Island adventure!!!

Island adventure!!!

So the next adventure in Fiji is the Yawasawa chain of Islands.   We booked  a short stay only because we have horrible luck with arranged tours usually.  Just not our thing really....we were correct once again they really are not very good at all.  Everyone piles onto these tours out to the Islands, and one company really has the monopoly of it all.   Unless you have the money to have a private boat or plane, we do not.
We got on the boat fine, headed to the largest of the islands out there.  The water on the way there was clear and deep.  Now everyone supposedly goes out here for the swimming, snorkeling, etc.....the tide is out so far and the coral has been ruined by tourists and boats that just don't know any better.  From far away your island you get dropped at looks gorgeous then you get up close and BAM...whole other story.   We picked one called Korovou eco resort, which there was nothing eco about it and had not been fixed up the 20 or 30 years it has been there.  The only eco thing was the shower didn't work, so no water was wasted the whole time we stayed there.  I did see Nemo's dad though, pretty cool when we could snorkel.
Our problem is we don't sit and sunbathe all day, and that is what people do here, and drink, oh yeah we don't really do that either.  So not really the place for us to say the least.
Fiji is beautiful at times but we have seen better for a whole lot less money.  Tan is looking pretty good though, guess we will work on that while we are here.  Getting a little stir crazy, you can only relax too much, feel like we should help clean or something at the nice Kiwi owned hotel we are at.  They have been amazing to us, very helpful and accommodating.
Well....NZ maybe here we come early...lol.....

Fiji Time...

Fiji Time...

Well we are 9days into the Fiji experience... Sorry for the slow updates, internet  is not the best here 1 out of 5 times we tried to log into our blog it has failed to work. So to catch everyone up.
After landing and spending the first few days jet laged, we decided to go on a 1/2 day hike/mudbath.  The hike was beautiful, although it is in the dry season here and everything is quite brown. We sweated our asses off hiking though the non shaded paths they had cleared for the tourists. We finally got to a sad excuse for a waterfall, it was quite nice setting but hardly any water was running. We decided to head back to the village instead of continuing farther up the cleared paths to the "bigger" waterfall. At the village we walked into a smoke filled inferno, the field of sugar cane next to the village had caught fire and was burning out of control, the smoke was so thick we could hardly breath and could barely see, our eyes and lungs burned, muscles ached from the hike and all we wanted to do was head off t the mud bathes and get back to the hotel for a cool refreshing dip in the pool. The villages invited us into there traditional Bure, this is a sacred building, which they use for church, weddings and apparently showing off to tourists. 4 young men invited/forced us into taking part in a Kava  ceremony, which consisted of one of the young men washing his hands in some dirty water in the traditional Kava bowl thing, then they added the Kava  which is a pounded white powder made from the Kava plant root. After stirring the milky dirty water with his "clean hands" after all he did wash them in the bowl he was now mixing our drinks in... We were offered "high tide? or low tide?" . Having no Idea what they were talking about I picked high tide and they offered me up a full half of a coconut cup full or dirty root water. I politely took a sip, looked at A with sad eyes suggesting it tasted awesome >.> I offered the cup back but apparently I was to dink all of it... I regretfully slammed the whole cup of dirty root water and passed the cup back. Now it was A's turn, she had learned from my mistake and took the low tide, her cup was only half full and when she took the first sip I saw in her eyes what I was thinking when I first took a sip of dirty root water.
After our Kava ceremony we were forced to wait around for a few hours with eyes and lungs burning from the smoke waiting for our driver to return to pick us up. After what felt like an eternity we were of to the mudbaths.
We arrived a few miles down the road to a field full of children playing below a village, and a kind lady took us around the area and explained to us the culture and beliefs of the mud bathes and how some of the Fijian use it for sun protection as well as war paint, and homeopathic remedy. She took us over to a muddy pool of water and said jump in. A looked at me warily as I made her jump in first as to get a photo of he being covered in mud. A few of the kids jumped in to help Her apply the mud, and I jumped in soon after. After being covered form head to knee in a thick yellow/brown mud we climbed out so the children could plaster the rest of us with mud, and were asked to hang out and let the mud dry. By this time the sun was already starting to set and the mud was taking forever to dry, after what seemed like and eternity we were finally dry enough to jump back into the mud puddle and rinse the mud off, we were then herded over to the hot spring which felt like a million bucks after crawling out of a dirty mud pool. We soaked for only a few minutes and headed of to get pickup up by our driver who waited for us this time, back off to the hotel for a hot shower.. we had mud in more places we wish to mention.

the endless saturday

Travel days, how I never missed you! Left Calgary on time and smoothly, Air Canada is a good plane so...

LAX, what a huge place, confusing and busy. I thought it was cloudy out, but it was supposedly just a bad smog day. By the time we got our bags, ate some lunch, we would only of had 4 hours in LA and we had our bags because Air Canada does not connect with Pacific Air with baggage transfers. Wasn't to bad a wait but, we were ready to get to Fiji and the time was not passing fast enough. Plane was packed and I don't think you can find an older plane in the air, you know when ashtrays are in the armrests of the seat you know your in for a rough ride.

Air Pacific was nothing to write home about so how about I don't and keep this more positive.  10 hours of pain and agony got us here finally. I have never seen so much luggage, I know it was alot of people but I heard someone say 16 pieces for their family, WHAT!!!! Probably for a week or two long trip too, we have tiny little packs for a year or longer, Crazy people!

Our plane landed early, 4:40 am and we made it to Beachside Resort in one piece.  Cute little place out of the way to relax and get organized for the next 24 ish days here in Fiji.  We have slept( sort of ), ate, swam, settled in, and soon will make some plans, maybe mudbaths. AWESOME!

Everyone feels so far away, and it's been hard to wrap our heads around not working, how to just relax and enjoy the ride.  It's only the first day which just happens to be Saturday here, how fitting, plenty of time to get on Fiji time.....miss you all, family and friends, keep in touch.

Will post pictures soon.

A and Ray