Fiji...kava, crabs and 'fiji time'

Sure enogh we made it into the upper deck. Biggest perk was getting served quickly since there were only 15 rows. Nothing else special about it besides the ratio of toilets to passengers (great on a long flight).

About a half hour before touchdown, the pilot announced the forcast for the next few days...rain, rain and more rain, it is cyclone season after all. Customs was a simple "do you have anything you shouldn't?"..."Nope"..."Carry on please.". We had a connecting flight to our island which was delayed for about 3 hours because of weather. The other family booked on the flight decided to take the boat, but we waited it out and it was worth it. We had a 8 seater plane all to ourselves. It was like a scenic tour you pay a lot of money for.



We stayed at the Funky Fish located on Malolo Island. The owner used to be the coach of Fiji's rugby team and a former All Blacks. Evan snorkled the first day and saw lots of fish and beautiful blue starfish, while Michelle caught up on some much needed sleep. A fun activity that night was a crab race -- they put crabs in the middle of a circle in the sand and the first crab out is the winner. We named our crab Hoof Hearted and he finished second and won us a free drink.

Friday morning we awoke to more rain. We made the best of it by reading and snorkeling in the afternoon. It was great other than a close call with some crazed pirates in speeding boat. The reef we swam around was about 50' past the buoys, so you can imagine our horror when coming up for a quick check of our surroundings we saw a boat headed right towards us. We booked it to safety and not 30 seconds later, it sped right through where we had just been.

A staple for Fijians and tourists to Fiji alike is kava. This afternoon we participated in the kava ceremony. Results...lockjaw for Evan and numb lips for Michelle. Everyone says it tastes like muddy water and Michelle agrees (Evan was a little more fond of it). You get a bit of a buzz, but we think that our mix was more on the tourist side and not as strong as I (Evan) would have hoped for.





The rain stayed away on Saturday, but it was still overcast. We sat by the pool and got burnt in about an hour. The Aussies we met said there was no ozone down here. Can anyone confirm? The entire afternoon we hiked across the island to a fort from WWII. Views were great -- we could see the island where they filmed Castaway. The best news of the day was an offer on our house!





Our last day in Fiji was greeted with blue skies, so we laid by the pool some more. With a 2pm flight to Auckland, we figured our 11:30am flight off the island would leave us plenty of time. When the plane arrived to pick us up from the island at 1:20pm, we were very nervous. Normally it's only 10 minutes back to the mainland, but we had to pick up more passengers on another island before going back to Nadi. We arrived at 1:45 and tried to check in for our flight. We were initially told that the flight was closed, but luckily they found some seats for us in the back row! That experience took a little of the fun out of "Fiji time" and led to our declaration that "Fiji time" should not be applied all the time.



Note on toilets in the southern hemisphere...all the ones we have encountered flush straight down instead of swirling. And they are also set up with a button for #1 and one for #2 to conserve water. Once we encounter a true backward flushing toilet you can count on hearing it here first.

Over and out from Fiji.