Bula!
Fiji is just like youd imagine Fiji to be. The beaches are white and sandy, the trees are green and full of coconuts and the rain, which we enjoyed on a daily basis, was hot and wet. Still, beacuse its Fiji, we didnt mind at all.
Our time in this little place was all about relaxing and doing nothing. Not through choice, but rather the fact that there is nothing at all to do, meant that we worked on our tans and read books by the dozen. The whole country is on a permanent go slow too, meaning that even when there is something to do it takes such an amazingly long time to accomplish anything, by the time you get something organised your totally exhausted and just want to work on your tan or read a book or two. Such is the Fiji cunning, infact, that they have renamed time itself 'Fiji time', thus giving Fijians an excuse for moving so inhumanly slow. A fine example of this mentality was when we met a local villager and he took us for a hike to see a waterfall. On our way through his village he stopped us and asked how long we think it took him and the rest of the village men to build a school house we were standing near. 18 inch thick straw rooves, bamboo intertwined walls and all sorts. Some guessed a month, other 6 weeks. He said that, left to their own devices, it would have taken them about a year to just pick the straw. Fortunately for the school children the Koreans who were paying for the school showed up just before the construction was due to begin and were so enraged that nothing had been done, at all, that they stood and watched the men in the village build the school in one day, putting an end to the fantasies the men had of undertaking the slowest construction project in recorded history.
We visited some islands that looked like on all the postcards and even saw where big Tom Hanks found himself stranded in 'Castaway'. Pretty neat on the whole, but in my opinion, we've been to nicer spots. This felt like a third world country with a first world price tag, spoiling what could have been somewhere really special.
I hate to give a negative review... Damn.
