We arrived in Fiji a little worse for wear, but awake somehow . . . at 2 AM on July 7, 2003. As usual, it was difficult to sleep in the airplane torture seat with our friends kneeing us in the back every time they looked behind their seat to see who was knocking them in the back. After our arrival in the Nadi airport, we fought sleep in a nice comfy seat the travel agency provided for us while made plans for the next few hours. We were due in Suva (a 3-hour drive away) by noon that day to submit Kam's visa application at the Australian embassy. I have no idea why Australia closes its embassy at noon, but I'm still not happy about it. The bus to Suva was due to pick us up at 7:30, but we figured there was no way it could make it to Suva in time for us to make the embassy. So, we decided to rent a car and make a go of it ourselves.

By 7 AM we had managed to arrange for a hotel and car rental for the next week. The car was delivered to the airport and we had our first full-fledged experience in receiving directions Fiji-style. Experience we've had since tells us that most Fijians probably give directions the same way. In any case, don't believe them when they say "it's just down the street" or "it's not far up the road". We now know this to be secret Fijian code. Our best interpretation of it is to mean that we should drive down the road for as long as we possibly can, then, when we're ready to turn around and come back because surely we must have passed the place a few miles back, we should drive another few miles. Seems Fijians also hate to write directions down or to look at a map. I advise you to be wary when they start a 2 minute description of the ins and outs of how to get a place with words like "it's easy" or "it's really simple".

We drove from the hotel at 8 AM. It was raining most of the way and Todd had to get used to driving on the left side of the road. We finally crawled into Suva around 11:30 and realized we had no idea where the embassy was (lack of maps you see). Kam asked directions of 3 different people and learned some more secret code having to do with round-abouts in the road. A very confusing half-hour of circling did finally leave us at the embassy at 11:53, just before they closed.

After lunch we arranged for Kamla to start Scuba lessons on Tuesday (the next day) in Nadi (a 3-hour drive back). Just a little tired, we started down the long road back. Sure, you're thinking we were tired, but it was only 3 hours away, right? Well, it's not really like driving in LA. All those people in Fiji who don't have cars walk along the road at night lurking in the shadows. Hundreds of untied dogs, cows, and horses leap into the road at least every few miles, no doubt laughing at our grimacing faces as we swerve to the side to avoid them.

A quick look at the beach from a hotel in Nadi.

The second night after our arrival, we drove to a nearby village and attended a lovo. This is a traditional Fiji feast and kava drinking ceremony. They were supposed to have 15 people for the feast, but only 3 of us showed. We had to eat a lot, then took left-overs home for the next day. Kam had quite the time dancing with her Fijian friends. Todd swigs a bit of kava and does the traditional face-squint that follows a drink of tree root squeezed through a sock into water. The Fijian people are wonderful, very friendly and quite interested in when we will get married.

Kam worked hard for three long days to gets her Open Water diving license in Nadi. The shop we chose was staffed by some super friendly people who've gone above and beyond what was expected of them. Right next to the dive shop was one of the really busy Fiji beaches where the boat launched from.

We made one dive together after Kam got her license. It was Todd's first experience with a lung expansion injury. Remember, don't hold your breath! Maybe Todd should go back to school too?

Carrying on, we took a bus that evening towards Suva for 70 km. We checked into a backpackers hotel on the beach called Tubakula Bungalows for 2 days. This was the first place we really did laundry. Maybe we miss the washer and dryer more than anything else?

It pretty much rained the entire time we were there. To top it off, the wind blew like crazy. We'd heard that the snorkeling was pretty good just off the beach (it probably wasn't called the coral coast for nothing). The weather was much too crappy for us to try it though. Once we were thoroughly discouraged by the rain and wind we put on our rain jackets and sidled down the road to Fiji's only wild animal park, Kula Ecopark. We walked through lots of poop leftover from the myriad of cows, dogs, and horses that regularly frequent the side of the road. We narrowly escaped collision with a young mare that leapt from the trees to haul ass down the highway too.

Our trek was rewarded by a Fijian woman who worked at Kula. She literally threw birds, iguanas, and snakes on us. They were all nice enough to pose for pictures too.

Finally we left Tubakula and heading to Suva. We walked from the bus station in Suva to our hotel. We're not sure our legs were conditioned enough yet for this Navy Seal-carry-everything-you-own-for-miles kind of hike. It did produce one of my favorite pictures of Kamla:

Are we there yet?

As soon as we arrived and booked into our city hotel (Travel Inn), we ran up to the Colo-i-Suva Forest Park for a hike (I like to call it the e-coli park). The Fijian that let us in to the park gave us the usual code: "It's just down this dirt road, then back around. Should take you an hour." I don't really think the Fijians are that much faster than us, but we were questioning our conditioning when we worriedly finished the hike two hours later (it was getting dark you see).

This is a picture of us at one of the natural pools along the hike.

Monday morning, we taxied over to the Australian embassy in Suva hoping to pick up Kam's visa - not ready. Kam's manager, Chai was kind enough to fax a letter all the way to Fiji supporting her visa later that day, making the Australians happy. After that, we jumped on the bus back to Nadi, visa in hand.

A good night's rest in Nadi found us on a boat to Mana island the next morning. Mana is one of the Mamanuca group an hour offshore from the main island most people think of as Fiji. We checked into one of the two backpacker hostels on the island.

Now this was a weird island. We'd heard before hand that these hostels were owned by two brothers who hated each other. From the sound of it some people didn't like Mana because the people who ran the hostels got mad if you went over to the other hostel for a visit. We figured "what's the big deal, just don't go over to the other hostel then."

As it turns out, the hostels are literally built on the same concrete slab. Their restaurants (meals are included in the costs, and there's no other place to eat on the island anyway) are inches from each other and you can actually bump elbows with a person eating at the other hostel. This was highly unexpected. Although we were a little reluctant to step across the line, nothing actually happened when we did. That is, no one came out to yell at us and throw us on the ground Fiji-style. Note that they really seem to like Judo in Fiji. There was a big-dollar resort at the other end of the island where we felt a little unwelcome. They had real restaurants and nice bars that looked out over the ocean. Too bad they had a no-backpacker rule there. We managed to sneak a glass of wine before they figured us out and refused to talk to us or serve us anymore. It's sure a beautiful island . . . better if you're staying at the resort I think.

OK, we had one more day to kill. And we were tired of staying on the island. We went back to the mainland, then caught a boat the next morning for a day trip on an island just offshore, South Sea Island. They let us use their wind surfer and catamaran (but didn't provide wind unfortunately), and all the booze we could drink. Really small island as you can see:

Kam drove us right over some coral when we took the catamaran out, she claimed it was due to the low tide. We're not really sure though. Poor fishes. Oh, we saw a HUGE 5 foot white-tipped reef shark while we were snorkeling. It didn't eat us.