Jewel of Fiji Tour

So after getting a dose of the beauty of the palm trees swaying and waves lapping the beach version of Fiji. I wanted to also show Maralee and Lindsey how Fijians really live. The Jewel of Fiji Tour had been recommend to me by a number of people (and it is the same organization that Mason went with our third week in country on his class field trip...though he spent 2 nights we opted for the day trip). Due to a work thing coming up with Richard, we couldn't do this trip the day Malika was at the house (since Richard was unreachable that day and while we would be reachable, we would be unable to get to the school if something came up). So since we were racing the clock to beat the school bus home, we opted to contact the company and as oppose to having them pick us up, we drove to the town of Navau. Traffic was surprisingly light (yeah!) and we waited a bit for the rest of the groups to arrive, we were offered morning tea, got our life jackets, boarded the boats, and were off on the adventure.

I mainly took video with the GoPro, so I played with iMovie and I'll share the highlights of that in a bit. After leaving the town of Navua, we stopped at the village to pick up the chief's nephew who happens to the trip photographer (Lindsey splurged ($10USD) and got the CD which was nice....I did not want to be disrespectful and take a lot of photos during the kava ceremony since they were going over who sits where, what to say, how many times to clap, etc....so I've incorporated those photos into the post too).

I did not know I was sitting by the chief's nephew when I was talking his ear off...it looks like he got tired of me...lol.....actually, he was telling me about a company that is doing a lot of environmental destruction in the area. This company is removing a lot of gravel for road building which has changed the course in a section of the river causing it to flow faster and change the water level making it more treacherous than it was before. The same company was also mining a mountain top improperly and caused a number of land slides. Quite sad seeing the pristine environment being destroyed. He took a lot of photos to document the daily changes they are making (in the video you will see some of their equipment).

One portion of the river was so shallow, we all had to get out of our boats and walk over the rocks as our boat captains drove through the rapids (see the tiny boat to right of Maralee). So perfect time for a photo op. We pass the hollywood celebrity waterfall from the movie Anaconda 2 (you'll have to watch the video to see that beauty....). Our first real stop was another waterfall. It was a short walk to this beautiful waterfall. Pictures really don't do it justice.

Maralee may have gotten an injury visiting a waterfall on a past international trip and may have been told to not visit waterfalls on future trips....don't tell anyone....

Selfie!

The water was quite cold....most of our tour group was from Australia/New Zealand....where it is winter and near freezing....so it was probably nice and warm here. So they all jumped in and swam. We just waded in to mid-calf and took pictures.....I'll go swimming in there at some future trip back!

After swim time was finished, we hiked back to our long boats. They took us over to the Bilibili. All 3 longboats of people got onto 1 bilibili. What is a bilibili you ask?

A bilibil is a bamboo boat used to float down the river. As you can see our tour guide is standing in the front and using a bamboo pole to navigate the bilibil. Our guide told us that there is only a certain type of bamboo that can be used to make a bilibil (even though about 20 different species of bamboo grow in Fiji). If I recall correctly, it only takes a few hours to build a bilibili and they will last about 3 months.

As we went down the river, our guide told us about the villages along the Navua River. There are eleven villages in all. The first two are reachable by road. The first was where we picked up the chief's nephew and the second was where the rock excavation was being done. The other nine villages are not reachable by road......therefore they do not have electricity and the only way to get to them is by this river. (She said they all typically have A generator....as in one for the whole village....so the whole village likely gathered around the one generator powered TV to cheer on the Fiji rugby team for the Olympics...don't know if you anyone heard a commentator make a remark about the villagers during the game). To get fuel for said generator it has to come up this river....so that is expensive too (and you can't bring a big boat as you will see during the video there are a lot of very shallow areas). Our guide told us that, it is expensive for the ladies to bring their produce to the market to sell. They will load all the food onto a small bilibili and head down the river, stay in town for about two weeks to sell everything, and then have to pay an expensive fare to get a boat ride back to her village. The men remain in the village tending to the farming. Very eye opening!!! (One of these upper villages is where Mason and his class stayed for their camping trip).

