Fear Pacific

Since the British certainly wouldn't do hard work themselves, they came up with a cunning plan. They started putting up posters in India, where they promised volunteers a free one-way ticket and good pay for a couple of years of hard work in Fiji, after which the volunteers would be welcome to return to India on their own expense. Fiji was depicted as this nice, little island just off the east coast of India. Lots of Indians signed on, and were probably slightly puzzled when the boat ride to nearby Fiji lasted a few months before they arrived. They worked for a couple of years, creating a very good business for the British, but when they wanted to go home, most of them discovered they could not afford to pay the price for a ticket all the way back home. So they stayed, and today Indians own most of Fiji, since, afterall, Polynesians simply do not see the point in making money or owning more than they need. Sooner or later this will lead to problems, but most of the time everybody seemed happy about this arrangement. Except for me, who wasn't really prepared to go back to India right now.

Luckily I was soon on my way out to the islands, where there are no Indians, just Polynesians and a nice, Southern Pacific paradise: The Mana Backpacker Resort. For FJ$30 per day I was welcome to stay in a crowded bungalow on the beach and enjoy a tropical island and 3 meals of decent standard every day. It was a two hour (inclusive) rough boat ride out there. The waves were big enough and the boat small enough that by the time we got out there I was soaking wet. I was given a mattress in a room that seemed to be full enough of people already. Definitely a backpacker place I would enjoy very much. I read. I slept in the shadows beneath the palm trees, after having checked them as carrying no ripe coconuts. I snorkled. I did everything and nothing, and there was no schedule or anything, and it was just perfect for me right there and then.

In the evening there were relaxed parties where the locals introduced the visitors to the local customs, like the kawa, an extract from some plant roots with rather intoxicating effects. The chief drinks first, there's some clapping going on, and then there's a party for the rest of the night. The guy running the backpacker resort was the local chief for this particular island, Mana. He was a very typical Polynesian: He COULD have run a very expensive resort, but since he couldn't possibly have coped with demanding Japanese and American upper class tourists, he has chosen instead to run a service virtually void of any services except for cooking and parties. Since he is a big fan of food and partying, this is something they would have done anyway, so I think the business they run is very good for them, all things considered.

The island is fairly small, it took me an hour to walk all the way around it along the water. They have fresh water and electricity, though, so it is a very comfortable place to stay; You're never more than half an hour away from a cold drink.

Breakfast was all the sweet bread and fresh fruit I could manage to consume. This was when I understood why all the locals seemed so, uhm..., well rounded. To burn off some energy I decided to participate in this day's activity; Island hopping and snorkelling. It set me back FJ$20, and I think it was worth it. Remembering the trip out here, I wore practically nothing, and that was a smart move. Island hopping is really hopping on the waves here, so we literally got a taste of the sea. After about an hour we arrived in Muskat Cove, a resort where people pay FJ$2-300 for basically the same experience as we get on Mana, except they live just like they do at home and they have to wear nice clothes when they have dinner. Here there was a supermarket, where we picked up everything we needed for the lunch that was included in the trip fee.

Then we moved on to Naisali Resort, another luxury resort that didn't really have any visitors, so they let us use their beach and pools. Some freshwater swimming was very nice after the intense snorkeling off the beach here. Just as I was about as happy as I can get, we moved once more, this time to Honeymoon Island, a small, uninhabited island which fits any Scandinavian's image of the ultimate Pacific paradise. We had an excellent, late lunch here, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the shadow, reading philosophy and enjoying life.

And so the days passed. On the third day I discovered we actually had the same food every day; Sweets and fruits for breakfast and lunch, chicken curry for dinner. Paying extra to go on trips and have barbeques was definitely an option. I also discovered that Kilroy Travels must send all Scandinavian backpackers on round-the-world tickets here. For the first time since leaving home I actually met people from home considerate enough to carry with them fairly fresh newspapers from Norway. It was a strange feeling reading about life at home again. A large part of the stories presumed a certain background knowledge about the cases which I did not possess anymore, making it seem like stories about places and things I didn't really know. It was a strange experience.

I was very surprised when I one day returned from my philosophy reading at the beach to the bungalow to discover that I was the only person left, while the place had been absolutely crowded in the morning. I went to the locals and asked, and they said a lot, of which I only understood "bad weather come". A Japanese tourist pulled up his hi-tech bag, in which there was among other expensive, compact stuff a fancy radio. We moved up and down the bands for a while until we got an English voice talking about weather, and there really was bad weather coming. A cyclone, to be exact. There was no boat leaving that afternoon, so we just had to wait until the next day. The sunset brought the craziest red colours I have ever seen except for on British people who have spent a few hours in the sun, and it was obvious that there might be interesting views in the sky on the next day as well.

