No AC, no internet, no problem!

Fiji is well known for it’s snorkeling, and we got a slight taste of that in the water right across from where we are staying.  As a swimmer, I’m a pretty good golfer, so I stayed closer to shore and got used to the idea that I could stay afloat without my usual flailing around in the water liked I’d just fallen off the Titanic right after that “strange noise” that fateful night in the North Atlantic.  Ben and Annie ventured further out and saw a nice array of tropical fish, including a manta ray spotted by Annie, while Marley paddled along in a kayak.  I was all set for another day in the water, which was breaking news in and of itself, but Annie was determined to get some local flavor and had arranged with our taxi driver Sirah to spend a couple of hours tooling around the island in his cab.  The morning that we were going to execute the plan, the idea was met with as much enthusiasm from me, Ben and Marley as General Custer probably encountered from his troops the day of his last stand.  After seeing my beloved's disappointment and realizing the long-term consequences for me, I reconsidered and managed to convince the children that it would be an educational experience, and dangled the carrot of hitting the Decked Out Café for some internet time after the tour.  The weather was comfortable as we left Savusavu and headed north through a collection of villages.  Each time we came across people working in and around their doorless homes, we were met with a wave, a smile and an enthusiastic “Bula!”, which we returned in kind.

To describe their homes as modest would be an understatement.  Almost all of them are wood frame with corrugated metal for walls and more of the same for the roof.  It appeared that they had some electric, and some must have had indoor plumbing as we didn’t see much in the way of outhouses.  I was somewhat concerned that we would be seen as rich white tourists and shunned, but that didn’t happen at all.  After a stop up in the hills for a scenic overlook, we headed back along the coast and past the airport toward the resorts along the southern coast of the island we’re on.  We stopped at one called the Koro Sun to get a feel for it, and it was beautiful, if pricey at $390 Fijian dollars a night for a basic villa, or bure as they call them here.  I also wanted to check out the nine-hole golf course and wasn't all that surprised to see that it made Reeves Golf Course at Lunken look like a TPC.  But it also looked interesting enough that I will probably explore it sometime in our remaining time here.

The evenings here have been mostly spent at our rental house, and with just two channels of TV from New Zealand available, we've been watching movies on our laptop, which has been some good bonding time for Annie and me and the kids.  Marley is very well-versed in pretty much every line from Caddyshack, and Ben is doing his best to keep up.  They've been going around singing, "I was born to rub you, but you were born to rub me first!"  We've also been spending a lot of time playing the word game Every Word on the Kindle and that's turned into some fun times as well, with the additional benefit of brushing up on vocabulary and spelling. 

Settling in

After five days in Fiji, we are settling into the lifestyle quite comfortably.  Mornings have been mostly dry, making them a good time to hit the beach, which is convenient to our rental house.  The Navure house where we are staying is about 6 kilometers from the village of Savusavu and close to the end of the road and the Jean Michel Cousteau resort.  The road is paved for only about one third of the way, with the final 4 kilometers a bumpy rocky ride.   

Big buses careen down the road, and I’ve been waiting to see a mass transit stand off on one of the many turns on the dirty surface.  The house we are in is on about one third of an acre on the side of a hill, above which the owner of the property lives, but is apparently currently away on a holiday holiday in Australia.  There are papaya trees in abundance, and most of the ripe fruit is targeted by the birds who serenade us frequently, which is another reason we’ve been up early.  Who needs roosters for a wake up call? Not us!   

Ben was determined to break open a coconut but couldn’t find the right kind to cut into.  We told our taxi driver Sirah, who showed up the following day with a bright green specimen and the proper tool to perform a coconutotomy. 

We tasted the fresh as fresh can be coconut milk, confident that we could withstand our time on whatever island the next version of Survivor was taped.