After our bilibili ride, we got back in our longboat and headed back to the first village we had past. Maralee commented the scenery reminded her of float trips on Missouri rivers....just there were lots of palm trees here.

Our arrival in the village was announce by the blowing of the triton shell and playing of the Lali drum.

Being super parched from the fun we had all morning, we negotiated and got ourselves a coconut (full of electrolytes) to replenish ourselves with (because when in Fiji....)!

Yum!

They unearthed our lovo lunch (cooked underground).

Our guide picked up each item to tell us what it was.

Chicken is wrapped in the fronds (the thing with braid at the end for easy picking up).

We then entered the bure for the kava ceremony. Prior to arriving, our "visiting village" had a designated chief. So he entered first, sat down in the middle, followed by the other men who sat down around him, and women entered last and sat in the back.

The chief prepared the kava. Water is poured from a bamboo spear over the kava root that has been pounded down (note: that night Maralee & Lindsey could hear our neighbors pounding their kava root).

The cup bearer delivers the kava to people to drink. The kava is in what looks like a half a coconut shell.

The chief from the village we were visiting drank first, then our chief, then the village's elders,

then anyone else who wanted any.....go Maralee!!! The cup bearer brings you the cup, you clap, say Bula, drink it all in one gulp, pass the cup back, and clap three times.

Afterwards, we saw the men performed a war dance,

the women performed at folk dance,

and everyone did the "taralala & tuboto” (Snake Dance) (watch the video to get the full experience with the music....very lively!!)

We then ate our lunch. Lots of traditional dishes to sample. Everything was quite tasty (or we were just extra hungry and anything would have been good...lol). Our boat crew played music and partook in more kava...lol.

The view from the village meeting house.....beautiful!

Afterwards, the adorable kindergarten class (and one older sibling) sang some songs to us. We learned the history of the village (and how the the tour company is own by the village family, so our money went to support the school....very cool!).

Afterwards, they all shake our hands....too cute!

We learned the difference between green and brown coconuts.

and saw how quickly one can husk a coconut.....

We met Nana.....at 92 she is still weaving mats! We also learned about the mat weaving processing. Mats are made from the leaves of pandanus tree, which are collected, spikes removed, boiled to soften, dried to brown, cut into stripes, which can then be woven.

We also learned about the making of Masi fabric (what the cupbearer was wearing and these wall hangings are made of). It is made from the bark of the mulberry tree that is soaked and then beaten into thin sheets of fabric. It is then decorated with dyes and clays. It was neat to find out that stencils she used were made out of old x-ray films that had been donated.

Turtles are a sign of good luck in Fijian culture. Afterwards, we could shop and purchase handicrafts from the women of the village. I got a really unique turtle covered in crushed mother of pearl shells, as well as the piece she is working on right here!

After our little shopping spree, we headed down the hill to the boats....in true, 'oh Fiji' fashion where all you can do is laugh....one of the three boats had sunk! I kid you not. I attempted to get a photo but my phone was ringing (Clarissa had decided to not do her after school activity that day as planned, so we had a bus mini-emergency since I was not home when she got there). So three boats worth of people squeezed into two boats and we headed back to the town of Navua. It was a really fun day and I can't really pick out what was my favorite part! So without further ado.....here is the video of our day that I keep talking about......

