Up at 7:00, tried to have breakfast, but breakfast is $15.50, so I skipped it. Bus left at 8:15 or so, and stopped downtown for a while, so we all ran over to McDonalds and got breakfast. Left Suva about 9:00, and drove to a town for some snacks, lunch, and to buy school supplies.
Continued on to the Fijian village, where we were welcomed into the village at the kava ceremoney, and we had to drink a whack more kava, and sing and dance a whole bunch more, more than an hour. In the village, everyone has to wear sarons (males and females), part of the tradition, and respect for the village and the elders.
The chief of the village couldn't be there, but we did get to meet him earlier in the day, he was on his way to a meeting of village chiefs, and was at a town, and we stopped and he got on and said hi to us all. We also had to elect a chief to represent Feejee Experience. We elected Renee, from Germany, and he was still drunk today, from the bar last night. He did a good job, though.
After the kava ceremony, we had a short bamboo raft ride across the river to swim in the river for a while (cold!), then back to the bus to visit a school. We had to buy school supplies to donate to the school as a good will gesture. We got to visit with the kids as well.
Getting changed into bathing suits was fun. Everyone simply changed on the bus, the girls trying to hide behind sarongs or towels.
After the school visit, a 1.5 hour bus ride to a boat to take us to Nananu-I-Ra island resort. Resort very nice. A few girls are pissed off at the "ruggedness" of it. They can't believe there's no hot water, and complaining about the beds in the dorm, and one was on the virge of crying, saying "what am I doing here?" Suck it up!! Geeze! It was nice, the dorm complex was BRAND NEW, along with all the beds. It was nice. I guess this backpacker resort built the dorm room complex exclusively for Feejee Experience.
Rained pretty much all day.
Notes:
- There were kids carrying machetes home from school. Not sure why.
- Kids wear sarongs as school uniforms.
- Too friendly here, something's up! Everyone waves as the bus goes by, including construction workers working on the road. They stop whatever they're doing, and wave to us as we go by. I think when they see tourists, they see dollar signs flash, and that's why. Maybe they're culture is simply that friendly, not sure. Anyway, I am fascinated with that aspect of the society. Seems also like the Indian-Fijians are not the friendly ones, but the native Fijian's are the friendly bunch.
I don't like the Feejee Experience. It's good, but it's not for me. It's supposed to be an independent travel source, but it's far from independent. Everything was planned for us from the start, and it's hard to be independent and do what you want. And living with a group of 35 people on a bus for 4 days straight is too much. There's not much freedom at all. It's all very "tour"-like. You were always booked into a specific hotel, and if you wanted to stay extra days at a stop, you'd have to make alternative accomodation arrangements, which made it very inconvenient to stay extra days. The hotels in Suva and Nadi don't have kitchen facilities, so you had to eat out. There were lots of complaints about the amount of money we spent on the tour from others as well. I'm glad I did this short 4-day Feejee Experience, now I know I don't want the Kiwi or Oz Experience (or the variations, thereof), I'll just go it my own, public buses (Greyhound, whatever). I was talking to another guy on the island this evening that looked at Kiwi Experience, Magic Bus Pass and Stray (all backpacker tour buses), and he figured out it was almost half the cost to just do local/public travel than it was to do the tour across New Zealand, so that's what he did. And he didn't want to be on the a tour-like thing either. He recommends NOT doing the backpacker tours of NZ or Australia, but do it on your own, which is what I will do.
Feejee Experience (and Kiwi and Oz and Stray and Magic) will be great for a certain segment of the backpackers, but not for me.
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