one week in paradise

What a weird last evening in Fiji!!

Arriving in Nadi, checking my mails in a really funky backpackers (all the tourists slurping their fancy drinks decorated with pineapples, living in their bubbles...),then  going back to my backpackers - the bunkhouse. What a contrast. Oh yes, the bunkhouse really deserved its name: a shabby house, the lights worked only in half of the rooms, the ceiling in my room was full with mildew. I was the only foreigner, and I guess the only guest - the other people in the house were in fact the family, which is running the place. 

Right when entering the frontgates of the bunkhouse a Fijian guy, who was there to help out the owners, talked to me and I ended up drinking beer with him for a while - Fiji style: one small glass is enough for everybody, regardless of the amount of people drinking together: it is filled up for one person at a time, who finishes it and filled up for the next... like this everybody gets the same amount. I really liked talking to him: after working 6 years in New Zealand Bosco (yes, many Fijians are really religious) came back 2 years ago and is since then working in tourism. But only in backpackers, because - I really loved this statement - "I hate working for the rich". Likewise.

I don't know what was going on, but this family must have had a party, or at least people coming over to have a few drinks. Anyhow, a lot of noice while I was sleeping (too tired to join them)... When I got up the early morning there was nobody awake, a few guys were sleeping on the floor in the entrance hall, and a girl was sitting on the toilet asleep with doors wide open (and pants down)... well, I went to have my early business in the bush...

I started backwards, why not continue backwards??

Before even arriving in Nadi I had taken a bus from a small bridge over a river on the complete other side of the main island. Bus rides in Fiji are funny. In Asia you'll always be lavished with cheap fight-movies, but in Fiji they'd show videos more adapted to their situation: when arriving to Fiji the first video on the bus had been "Flippers new adventures" :)


(PS:  on this photo you can see Fijian schoolboys waiting for the bus... They are wearing sulus, which is a traditional piece of cloth wrapped around the hip creating a skirt. Men wear it as well as women. Whereas I considered Burmese men wearing longyis really sexy, I don't find Fijian men wearing sulus sexy. Sulus are only 3/4 long, and this looks in my Western eyes simply - sorry my dear Fijians - not masculin at all)

Even though the busride took quite a while I really enjoyed it. Somehow I like these moments, when one step, one part, of my trip comes to an end and the next one announces itself...
I can sit for ages in a bus, enjoy the landscape and daydream into the future and everything that is coming up!!

And especially this step is quite a big one: with the flight from Fiji to Hong Kong I changed the direction - from east- to westward. After Fiji I am now actually starting my way back home... More about that the next time though!

There are different kinds of busses: the bigger busses running around the island and the small busses connecting the small villages with the towns. I was lucky to get to know both of them: the long-distance busses are really ok, even though there are 5 persons per line, which gives you a sardine-feeling. The short-distance busses are quite special though: there are no bus-stops so whenever somebody wants to get off, he would ring the bell (the bell indeed: a string is tied from the back of the bus to a bicycle-bell in the front! Hillarious!) and the busdriver would stop wherever you want. Even if the bus had stopped just 5m earlier! No joke, they really ring and make the bus stop every few meters!!

The same is the case when you want to get on a bus - just stop the bus wherever you are. So that's what I did: I was standing just at this bridge, flagging down the first bus going in the direction I needed to go.


I had reached that bridge with a boat from the island Leleuvia, where I had been for 5 days. We had been going quite a while through the long river delta, where I saw many mangrove trees with their "trunks" hanging from the top of the trees down to the water. I have never seen that!! Amazing!

We passed fisherwomen on small bamboo-rafts. The driver of my boat explained me that they went out fishing with the currents: when the tides change from high to low the currents bring them out to the sea and when the tide gets high again they go back the river with the current... 

The change of tides is really fascinating! I was on a really small island for five nights, where - especially with the full moon - the tides would change approximately 2m in sealevel: when it was low tide you would have to walk out for nearly 150m before being able to swim properly whereas you could go swimming straight from the beach during high tide.

I really enjoyed these five days on Leleuvia island. It is exactly like the image of Fiji everybody has:

beautiful white sandbeach, palmtrees, sun, cristallclear turquois water... and only a few other people! Yes, I was really really lucky to have found this insider tipp: when I was there construction works were going on (to avoid the noise I was just walking on the other side of the island - no noise, no people) so there were hardly any other tourists :) oh yes, my little paradise!!

