Up at 8:00, slept great last night. Got up, had breakfast, walked to "One Beach", a nice 1km stretch of sand on the other side of the island. It's neat, it's not wide, but trees overhang the beach along the whole stretch. Got back, played some volleyball, paid my bill at the resort ($35.00, $20 for return boat trip (should have been included in Feejee Experience price!!!!), $10 for supper last night, $5 for breakfast this morning), then waited for the boat.
The boat from the island to the mainland was very, very wet. Fiji is very windy, so waves were crashing against the small aluminum boat, and blowing all over us. Bus took off about 12:30 or 1:00, I think. Made a snack and grocery stop in a city, then continued on.
A few people stayed on the island, so I got my own (broken) seat set, as Erika moved to her own seat-set. More room for both of us!
We stopped at an Indian restaurant in Latoka (sp?...Lautoka?) and made a souvenir shop stop as well (request from Erica). At the restaurant, the chicken was full of bones, and two guys ordered goat curry (which I tried a piece of), which had bones all over too. People were not impressed.
Along the way, we stopped at the side of the road and sampled some sugar cane. I've had sugar cane in SE Asia. Sugar cane is the BIG crop here, and it's harvest time for it.
You can tell those that have travelled lots and those that haven't. I'm used to no electricity, no hot water, lots of bones in my chicken, crappy beds and dirty washrooms. Many on the tour aren't.
After the souvenir shopping, we drove to a natural hot spring coming out of the ground, and had a big mud fight (hot springs were very, very muddy), then tried to wash off in a different pool, but it was still muddy.
Back to the Nadi Bay hotel about 7:00, checked in, showered, had supper (expensive sirloin steak, it was pretty good). Sat around with the Feejee Experience crew for a while, then went to bed about 11:30.
Other stuff:
- John (the guide) pointed out Bligh (sp?) Bay, where the Mutiny on the Bounty actually happened, which was neat to see.
- We passed by the tomb of Fiji's greatest warrior and cannibal, he supposedly ate 199 people (yes, Fijian's are cannibals).
- The difference between the east and west of the island is stunning. The west is dry, lots and lots of farms (sugar cane), and hilly, brown/yellowish grasslands, not unlike you'd see in grasslands areas of Saskatchewan or Alberta. Except they hills are a lot higher. The east is very, very wet (rained the whole time in the east side of the island), it's very much a tropical rain forest there, not much for farming.
- The Fijian rail system is simply to get sugar cane to the sugar cane factory, that's it, consisting of small rail cars in a narrow gauge rail line, often pushed by workers. It's quite funny to see, and comparing to what we know of rail.
No comments:
Post a Comment