Life As We Live It

Okay, Okay...I am finally getting around to telling you all about the rest of our Fiji experience. Tyler has had this title ready for me for a while now. After our "initiation" into the culture with our Kava ceremony...we felt ready to take on another town on the island aside from Nadi. We ventured out on a local bus to a town called...Not sure really. It's about an hour north of Nadi. It was REALLY hot that day. I was glad to escape into air conditioned shops every now and again to get away from the heat. It was nice to be in a town that didn't just flock to us immediately because we were white. Everyone pretty much just left us alone because it wasn't much of a tourist town like Nadi. It was great. For the first time ever, we felt like we kinda fit in (even though it was OBVIOUS we didn't!) We ended up taking in "Narnia" at the movie theatre as it was the only one playing in English. We thought it was aweful but we were glad to escape the heat. Our seats (they assign seats here) were right at the front so we had to look up the entire time...I felt like I was in the ice forest with them!! We got the bus back to our hotel and ate, yet another, meal of Mr.Noodles. We were really starting to get sick of them but they were just SO cheap, we couldn't resist. We would eat a nice meal for lunch and then skimp on supper. Because we arrived on New Years, the shops were all closed down for three days after?! We weren't really able to shop for some better food supplies! We were in town one day and the "kava guy", Mike, accosted us not realizing we were in his shop just the day before. He soon realized who we were...Tyler is pretty easy to remember, and was trying to get Tyler to give him something...like his hat or something?? It was so wierd. He tried to get us to come in to his shop to buy more...but we figured we got suckered in enough by him already so I managed to pull Tyler free and we escaped, unharmed...hehe. The best day ever was spent aboard a "sailing" boat called Seaspray. It had engines on it so the sails were really just for decoration, but whatever. There was free alcohol all day, a pretty nice BBQ buffet lunch and we "sailed" all through the Yasaweh Islands. Glorious, tourquoise waters, HOT sun, warm water, and free beer...we were in heaven. We stopped at an island and had another kava ceremony with the chief to be officially welcomed to the islands. We only had to have one cup full this time which was nice. Oh ya...as we were ready to board our boat again a big dog fight broke out with three dogs attacking another poor old dog. It was so sad. He was barking and whining and the others wouldn't let go of him. Tyler walked right over to them and started kicking the dogs to free the old helpless one...he picked up the last dog by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the side. It was really funny to watch, actually. Tyler is so used to little dogs and is pretty defensive when one is getting picked on. He saved the day. My hero! All the other people just sat there with their mouths open, watching...very funny. We next stopped at the island where Tom Hanks filmed "Castaway" for a snorkel...it was absolutely beautiful!!! SO much coral and fish...more than I had ever seen before. We can see why everyone always says to see the outer islands when visiting Fiji for a true experience. It was a great day. A perfect way to end our Fiji visit. We left the next day to the airport for our flight to Aukland! We would have loved to go diving in Fiji but just didn't have the time and decided we would dive in Australia at the Barrier Reef instead. We still look forward to that! All in all, a mellow, slimming, annoying at times, exciting and explorable adventure. BULA!!