what not to read on summer vacation (fiji pt. 7/fin)

this last morning i was supposed to go underwater caving. how cool does that sound? pretty cool i think. but due to some legalese island mumbo jumbo about boats and vouchers that seemed all too complicated i went with the massage instead. i listened to the waves, felt the cool breeze, was rubbed with exotic oils. it was an acceptable consolation prize.

and wouldn't you know it, on this last full day of vacation, the skies opened and the sun shone down. what further activities did i have in store to soak up these unfettered rays? why, a 5 hour boat ride back to the harbor of course. the charm of a water shuttle quickly dries up past the 2 hour mark but i was able to tap into the boats free wifi (not sure how that works) so i could hop on facebook and make an appropriate comment on robin william's passing and the phenomenon of people dumping buckets of ice on their head. a whooollleee newww woooorllddd.

i also made incredible progress into the book i was reading, the emperor of all maladies, a biography of cancer. yes, that cancer. i don't think you'll find that in your library under summer reading. you won't see too many people sipping pina coladas around the pool with it either. because as interesting as the story is its also a terrible downer. but on the plus side i did learn a lot about something that has become a common presence in my life, and like an unwanted guest at the dinner table, i thought that learning a little bit more about it might make it seem tolerable.

back on the main island i ran into a couple i had met along the way. they had in the course of a single night become the closest of friends with a small group of english travelers. they were beyond facebook friends. they knew about each others sex lives, overcoming childhood obesity, single friends back home who would be perfect for one another...i mistakingly thought they had somehow knew one another previously they spoke with such casual familiarity. it was like life was presenting its argument to my earlier complaint of the futility of island friendships. it was life saying, "hey buddy, those sour grapes could be a fine wine if you weren't such an asshole." we'll see life, we'll see.

there were talks about getting real drunk and going to some karaoke joint but that seemed simplify into just getting real drunk and passing out in the 32 person dorm. fair enough. the next day my flight didn't take off until late evening so i had most of the day to lie around and burrow deeper into depress...i mean my book. i savored every sunny moment because i knew as soon as i stepped on that plane i wouldn't be outside of a jet or airport for the next 30 hours.

two transfers, two layovers, 30 hours later. i was home. hoo boy.

book double feature: gone to the forest + a wild sheep chase

way behind on books so i'll probably be leaving the commentary a bit short on some of these, particularly these two. gone to the forest follows the lives of some lightly sketched characters in an unnamed plantation colony. there are hints, such as the existence of mahi mahi (referred to as dorado) and volcanic activity but as far as i can tell the indistinctness is intentional. it is a fine book about inheritance and political upheaval, the prose is spartan, direct, like mccarthy trying to find his voice, but it runs a bit thin. it would make a fine short story but needs some more consideration to be taken as a full fledged novel.

full disclosure on all this murakami: i downloaded his complete works (up to 1Q84) so they are always kind of there to fill in the book gaps. i was reading an article about his newest novel and the author cheekily name checks all of the standard murakami tropes as they appear in this latest story, the overall point being if you read one of his novels you kind of know what you're getting into with the others. generally this is fine as i do like his style, however if you've read as many as i have in a single year it does start to grow a little stale: another feckless man, another disappearance, another supernatural element. a wild sheep chase isn't bad (although i don't think its on the level of windup bird chronicle) and i want to read the other parts of the rat trilogy to see what is going on with these guys but it's also not the first of his i'd recommend.

no man is an island but what about an archipelago (fiji pt. 6)

the weather is hinting at letting up this morning but has yet to yield that beautiful fiji sunshine that greeted me so few days ago. i had the option of staying a final night at long beach but opted to pay about $20 more to visit a third island at the furtherest edge of the yasawas, nacula island, home to blue lagoon (made famous by a very young brooke shields). i can only hope the weather will be kind and make it beautiful.

although i tried to play the mysterious loner for the majority of the trip this last island felt particularly lonesome. at least on other  islands i had 2 nights to make insincere, short lasting relationships. what ya gonna do with a night?

if waya lailai was the prettiest location and long beach had the friendliest staff then safe landing resort was probably the most backpackery of the bunch. the grounds were pleasant, positioned on a tiny peninsula and surrounded on three sides by water, and the activities were plentiful. it had the most polish of the three and that insistence on fun that most backpacker hostels seem to have.

