Bula Fiji
A three hour early morning flight north from Auckland and we’re in Fiji, right in the South Pacific, just west of yesterday*. Can’t miss it.
Over 300 islands make up the country, with two larger ones. The main is called Vita Levu (pronounced Fiji), with the capital Suva on the east and the main tourist airport at Nadi (say Nandi) on the east. After getting serenaded by guitar playing locals at the plane door (I may be right in saying this is the only place in the world this happens), I’m straight off the main island to do a bit of island hopping for the next 12 days. And to slow down to Fiji Time- where a watch isn’t required.
As it’s my birthday, I head straight for the self-titled party island, “Beachcomber”. Now cast away any thoughts of it being something like the Canary Islands or something in Spain, it might be cheap but it’s certainly not what you’d expect. The island itself takes about 5 minutes to walk around slowly. Days are spent on the beach and in the sea, with regular breaks for mountainous meals. Evenings are spent in the Sand Bar, watching the live band and dancing on the sand. I even get a rendition of Happy Birthday, though here it has three verses, the final being an instruction to drink lots of Fiji Bitter. There’s also fire dancing and traditional Pacific entertainment, along with crab and coconut racing (!), and nightly, the traditional everyone-must-participate dance called the Bula Dance. Bula is a general greeting and the dance is somewhat modelled on the Macarena. We are told that if we don’t do it, it will be rainy tomorrow, and on the night it wasn’t done… was the worst weather of our stay! Sppoky. I even found a video of it- just to see how embarassing it was: http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/d/adr156/movies/buladancemovie.AVI
Leaving the Manamuca Islands behind, and heading up to the volcanic Yasawa Islands to the north, next stop is right at the top: Nacula Island and purportedly the nicest beach at Oarsmans Bay. More of the same lazing around and snorkelling, as well as a bit of underground cave swimming at a sacred island and visiting Navula village. Here we wander round grassy “streets”, see the little ones at the nursery school, visit the missionaries churches and get sung to at the main school. Culture over with, it’s another journey south on the Big Yellow Boat, this one a bit choppy, to Manta Ray Island, just next to Naviti. Unfortunately the big sea monsters weren’t around, and as it rained a lot here, we never made it much out of the shelter at the top of the hill (ok, the bar). Keeping up the tradition of having someones birthday on every island wasn’t neglected here either. My final night was spent pretty much next to the mainland at Bounty Island, not very remarkable itself, and only noteable for it’s appearance on Celebrity Love Island… Anyway it meant that I didn’t have to spend any time in Nadi which is a bit of a dump by all accounts.
It’s hard to leave behind the smiley happy locals, but after one final rendition of Isa Isa Lei (a goodbye song) it’s time to go back to the airport for my late night flight across the Pacific. Great place and great times, and nearly everyone is heading home after here. This meant that both the daily boat, and the airport departure lounge (and later on both LA and San Francisco) were like reunions. I’m sure I’ll come back…
* next to the International Date Line
Tags: Travel
Nick