To cheer us up a bit, a crab race was held in the evening. A number of crabs was collected from the beach, and we could buy them for FJ$3-25, I didn't really get why they were priced differently, to me they all looked pretty much the same. Some of them must have been specially trained, I guess. Anyway, when bought, a number was painted onto the crabs' shells, and the whole lot was put down on the floor, inside a big circle. The owner of the first crab to cross the circles perimeter would win the money from the crab sale, minus a small commission for the crab race organizers, of course. I didn't win.

In the morning I got up early to be there for the first boat to the mainland. Going with the fairly strong winds, this time I didn't get wet at all. I made it into the city center and got a bed at Nadi Motel & Hostel for FJS$4.50 per night. Because of two bars on the first floor it looked like it could be a noisy place, but as we shall see, that didn't really matter much. I took a walk up and down the main street and found a place where an Indian man gladly cut my hair in 4 minutes for FJ$2.50. Compared to the price of the hotel bed and the short time he used I guess he was well paid.

By now, the wind had grown strong enough to create a small sandstorm in the streets, so I went back to the hotel and slept a bit, I was quite tired after getting up so early to come back here. A few hours later I regained consciousness, only to find that my room was infested by five Swedes. It was early in the evening, just after sunset, and the electricity was gone. We used candles and flashlights to see, but we had little idea of what was going on outside. There was a lot of shouting and screaming, big things were flying past on the streets below, the wind was very easy to hear and the walls kept moving. One of the people working at the hotel wanted to go home to check on his family, and I gave him my flashlight so that he could find his way. He returned after five minutes, having given up finding his way in the dark storm.

We sat around the candles and talked for a while, but went to sleep when we discovered we only talked about the weather, and we didn't really know much about what was going on.

In the morning the storm had mostly passed, but it had left quite a bit of tidying up to do. Our room was on the third floor, but when I looked out the windows, there was only one floor below me, and where the main street through Nadi used to go, there was only a big river. The flooding was bad, and it was easy to see on the buildings along the street that quite a few walls, signposts and roofs had left the city center throughout the night.

The whole city was chaotic, nobody seemed to know where to start and what to do. I went for a walk/swim in the streets with two of the Swedes to see how bad it really was. The water was really cold, having come straight from the clouds and not yet been warmed by the sun, and it was all greyish brown, so it wasn't very pleasant to be in. I kept walking into and feeling strange, unseen items/bodies touching me under the surface, and just concentrated on at least keeping my head above the water. This was NOT drinking water.

After some swimwalking we found a guy in uniform, apparently some sort of disaster relief person. He told us that the airport was actually open, but that getting there would not be easy. There were no way to get there except for by foot/boat, and we had not seen any boats yet. The situation was that there was no food available, no water suitable for drinking available, no electricity available and not much to do here except for staying alive, something quite a few people failed at, I read in the newspapers a few days later, so we decided to give getting to the airport a try.

After the wild river, the rest of the way to the airport was easy. Most of the time I could just wade through the water without any trouble, and we got to the airport just a couple of hours after having left the hotel, having covered 3-4 kilometres of disaster ground. I unwrapped my backpack and found that it was actually still dry, as opposed to me. I was just literally dripping wet, and went into the mens' room to wash up a bit and change into cleaner clothes. There were practically no other people at the airport, since it was so hard to get here, so I was free to use the sink in any way I wanted. I splashed as much clean water onto myself as possible, until I felt not incredibly dirty anymore, and put on lots of layers of clothing, as I felt quite cold after all the time in the wet, cold water.

The airport had electricity, and I spent the rest of my money on hot dogs and Coke. Fiji is a stopover airport for several airlines, and now that the storm had passed, there were quite a few planes available, but very few passengers. No schedules were followed at the time, and anyone who had a ticket off Fiji were free to get on pretty much any plane leaving in the general direction the ticket indicated. My ticket was for Los Angeles on Tuesday (this was Sunday), with Qantas, but I got on an Air New Zealand flight that left late in the evening instead. I was glad to leave, I have to say. The check-in was incredibly efficient. I dropped off my luggage, paid the departure tax, ran through a security check, a passport check and a boarding pass check, all in about 90 seconds. The plane wasn't even half-full, so there was lots of space for everyone.

Now, if they could just have told me that a stopover in Hawaii would have been possible, I definitely would have done that. Instead I woke up after some hours in the air and was surprised when I saw this big, tropical island come closer outside the windows. I banged my head into the wall in frustration when the captain said "We're approaching Honolulu International Airport, please fasten your seatbelts". All I did in Hawaii was to pass through the passport check, go outside and step on the ground and watch the sun rise over the rooftops. It was beautiful, my one hour in Hawaii.

And then I left paradise.