despite my best efforts to do nothing i found myself playing volleyball again in the afternoon and making friends with a table full of australian travel agents, doing what is called a “familiar” in the industry. we were treated in the evening to a lovo feast where food is prepared in a pit that is buried underground. the spread featured fish, chicken, pork, taro, cassava, salad, pasta, and a banana bread with this delicious mint cream sauce. i would have dripped it on everything had i not waited to sample it until last.

dinner was followed by traditional dancing, alternating by turns between the mens and women’s group. a lot of stomping and hip swaying, a mix between the haka and hula dance. eventually we were all invited to participate in a snake line, which, you know, white people dancing, but also, when in fiji.

underground pit

revealed

how to karate chop a coconut in three easy steps (fiji, pt. 5)

what’s been poorer lately: this weather or my attitude? let's be honest, they both could use some improvement. today has continued the disappointing trend of strong winds and clouds ruining my holiday and because there is no sunshine being cast over the land our hosts decided to introduce some sunshine into our hearts. aww.

we took off after breakfast and made a short trek inland to the local village. it was larger and more spread out than the one on waya lailai, complete with shops, a post office and a primary school. the school was to be our main destination. it is an island community so everyone at the very least knows everyone, if they are not directly related to them, and one of our resort hosts was cousins with one of the four teachers at the school, which services about 150 students from 2 or 3 of the local islands.

if the fijian lifestyle is full of hardship it is impossible to tell by the personality of their children. they are loud when they sing, they dance with strangers in a style that threatened sensibilities, love to get their photo taken, and are all smiles. we introduced ourselves to the classroom, myself, an older australian couple and a young teacher from germany. some of the students had met the german on the beach the day earlier and when he introduced himself you could hear them whisper around the room, “jerry! jerry!” apparently word travels fast on these islands and its easy to find yourself as the local celebrity. they greeted us in english, sang some songs, and then asked us to entertain them which we failed miserably at. how can four awkward white people compete with the easy charm of these kids? they can’t and we couldn’t, but they were nice about it. we met some of the other teachers, including the principal, made some contributions (as you do), and then made it back in time for lunch.

i began to feel overcome by exhaustion on our walk back and after lunch i had to go lie down for awhile before i felt even a little normal. i think all of this jumping around has finally gotten to me and it may have been a smarter idea to do a longer stay on a single island.

the weather hemmed and hawed throughout the day but mostly stayed windy and not exactly cold but not exactly warm either. we found other ways to entertain ourselves. there was a demonstration on  local produce which involved practice climbing coconut trees (not adept), tasting a fruit that looked like a mandarin but had the flavor of a lemon, eating bananas straight off the tree, and then learning to husk (not adept), break open (easy), and clean out the coconut. it is possible and not even all that difficult to use a karate chop type motion to break open a coconut. as with everything else, once you have the knowledge, it's all in the wrist. we ate the meat and also shred it and squeezed it out into a delicious creamy milk. a delicious fruit salad is made by taking a papaya and adding coconut milk and some of the lemony citrus mentioned before.

after our educational tour of the premises we had an afternoon of volleyball, 15 games to 10 points, over half of which my team lost. following the bit of sport was a period of rest in which i did my best to lay out and enjoy the brief periods of sunshine that snuck out between the clouds. we found an area near our dorm that was protected from the strong winds that bounded in off the ocean and were relatively at peace.

late evening played host to another round of educational material, this time how to properly pound raw cava root into a fine powder so it is ready to drink. and what do you do with freshly pounded cava powder? why, sit around a beach bonfire and drink it with beer chasers until late into the night. my preference would be to not drink it but do all of those other things anyway. all the same, even with a starless night and my belly full of bitter muddy water, it was a lovely evening.

a windy beach, a whiny bitch (fiji, pt. 4)

apparently on the seventh day fijians rest as well. sunday, a nationwide day of rest as far as tourism goes, means no activities to placate the agitated tourists. i don’t want to complain about being stuck on a tropical island in the middle of the pacific but really how much downtime does one need? i’m sure there’s some wisdom in the mantra, “fiji time” and i’ll probably be begging for some relaxing days on the beach when i get home, but it does in fact get boring. just had to say it.

