By the Sea in Fiji
I have traveled by boat out to an island to enjoy the “out there even more” feeling of Robinson Crusoe, but with basic comforts. I am on a real gem of a remote island that takes only 30 minutes on foot to walk around slowly. It is small, self-contained, primitive, and magnificent. It has the greens, blues, and browns of an artist’s palette. Here there are the sounds of silence and birds that only being out in nature can offer.
My “home” is a newly-constructed bura, made completely from natural vegetation on the island. Because I was the first resident of this new bura, the caretaker decorated one corner of my home with huge seashells. From a window without glass, I can lay on my bed and look out upon a slanting coconut palm tree that has a single coconut dangling precisely in the middle of my view. One footstep from the front cloth door opening is a soft, inviting, white sand beach that ends in an infinite blue-green sea.
It is like camping. The shared toilet and showers are not too far away. Very, very simple meals are served. The price, all-inclusive, is $15 a day! Four of us are sharing this island today — a happily married middle-aged Italian couple, and a woman from California who has the good luck to own a home near a beach that everyone wants to visit. She rents it out for a couple of months at a time, cash up front. Then, she takes the money and travels while it’s rented.
This morning I was a true child at play. Being rather skittish about swimming over reefs, I opted to crawl and dogpaddle around most of the island at high tide. I became part of a kinetic art piece as the light and colors played with me, and I with them. I wake up to the sound of waves and birds, and say goodnight to the lovely full moon and Southern Cross stars that light up the sand and water just outside my cloth door.
This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, and is taken from my travel journal dated June 16, 1995.
Tags: Fiji; island in Fiji;, Travel
