Fiji Day 2

Hotel buffet breakfast was good. I took the cooked option as well, the lady cooking in the outdoor kitchen was the Indian lady, hotel staff, who had walked down the hill with us the previous day on her way home, telling us about Nadi and where to walk. She was so friendly and did me the most superb omlette.

Our driver for our transfer to Natovi jetty on the other side of Viti Levi arrived 20 minutes early but we were ready in the hotel reception. He was Indian Fijian, named Vinnit, and drove a 2000 Subaru Forester which had done 450,000 km, as he told me in answer to my enquiry. Nice sort of a fella really, but his mobile phone kept ringing during the 5 hour trip and he talked in Fijian or maybe it was Indian which got on my goat in the end. He did know a fair bit about the history and flora. he told me Fiji was 50% native, 40% Indian whose ancestors came out to work for the Poms on the sugar plantations which the natives would not do.

The boat was waitng for us at the jetty. Last on, others on the boat particularly one couple, joked about our 2X6 boxes of wine. From that early point we had the reputation as pisspots amongst the others. There were five other couples on the boat and the talk before finally heading off was about how we had all got to the jetty and from where and how much it had cost. There was a couple from Florida, another from Toronto Canada, two couples from Los Angeles and another from Sydney, near Cronulla in fact.

Boat trip was thirty or forty minutes in quite rough sea. After disembarking we gathered in the foyer of the restaurant and were given details of the island and alloted our bures by manager Heppy, a large native Fijian with a soft feminine voice. He called out names and gave each a bure. Ours was bure 8, about 100 metres walk from the restaurant and office and fronting the sea. It was big for just two of us, two bedrooms with double beds and two more beds in the large family room.

Lib in front of Bure

Inside

 Front Garden

We took a walk before dinner along the shore, it was low tide. We met the couple from Cronulla, Tracy and Mark and talked with a Kiwi couple who had been staying in the bure at the end for three months. They had their own boat and were leaving day after tomorrow, heading back to NZ now that the worst of winter was over. They told us much about the island, none of which meant much then but as the fortnight unfolded it all had helpful relevance.



The Kiwis

Dinner was seafood buffet. We talked with the other couples before retiring early. No TV. Electricity went of late in the evening when they turned off the generators. Pitch dark when you woke up for a pee. There was supposed to a bedside torch but there wasn't, I didn't mind, I felt my way along the walls and peed in the warm night air. Coconuts dropped from palms in the night, thump! Waves slapped at the shore at high tide. I dreamed extravagantly. Did for the whole sojourn on Naigani. Travel dreams, erotica, people I hadn't seen for years. It was great. It was so warm. I loved the night.