We’ve hit the village everyday, in part because the internet here at the house has only worked once.  There is a restaurant in town called the Decked Out Café, which offers free wi-fi if you spend at least ten dollars on food and drinks while you’re there, a threshold we have had no trouble reaching.  Our second time there introduced us to the new owner, Colin, who is from Australia, and his wife Jeanine,  who is a native of New Zealand.  They are, as she told us, a Kangaroo and a Kiwi, and they run a dive operation about 7 kilometers away called Korosun Dive.  They got married on the Fourth of July this past summer, their “un-independence” day as they described it with a chuckle.  It’s the second marriage for both, and she had in tow her eight year old son Blygh, who defines precocious.  He and Ben have become fast friends, or at least Blygh and Ben’s Ipad are on a first-name basis.  The café has also been a place of realization that bad music knows no boundaries.  Our first time there we were treated to “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” by Leo Sayer, a song that thankfully we hadn’t heard in years and made us feel more like leaving than dancing.  More recent visits have allowed us to experience “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” (no, I think I would prefer to kill you at this point) and “Lady in Red”.  We will have a serious musical discussion with the proprietor before our second week here is out.  Collin offered up a free snorkeling outing for the family which Ben and Marley and Annie plan on taking advantage of.  While they are doing that, I’m going to investigate the local golf scene, as both courses on the island are close to where the Korosun Dive Center is.

Musings from Fiji

It is Thursday morning in Fiji. We arrived in Savusavu last Friday afternoon. The airport was likely the smallest one that we have ever been to. An interesting note….when we got our boarding passes for this flight, each of us had to actually stand on the scale with our daypacks to get weighed. Although we were assigned seats, once boarding began, we were reshuffled according to our weight and given new seats accordingly. Now that is some serious weight and balance exercise.

We were directed to a local Indian/Fijian cab driver who went by the name of Sirah even though his cabbie license has him listed as Devindra. Sirah has adopted us and is our “go to” guy in Fiji. His hair is as white as my Snowflake locks so it makes it easy for each of us to spot the other.

Sirah’s cab is an interesting white Toyota Corolla station wagon with the inside retrofitted with a red, brown and gold velour fabric seat covering ensconced in what reminds me of a grandmothers’ plastic seat cover to protect it from the debris of its passengers. It rattles along the dirt road to and from town and I keep waiting for parts to start shaking themselves loose.

Fiji is definitely more like a 2^nd or 3^rd world nation. We took a drive with Sirah around the island yesterday. People live in fairly primitive “huts” as Sirah called them. It’s hard to tell if they have electric or not. Usually when you can spot a wire it is obvious that there isn’t much power going to these homes. Because of this lower income economy, Fiji is quite affordable especially compared with somewhere like Hawaii. A beer at our favorite wifi spot is a $1.50 US during happy hour. You can get a decent burger for $4US.

The Fijians couldn’t be nicer. Everyone greets you with the local hello…Bula. Usually said Bu-LAA!! Enthusiastic waves are the norm as we drive around the island from the people waiting at bus stops to those hanging out in their yards. You spy the occasional goat, chicken and cow roaming the landscape. We even spied a bunch of piglets on our road into town.

The culture is a mix of local Fijians and Indians with the occasional Australian and New Zelander. Kangaroos and Kiwi’s respectively.

Hermit crabs are adorable and are everywhere on the beach. They come in a variety of sizes including an uber-mini size. They are also like toy cars are to boys and keep Ben occupied for hours. We have had a lot of fun catching them, racing them and just comparing their “houses”.

Snorkeling in the ocean is quite spectacular and even more so when you haven’t been delivered to a coral reef in a boat filled with other travelers. We went just off our beach and it was relaxing and brilliant and we will do it often. I was fortunate enough to see a manta-ray take off about 10 inches in front of me. We also met the owners of a local Dive operation and they have offered for us to come out snorkeling for free. WE are hoping to do that tomorrow.

Off to the Wifi café and a download. Love and hugs!

Rafael Fiji

We couldn’t ask for a better spot to begin our journey, as our house sits across a one lane dirt road from a slim sliver of sand.  It’s perfect for the kids to hang out, with virtually no waves, making it more like a lake than the South Pacific due to our location, which is protected from the open seas.  Ben spent time obsessing over the hermit crabs that populate the rocky areas while Marley and I took a stroll along the beach and she home schooled me on how the whole hermit crab thing works.  Coming off of the beach, the kids encountered an orange tabby cat, which we immediately named Rafael Fiji.  