i snuck in a bit of a forced activity all the same because i transferred islands for the first time. hopped back on the boat taxi and took the 2 hour cruise north to long beach resort on the matacawalevu island. it is not real easy to make consistent friends on a disjointed island hopping adventure, not that i’d probably make any keepers in the shot span of a week, just a stray observation. it creates an even more annoying version of the standard travelers conversation condensed down to a chain of islands. “where are you from?” “how long have you been here?” “where else have you been?” you can make this fiji specific or just generally travel related, which makes it so fun. i guess you have to start somewhere. its not like you’re going to find out you and your new german friend are both fans of coltrane’s giant steps from word one, but there’s only so much i can hear about the southeast asia trail without my eyes glossing over. i would love to talk about that with a friend or, sure, try and impress a girl with it, but generally i do not give many shits about your home stay in thailand, random french dude i just met and will never talk to again.

so new island, new people, and unfortunately new weather. was great the first few days but the weather turned gray, overcast and windy for this new island. a shame because true to its name it really is a long beach, but how much fun can you have at a beach wearing a sweater? a sweater? in fiji? uncharacteristically cold is a phrase i am hearing like its supposed to offer comfort. well i am characteristically upset that the weather is not perfect for my island holiday. combined with the no activity sunday this highlights a bit of a glaring problem with the secluded island getaway, the very reason you choose the secluded island: the seclusion. feels luxurious when things are going the right way for you but can be a real bummer with a simple thing like the sun falling behind some clouds. i begin to see us less as guests on an island but more as spoiled children(1) being entertained at a tropical day care center.

so first day on long beach was a bit of a lame one. finished my first book (blood, bones and butter - if you think i can complain about privilege you should give this book a try) and started my second one (behind the beautiful forevers). met some decent folk, sure, but i will no doubt forget their decent faces sometime in the next month or so as well as the particulars of their 5 months tour of southeast asia. what i will probably remember is that they snored all night in our deadly quiet dorm room.

sunday is also a day of no photos.

(1) these low budget accommodations are mostly 20 to 30 somethings like myself with adults and families more often choosing the upper class resorts, of which i'm sure there are also plenty, but i did not have the money to investigate.

complimentary spinal tap with every reef visit (fiji, pt. 3)

its hard to sleep in when you’re on an island. you just wake up whenever the sun decides to shine in your window, which was about 6:30am. with breakfast at 7:30 that left an hour to be filled by reading or staring at the wall. if i felt proactive i might go watch the sunrise. did i this day? who can remember which sunrise, which sunset? i do know that i felt every coiled spring in my mattress anew which each shift in the middle of the night. i suppose that is what you get for budget accommodation.

after breakfast i gathered with some fellow guests for a reef shark snorkeling adventure. now we're fucking talking. we split into two groups, jumped into some fiberglass looking fishing boats and made our way out to the reef, some 30 minutes away. thirty very uncomfortable minutes. the ocean surrounding the islands is not terribly choppy but rough enough for fishing boats trying to crash through them. i was lucky to be placed in the front of the vessel. whenever the boat hit a wave and was thrust into the air i knew i was in for a hard landing on my unpadded ass and back. seeing as it’s the ocean and the ocean has waves this was an all too common occurrence. at least i didn’t get seasick.

this wasn’t exactly the great barrier reef experience. that alone cost me around $200. i don’t think i’ll spend that the entire week i’m in fiji with this snorkeling trip costing around $20. but you get what you pay for i suppose, the first part being the bumpy ride. unfortunately the gear wasn’t all that fantastic either; serviceable but prone to getting fogged up about every 5 minutes, which meant i had to re-mask just as often, otherwise i couldn’t see a damn thing. however, and this is a big plus, there were a lot of reef sharks and they got up close and personal. reach out and touch personal. reef sharks aren’t huge but they’re still sharks and they’re still wild and eat flesh and have predatory eyes that make you feel a bit uncomfortable. our fiji guides were undeterred however and would swim down and pluck them by their backs and casually deposit them, now agitated, among us snorkelers. the sharks weren’t particularly shy themselves and swam right between my arms and legs as i treaded water making them easy to reach out and touch. so i touched a wild shark. bucket list. what did you do this week? probably had a dumb meeting about something dumb, you dummy.

