cars, computers, or buildings in general, sydney has been a bit of a shock. things i miss: not wearing any clothes (shoes are crap), hearing Bula!, friends and friendly people. Sydneys a city so most people are busy. my hostel is big and people don't say hi in the hallways.

my first day was difficult because i didn't know what was going on, but after a free concert that night, i'm seeing the little things that make places great (like a nap on a patch of grass overlooking the sydney opera house). today it was a medival fair that included an ochestra and a choir in a cathedral. tomorrow is a spanish festival. as a big city, sydney is growing on me.

so, thats most of it. hope it was enjoyable. thanks for reading such a long post. if you have emailed me during the last two weeks, i have just seen it for the first time yesterday. i will respond, but with a short delay.

have a good day
your friend

chad