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.

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