The people working on the small resort were our friends and everybody mixed up. I was lucky to see and taste a lot of Fiji culture there: nearly every evening the employees of the resort and the workers for the constructions were sitting together, singing while drinking kava (video is really dark, but you get the singing...):

I was lucky to taste some of the kava as well: A drink made of the rood of a certain wood mixed with water. They usually sit together with a huge bowl of kava and drink it out of a coconutshell, which is passed around (Fiji-style...). After many cups of kava you're getting quite numb and really tired the next day. I only had a one or two cups each time, so I can't tell...

I was quite lucky too to see how they prepared lovo. It is their traditional way of cooking: inside the earth. First they dig a hole and put a fire there. On the fire they put stones which after one or two hours get really hot and turn white...

...When the stones are ready they put food (entire pigs, or birds, any kind of meet, potatoes, ....) in alufoil on the stones, cover everything with leaves...

...then with bags and afterwards cover the whole thing entirely with earth again. In this hot oven the food is cooked for one or two hours and gets this yummy smokey taste through the lovo!! It is simply delicious...

Yes, I really enjoyed my time on Leleuvia. I was lying around the beach - my own little private beach, walked in the jungle in the middle of the small island, was going snorkling in the cristall water, had a nice chat with the other people in the evenings. Simply relaxed, like you'd do on vacation, right?

Before this great time on Leleuvia I had been on the main island Viti Levu for three nights - in Pacific Harbour to be specific... Why the hell did I go there? Because, to be honest, it is not particularly beautiful there. But I had a great reason to go there:

Since Tim had told me and shown me his videos of the shark dive he had done, I knew one thing: when I come to Fiji I definitely want to do that too. I was like the bungy jump: I knew I wanted to do that in New Zealand so I did it! Same with the shark dive: I wanted to do that on Fiji, so I organised everything around that!

So that's how I ended up going straight to Pacific Harbour after landing on Fiji - the place to be for shark dives. The place itself is rather unspectacular: the club oceanus resort (in Fiji you find mainly resorts, and some hostels in some places...) I stayed in was nearly empty. So the dormitory-bed I had turned out to be a bed in a 4-bed room I had all to myself. The weather was so-so and the beach was not inviting at all due to huuuuuuge jellyfish. Well, so far so good. That's not really the picture everybody has of Fiji, right?

But I came to this rather forlorn place for the shark-dive anyway. So the next morning was already the big day! The weather was still rather shit, the sea rough making me feel not really well on the boat. So I couldn't wait to get into the water. I don't know how I would have felt if some sharks had been swimming close to the surface though. A guy who was there too showed me a video where this was the case. Really freaky indeed! But here all was pretty easy going: getting into the water, going down to 24m (oops...) and then all divers just lined up and sat there, while the dive masters were feeding the sharks (PS: on the photo is not a dive-master feeding but another diver making photos...).

The visibility was so-so, and in fact there were sooooo many fish that you couldn't really figure out how many sharks were there at the same time (this photo really represents best how the view was in general!). But still, there were many and quite often they would swim just in front or over you. They are really big indeed. Unfortunately the weren't any of the in that area quite rare tiger sharks. These would have been really big. So I only saw the "smaller" silvertips, black tips, bull sharks and lemon sharks. They are "only" around 3m long... Haha, yes, still long enough!

The remaining day in Pacific Harbour I was just relaxing at the (rather small) pool. In the evening the dive masters would invite me to join them to a beach party with another dive group. Got it all: beach, beer, fire! Fiji, this is!!

I really loved my stay in Fiji and I wished I stayed there longer!! The people are really nice and welcoming. Tourism is of course the main income of the island. But unlike the countries in South-East-Asia they really take it seriously in Fiji: you can feel that they aim for sustainable tourism and a long-time relationship: They definitely want the people to come back! In SEA I always had to bargain wherever I went and whatever I bought. And still I would often have the impression that locals would get the stuff for a cheaper price. In Fiji I never had the feeling of paying too much, the rates for busses are fixed, the taxis run with taxometers, and even in small markets the prices for bananas and other fruits are marked... Nowhere I had the feeling of being considered like a walking wallet.

I know, I didn't put many typical Fiji-photos in this story, but you can check them out here!