We decided as a family before we left on the trip that any cat we befriended along the way would be named Rafael, after the Saint of Healing and also a patron Saint of Travelers.  (Plus I've always liked the name due to the outtakes at the end of Being There with Peter Sellers)   Ben gave him the nickname of nuggets because this boy was still packing heat if you know what I’m saying.  Rafael made himself right at home, curling up on the chairs outside our house, and enjoying plates of left over tuna.  He hung out through the evening and was patiently waiting for us the next morning, happily licking clean a breakfast plate of tuna.  Then, after having spent some time snoozing on Annie’s lap, he hopped off, and vanished!  A stunning move, considering he had it all here.  I want to know where he’s got the better deal and spend some time there!  Is there an all you can eat caviar bar down the road at the Cousteau Resort?  Did he grow uncomfortable with our jokes about his nuggets?  Hopefully he’ll return and we can get some answers. 

Exhale

 

One of the benefits of our first destination outside of the United States is the pace of life here.  It’s a “no worries, no hurries’ kind of lifestyle, which has really helped us slow down after the ordeal of getting here.  After arriving in Nadi, Fiji, on the largest of the nations’ 330 plus islands, we had about nine hours before our flight to Savusavu thanks to a schedule change and we weren’t sure what we were going to do with that time.  We couldn’t check our bags until 3 hours before departure, but fortunately Air Pacific gave us a “day room” at a hotel near the airport, along with a voucher for lunch at the hotel restaurant.  Ben and Marley hit the pool, we jumped at the chance for some free internet access, then went to the lobby to grab a cab and check out the local scene for a bit.  We asked our driver what he would recommend and he suggested the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, about a fifteen minute drive from the hotel. 

The garden was at the foot of a mountain that had a profile that looked like a, well, sleeping giant.  He apparently had too much of the local liquor, Kava, which is made from crushed roots and strained through a cheesecloth, producing a brownish liquid that is said to numb the tongue and make you very lazy.  The taste is said to be somewhere in the dirt family.  Appetizing, no?  I’ll have to ask the sommelier at my next nice dinner out to see if he can pair my pan-seared Chilean Sea Bass with  a nice Fijian Kava.  Anyway, our trek through the garden was a peaceful stroll through the jungle, with a variety of birds and some frogs to keep us company.  After some fresh mango juice at the end of the tour, our driver took us to the village of Nadi, which, considering it’s the largest town in Fiji, surprised me at it’s lack of development.  There is a McDonalds on the outskirts of town, but we managed to fight off the urge to McCafe our day and wandered through the dusty streets, being urged by shopkeepers to come inside.  

The shoppers in our group, (Annie and Marley) couldn’t resist, so we entered a store that had a variety of local clothes.  Marley bought a sarong that looks adorable in, and I fought off the efforts of one of the men in the store who wrapped me in what looked like two skirts that he said would make me blend right in.  I resisted his advances by saying we were taking a long trip and had all the clothes I needed and safely left the establishment with only the one purchase. 

Our driver then led us to a massive market that covered a full city block, where all kinds of fruits and vegetables were sold.  The fragrant smell was tempting, but we still had one more flight to catch and decided to wait until Savusavu to buy any produce.  A quick stop at a Hindu Temple, then it was back to the hotel for our free lunch.  There, our education in a different culture continued as when Ben got the “cheese burger” he ordered, we discovered that here, a burger is a bun with whatever you put in it, in this case, just cheese, no beef.  We filed that little nugget of knowledge away and headed back to the airport for the one-hour flight to Savusavu.

The flight to Savusavu with 17 people on board was almost full, as the 20-seater dual prop plane took off at a steep angle but provided some breathtaking views.  We were seated in accordance to the weight we registered when we checked out bags and physically stood on the scale with whatever we were carrying on to the plane.  The hour passed fairly quickly and we landed uneventfully at the Savusavu airport.  It didn’t take any announcements to know what baggage carousel to claim our luggage as it was loaded on to a cart and brought a few feet away to the passengers.  

A taxi driver named Sirah loaded our luggage into his cab with it’s colorfully decorated interior and we asked him to take us to the market to get a few things to eat and drink and then he took us to the house we reserved for our time in Savusavu.  We grilled a tuna steak that we bought at the local market for just $4 Fijian, which is about $2 US,  and relaxed, glad to be able to settle down for two weeks after a frenetic travel schedule in getting here. 

