waterfalls and rutted roads
We made a good decision yesterday when we left Mana Island. The mainland is much larger and consequently much more diverse, so we were able to find something to do, which for us means we found somewhere to go on a hike.
We knew there was a national park nearby, but the Lonely Planet said that there were no buses that ran up there and only on guy that you could call to take you there, without going with a large tour group. We tried to call the visitor center but didn’t get an answer.
Mama, the owner of the hostel we’re staying at, was kind enough to make a few calls to a travel agency, and they suggested that take a bus to Lautoka, the nearest city, and then hire a carrier, which is a pickup truck with a tarp covering the back, to take us up to the main village in the park, Abaca (which, for whatever reason is pronounced ambartha).
By some strange miracle, this was no more difficult than it sounded. We wandered around in Lautoka for a few minutes, wondering if these gentlemen with pickup trucks were legit or not, and then spoke to one, who agreed to take us immediately. He waited at the visitor center while we did our hike and then took us back down.
The roads up to the place were terrible. They were rutted and washed out, due to a huge flood Fiji had about a month ago. I think even in the best of times the roads would have been rough passage, though.
The hike was unbelievable. We walked through thick jungle on the hillside above the river that went over the falls we were going to see. It was wet and slippery and muddy and hard to follow at times, but it was great fun. It felt good to be wandering through the woods again, getting lost, finding our way and looking out over huge valleys that widened until they reached the ocean. The falls themselves were great too. They fell 80m (sorry, I don’t know what that works out to) in 3 stages. Up close, we only saw the bottom third, which we thought was the whole thing, it was so spectacular. It was a wonderful hike and a wonderful day.
I can’t believe I’ve forgotten about this unti just now, but when we were on Mana Island, one of the girls staying in the same hostel as us was wading in the ocean out front of the place and was bitten on the finger by an eel. The village doctor, who used mostly traditional methods, told her that she was lucky, because usually the eels take the whole finger, instead of just a nibble. We asked her how bad the injury was and she said, “Well, in England, they probably would have given me stitches but here they just put some leaves on it.”
Priceless.
Tags: Fiji, Travel
awrichner
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