Beautiful resort

Bula!

Wow. Visual overload. Palm trees are as abundant as presents at Christmas. I sound like a broken record regarding the scenery I’ve taken in the past couple weeks, and I know it. But it can’t be helped because it gets me every time. As expected, it’s much more tropical than New Zealand. Bright flowers and coconuts and mangoes pepper the trees and shrubs like insects. Once again, I’ll let the pictures speak. And of course, the sun is shining and the humidity is intense, but I love it.

Banana Trees

Amazing flowers

Zeek and I parted ways with James at the airport, and I miss him, really I do. He had to cut the trip short to spend some time with his ill dad. It’s too bad that Jamie, Carol, Dan and Jarni couldn’t be with us for this leg of the trip, as originally planned. Fortunately Zeek and I have been good friends for years and have gotten along beautifully the past couple weeks, so while the situation isn’t exactly ideal, it’s feasible. I’m in Fiji- I can’t be bummed about anything!

Children sell mangoes at the side of the road

Children on the beach happy to pose for pictures

But this disappointment weighed heavy on my mind as Zeek and I made our way in a cab to the resort, drinking in the scenery, hot wind blowing through my hair from the open window. It was a two hour journey, arranged for by the hotel. It was cool to drive around, but the poverty of the Fijians is apparent which is always tough to see. We bought mangoes on the side of the road from children and commented on the stray dogs and horses that seemed to have their run of the bumpy roads.

Needless to say, I’m as mellow as jello out here. I’m not going to bore you with tales of my doing absolutely nothing, but there have been a couple random events that are worth noting.

Noteworthy Incident #1: Where There’s Smoke

The first one happened during the first day here. I looked out the patio doors of the room and thought it was odd that there seemed to be a lot of fog or steam at 4pm. I opened the doors and as my lungs filled with smoke, I realized that there was a fire quite close. Thinking maybe it was a bonfire of some sort, I went to check it out.

Turns out it was a pretty sizeable forest fire not too far from the complex that housed all our rooms. I saw orange flames, the smoke was suffocating, and there were ashes floating around like black snowflakes. Fijians were running around like lemmings, and both Zeek and I were very sceptical of the guy with a flimsy garden hose, spraying a very weak stream of water in the brush. Kind of like retaliating an army of machine-gun clad dudes with a bibi gun. We laughed nervously at the show before us. What else are you gonna do?

Fire on the resort!

Singed Terrain

We watched the mayhem for a while, then left them to fight this odd occurrence, making comments that hopefully we had a place to sleep that night as the fire crept closer.

Turns out that the fire was contained, though it did a fair bit of damage to the terrain. By the looks of it, it got pretty darn close to the complex. Now there’s a bald, bleak, black patch on the resort, which is too bad.

Noteworthy Incident #2: Wild Boars

I decided to go for a peaceful walk on the beach yesterday afternoon. It’s remote here- seeing other people on the beach is rare at this resort. So I was pretty much all alone with the exception of a couple pea-sized kayakers in the distance.

I walked down the beach a bit, fairly close to the brush because the tide was high, contemplating things such as how I could stay here forever and expressing gratitude that I was not tromping through snow like my Canadian friends. I went as far as the tide would let me and turned around, sad that my walk had come to an end so soon. Suddenly I heard a noise that frightened me- sort of a grunt and a growl. I whirled around to see a wild boar coming at me! Adrenaline immediately pulsed through my veins and I started running, fear creeping over my skin like the sun. I turned around to see how concerned I needed to be, and heaved a sigh of relief when I realize that he had already lost interest in me, and lazily watched me hightail it out of the vicinity. I swear there was a smirk on his face.

Ok, back to the beach. Wally Lamb is calling.

A stunning beach