It's called a pacifier for a reason...

As a parent, it's always good to feel needed by kids, and in the case of a ten hour and 25 minute flight from Los Angeles, I felt like two infants seated two rows in front of us needed me very much.  Apparently, they couldn't bear the thought of me falling asleep and protecting them from whatever peril might come their way mid-flight.  Everytime I came close to nodding off, one of them would cry out.  Not an "I need a comforting pat on the back from Mommy so I can go to sleep" cry.  These were eardrum piercing screeches like they had just been told that Tigger had gone on a feeding frenzy and devoured Piglet, Roo, Owl, AND Rabbit and was turning his attention with a bloodthirsty grin toward Winnie his own honey-covered Pooh self.  It only went on for about 13 hours of the flight, that's not a typo, time seemed to go backwards as the parents tried the shushing method of comfort, much to the discomfort of every passenger in our area of the Air Pacific 747 we were on.  

As I sat there trying to get some sleep in between their yowls, my head became filled with strange thoughts.  One of which was what were we going to miss on December 15th?  We left Los Angeles on December 14th and we landed in Nadi, Fiji on December 16th.  What sort of massive news event were we running the risk of not enjoying 24/7 news coverage?  Charlie Sheen going on a Tiger Blood and Warlock filled internet rampage?  Occupy Deer Park protestors spilling into Kennedy Heights and Silverton? Tim Tebows visage being carved into Mt. Rushmore?  

Looking over the Wikipedia list of events that happened over the years on 12/15, the only one that really stands out happened in 1933 when The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially became effective, repealing the 18th Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.  I may just have to celebrate that with some coconut beverage at some point today, on December 16th.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

After months of planning, preparing and worrying about details of details, our journey of much more than a thousand miles began on a frosty Monday morning in Madeira.  We are relying on the kindness of friends and a few strangers to take this trip, and the first step was borrowing one of our neighbors to drive us to the Dayton airport in a Ford Flex borrowed from another neighbor since we sold our Flex last week to help make the trip happen.  We successfully navigated the never-ending construction on I 75 in Dayton and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. 

We took this first step in our journey without our passports and without our visas for India and China.  That process got complicated when we put "media" under my occupation on the China visa application, and the Chinese aren't real fond of western reporters.  The company we are working with to process our visas, Travisa, told us last week that after getting held up with the Chinese consulate in New York, 

we would have the passports and visas by Thursday.  That became Friday, and then, on Friday we called and were told that things were actually in the hands of the Indian consulate and they weren't releasing ANY passports on Friday.  

That became what football coaches like to call a "teachable moment" in our lesson of just having patience and letting things play out, instead of having everything planned out in great detail far in advance.  That simply won't happen much on this trip.  Our agent at Travisa told us confidently on Friday that the package would go out Monday, and fortunately, we had some days still in the U.S. after we left Cincinnati that would allow the passports and visas to get to us before our scheduled departure from the States Wednesday night.  So, we left Dayton for the quick flight to Detroit and then a long flight to Los Angeles.  Marley and Ben continue to show what great travelers they are and hunkered down together as we headed to the West Coast.

Before we left Detroit, I realized that we wouldn't be landing at LAX until after the Travisa offices in New York closed, so I called our agent and she still didn't have any news, so I explained the time concerns and asked her to call me and leave a message so that when we landed we would know what the status of the package was.  Upon landing in Los Angeles, and powering up my phone, I had a message from Travisa saying our names were on the list of items to be processed, but it still wasn't a final confirmation.  

We grabbed our bags and tossed them in the rental car and headed south toward Cota De Caza to stay at the house of some friends of ours who had four kids, including triplets about a year ahead of when we had Ben and Marley.  They moved from Cincinnati about ten years ago and offered to house us for a couple of days before we headed overseas.  Our drive on I 405 was through some intermittent rain showers, which produced a full rainbow to the east.

We took that as a good omen and shortly after we saw that, we got the call from the visa agency that our passports and visas were, indeed, leaving New York and scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, giving us a solid 36 hours in our possession before leaving Wednesday night for Fiji.  Lesson in faith and patience learned.