after a gentler ride back i et lunch and used the rest of the day to actively pursue absolutely nothing except maybe the book i was reading. the ecohaven has about 10 hammocks along the beach which is perhaps the best way to be lazy, get burnt, and read. after dinner i hung out with some of my snorkeling trip buddies and played cards well into the night. popular games among travelers seem to be shithead, bullshit and asshole, suggesting a relationship between the popularity of a game with the vulgarity of its name and the simplicity of its rules. hence my new card game "fuckface" where you divide the deck neatly in half and proceed to throw your cards one by one at your opponents face yelling, "fuck" loudly whenever you get hit. whoever prompts neighboring parties to complain about either loudness, vulgarity, childishness, or any combination thereof is the winner/loser.

sorry no shark photos. camera is definitely not water proof.

hiked to the top of that

stick around a little waya (fiji, pt. 2)

i had an early shuttle to denarau marina so a deep rest wasn’t really in the cards. some noisy brits and an ongoing chest cold made the night somewhat restless already but that's all part of it i guess (#backpackerlife). fiji is clearly setup for the tourist trade and at the marina i heard some fellow tourists remark in glum surprise at how built up everything already was, hoping no doubt for a bit of that authentic island experience. i’m not sure where you can find that anymore friend, unless you forge your own way and perhaps get lost doing so.

i bought a 12 pack of coronas before getting on the boat, a tactic they recommend as island beers can be costly, which meant i had to lug that around for the rest of the trip. the cost of living cheaply. the catamaran serves the role of island taxi and makes a total of 29 stops in one direction. my first island, waya lailai (meaning "little waya") was only around stop 9 and is referred to as the gateway to the yasawas, the northern most strand of fiji’s northern islands. it took about 2 hours to get there and myself along with several english girls were picked up from the catamaran via a couple of small fishing boats and ushered over to the beach, our temporary home.

waya lailai ecohaven resort is known as a budget option which means its not some sandals type resort but a no frills, living with the locals type establishment. it is completely fijian owned and ran (as all my accommodations would be) and i guess that more or less appealed to me, as did the cost. i wish i had splurged on a more private room but i’m sure the dorm will be fine for a couple of nights, even though with my cold and cough i am bound to be the nuisance in the room.

that evening i decided to pay the $10FJD (~$5USD) to join a guided hiking tour to the top of the island. i was thinking it would be a leisurely stroll meant for pensioners but this was more mountaineering than hike. i was breathing hard with the heat, altitude and congestion but it was no doubt worth the difficult ascent. from the top you were awarded a lovely 180º view out toward the neighboring island of kuata. you could also see castaway island, so named because they filmed the tom hanks movie there. willllssssoooonnnn!

the descent was even steeper and i feared for my thighs but we made it before nightfall and in time for some journaling and dinner. during our sup i met some girls from hawaii who decided to leave one island paradise for another (for whatever reason) and we ended up visiting the neighboring village where we spent a traditional evening with the largest family on the island. there were probably about 20 of them in total, coming and going, cousins, aunts, uncles, daughters, etc. most of the time i sat awkwardly not talking to the italian fellow who also joined us and respectfully drinking the traditional kava root tea whenever it was offered, which was frequently. the kava is pounded into a powder and then sieved through a sarong, enough like tea that i don’t know what else to call it. apparently it has some sedative and anesthetic properties and as such it's not too difficult to explain why they down the stuff cup after cup. it’s surely not the taste which even fijians admit to tasting like muddy water.

after our cool-kids-only home visit we joined the rest of the resort guests on the beachfront for a bonfire. and more kava. if i never have to drink a cup of kava again, sedative or no…there was some unconfident guitar jamming going down and even less confident singing, no one quite knowing the words to bryan adam’s “everything i do, i do it for you” (except myself obviously but i wasn’t about to join in on no beachfront acoustic jam, i ain’t no snag). feeling somewhat anesthetized and having about as much koombyah togetherness as i could take i turned in for the night.

first three are actually from the main island, first night

denarau marina

one of the mamanuca islands, the southern chain of northern islands, probably south sea island. they are significantly smaller than the yasawas and usually in this small, perfectly circle, ideal desert island style. i didn't stay on any of these but someone told me you can walk around the entire perimeter in about 5 minutes.

beachcomber, party island

waya lailai ecohaven resort

views from the top

bit steep of a drop from the top

castaway island