Bola from Fiji
An awful, awful flight (one where my knuckles were permanently white from gripping the seat through hours of turbulence,) saw us finally touch down in Nadi, Fiji.
The first thing I noticed as I stepped through the plane doors is the stifling humidity, even at half eight at night it was enough to make me drip sweat instantly. The second thing I noticed was a Fijian quartet playing Hula music in Hawaiian style shirts. The third thing I noticed was my ear to ear grin - I was traveling again!
After the four tedious months that was Australia (aka. Holiday Resort after Holiday Resort,) the breath of fresh air that comes with unfinished roads and fume-belching buses is almost unbelievable. We only have around 24 hours here, and are desperate to make the most of it, the only reason we are on the internet now is because we need to get our flight details printed out for L.A.
We’re staying in a homestay with a lady called Dee and her family. A man who I assume is her son, Gerald, has taken care of us since we got here. It was so good to get back into the slight musky room smell of a combination of clean sheets and damp air that we became so accustomed to through all of our time in Asia that the second we walked in the room my zest for being on the road was rekindled. The family are all lovely and very helpful and made us feel right at home. Although there is a little baby there and she didn’t like the look of us one bit. Try as we might at breakfast, we couldn’t get her to stop crying each time she looked at us, big smiles and arms flailing and everything.
‘You’re the first white people she’s seen,’ Gerald explains with a kindly smile.
Another thing that we have missed so much about traveling is this; people pulling over in their cars to offer us a taxi service, even though they are definitely not taxis. We just got a ride into Nadi town with some guy who said he’d charge me the same as the bus (80c) before halfway through insisting on $4 until he finally shortchanged me and I ended up paying $5. I was so pleased at his cheeky chappy foreignness that I could have high-fived him. Give me another week of being on the road properly and I’ll be haggling prices to the last cent, but for now, I was happy to let it slide. Knowing that I’d been effortlessly conned reminded me of that first night in Bangkok, when we payed a tuk-tuk driver 200 baht to drive us to a destination 5 minutes walk away. Suddenly, in the course of an evening, we are in a state of near constant confusion and hope again -much like we were through the majority of Asia. Confusion because we just got into a situation that we don’t understand, but hope that we understand enough of it for it to be alright. It’s giving me butterflies in my stomach just thinking of the adventures this leads too.
Fly to L.A. tonight. The plane on the way here was empty and they were offering first-class upgrades for cheap. We decided against it because it was a relatively short (4 hour) flight, but we might take the opportunity if it’s there for the Nadi -> LA leg (12 hours.)
Bola, by the way, means hello. We’ve yet to walk past a local that hasn’t called it out to us.
Tags: Fiji, Travel
