Nadi in a Day

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Fiji Day 1

Got into Fiji at 5:15 am on January 3rd. It seemed a little weird losing a a day as I left Toronto on the morning of the first and arrived here on the morning of the 3rd. Since I crossed the international date line I'm not even sure if it was ever actually the 2nd of January or if it went straight to the third.  The temperature when I arrived was about 25 and sunny. It was a little humid, but not unbearably so.  My first look around the island on the way to the hostel reminded me very much o how things look in Trinidad with the type of vegetation and buildings and cars around. The indian influence on the culture  is reminiscent as well.  Went from the airport to the hostel we had booked for the first couple nights called Horizon Backpackers. We'd been fairly lacsidasical in our planning and only booked our accommodation there about 7 hours before we flew out of Toronto. The hostel is within sight of an OK beach and the facilities here are adequate and very inexpensive (about 16$ Canadian per night). (the hostel beside us called Smugglers Cove looks a little newer and is right on the beach, so that might be better)

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Right away in the dorm we met a fellow Canadian guy from Ottawa who was just leaving the hostel on his way out to the other islands.  He gave us some decent recommendations on things to do in Nadi and Fiji while we were there.

After paying and settling in our stuff we decided to take a head in to the town of Nadi (it's the closest city to the airport and second largest city in Fiji) The guy from Ottawa had told us it was about about a 45 minute walk to the city, but I would guess it took us about an Hour and a bit t do it.  One thing which stood out as different from here on the walk was on the mango pits along the side of the road from the trees. You couldn't go 2 feet without seeing one. (I don't think mangos are currently in season as I never really saw any on the trees and just the only saw the pits and no mangos on the ground)  It was also a little unusual to see road kill frogs.

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I didn't find there much to see in Nadi.  Most of the native Fijians are pretty friendly, easy going and laugh a lot.  Quite a few people on the trip to town would say Bula (Hi) as we passed by.  As we wandered through the city a native Fijian started chatting with us as we walked along and tried to get us to go into his "friends" shop where he sold native fijian artifact and we figured why and went with him to the shop.  The Shop had a lot of wooden and mother of pearl carved native artifacts but we were immediately taken to the back of the shop where we had our first experience with the Fijian Kava ceremony.

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The Kava ceremony is a traditional Fijian welcoming ceremony where everyone is first seated around the kava bowl and drink kava from it.  Some Kava is taken from the bowl in a cup and given to the first person.  That person then claps once and then drinks from the cup. Everyone else claps 3 times while the person drinks and the the drinker claps 3 times when they're done. The cup is then refilled from the bowl and given to the second person.  This is then all repeated till the bowl of Kava in the center is finished.  Kava is made from a local root that is ground up and mixed with water.  The root is supposed to have a mild narcotic effect.  I can't say that I found the taste of it appealing in ay way whatsoever.  To me it tasted like muddy water with a slight bitter taste. (the taste of it ended up lingering in the back of my throat for hours and hours...)  The whole welcoming aspect o the ceremony felt a little disingenuous  as wells you felt there was that underlying expectation that you would buy something afterwards. (they did give me a sharks tooth necklace when the ceremony was done)

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So we bought our little souvenirs and then we walked around town a little bit more and did see our that there was a military checkpoint o the way south out of town.  Other than that though I haven't seen any indication of the current political situation.

After that "fun" incident we checked out the tourist information place and then headed back to the hostel. We met and chatted with some of the other travelers at the hostel throughout the evening and played some cards with them.  Surprisingly to me I have yet to meet a single American traveler. So far it has mainly been English, Aussie and New Zealand travelers so far. (Have met some from Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland as well) A lot of travelers seem to stop in Fiji at the tail end of their trips.  Many are coming from Thailand, Australia and New Zealand before heading home.

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Day 2

Didn't do much of anything today.  I think it's the first day in quite some time when I felt that I didn't have to be somewhere or do something.  We arranged travel to some of the smaller islands for the next 12 days and booked a course for scuba certification.  It should be interesting.  I'm not sure if I'll really have access to the internet over the next 2 weeks in the islands so I may not update for a bit.  I don't think the computers at this Hostel are really geared for transferring pictures either so I'll do that at a later point.