First Two Weeks in Suva

The trip over was fairly uneventful....except for the fact we almost missed our connection to Nadi (and the next flight wasn't till the next day). We boarded the plane in Charlotte....and then sat and sat. Captain came on, said maintenance is on their way to do a repair (always reassuring before getting airborne), sat some more, then there was banging and drilling for a good 30 minutes, quiet for 10 minutes or so, Captain comes on again says they are going trying shutting the plane completely down and starting it back up (IT must of said 'reboot'...lol....sorry honey), sat some more, finally we are leaving....2 hours late.....great we only had a 2.5 hour layover to get from domestic to international terminals at LAX......eek. We landed at 7:30, our boarding passes say boarding began at 8:00. The flight attendants announce if LAX is your final destination stay seated let the people with connections get off. They also said there will be a gate agent to help you once you get off...there was one, working very, very slowly.....no signs....we waited a couple minutes and then winged it. We got down some stairs asked a man with the people mover cart how to get to the international terminal he pointed to the right out a door, but then said hop on....woo hoo!!! He drove us a good bit of the way, we then hustled outside for the rest of the way (which according to my fitness tracker was about a 1/2 mile). We re-checked in at the Fijian Airways counter, had all our hand luggage weighed (has to be under 7kg...or 15 lbs!), then headed upstairs to security. Unfortunately, there is no TSA pre-check for the international terminal, but we did luck out in that an agent offered to let people into a shorter line if a member of their party was subjected to a full body cavity search....j/j just a residue swab...Richard volunteered, passed, and we made it into the shorter line. The TSA agent checking passports informed us that her grandson has the same first AND last name as Mason.....that was kind of interesting....her grandson is 3....therefore our Mason is the original! We got our shoes back on, electronics re-stowed, and scurried off to our gate....boarding was now set to begin at 8:50....we arrived at 8:40.....plenty of time.....lesson learned plan a stopover in LA!

So we flew across the equator (a whole lot of turbulence there....not sure if it was a coincidence but scientist me was thinking it is caused by the convergence of wind directions at the equator as shown on the map here) and then we flew across the international date line (it jets out to the east a bit in the South Pacific so some of the island nations remain in all one time zone/day). Clarissa was able to curl up nicely and sleep most of the flight. Mason has discovered that while being able to slowly make a list of grown-ups you are taller than is cool, the draw back is you can not comfortably sleep in the steerage section of an airplane anymore.

When we stepped off the plane and we were welcomed by the humidity and a lovely band playing to welcome us to the islands. We made it through customs. We only had to open one suitcase for possible prohibited biological item. It was a suitcase full of clothes but the x-ray agent was sure we had honey in our bag (which none of us eat and I had checked the list of prohibited things throughly to make sure we didn't bring anything close to questionable). The culprit item....Mason's new tennis shoes have "shock absorbers" that apparently look like little bottle caps on an x-ray machine. The searching agent was so confused as to why he had to search our suitcase full of clothes.

We then completely exited the international terminal, walked past all the taxis, walked past all the "departure" signs (felt a bit like a fish swimming upstream) towards the domestic terminal....aka a small white warehouse/hanger like building (I give this all future visitors as directions, if we don't plan to pick you up in Nadi for some reason). We were warned that potentially all our luggage wouldn't make it on our last flight as it was a small commuter jet. Each piece was weighed and the weight was written on the luggage tag (we were lucky.....all our luggage arrived....had I not pre-planned and put swimsuits and a change of clothes in our carry on you know that wouldn't have happened). We then went through a small security screening and waited for our flight to begin boarding. When it was time, we boarded our puddle jumper for the 30 minute flight to Suva (note the beautiful sunrise lighting).

When we landed in Suva it was raining. A co-worker of Richard's met us at the airport and took us to our hotel (our house is not ready for move in yet). We all showered to remove many hours of travel funk and then having been up since ~5:00 am when breakfast service started we all headed downstairs for lunch.....and were surprised they were still serving breakfast until we realized it was only 10:15 am.....so we ate what was still out from the breakfast buffet, waited for the rain to pass, and headed for the pool.

Richard started work the next day. I picked up the kids school uniforms (Talk about adorable! They still complain though because it is a uniform). We got into the usual work/school/living in a hotel groove. Making a school lunch is hard from a hotel (especially when peanut butter is banned and you don't have freezer to freeze icepacks to send things with cheese).

Hotel dining with an ice cream dessert option and room service after a long swim in the pool are nice perks.

We stayed at the Grand Pacific Hotel. If you look at their website, part of the design of the hotel was to make you feel as if you were still at sea when you were staying there. The view from our room wasn't too shabby and I think their goal was accomplished (complete with tween attitude).

Every night at sunset, there is a torch light ceremony. Two men are involved. They wear traditional Fijian dress, one plays the Lali drum while the other runs and lights the torches around the pool and waterfront dining area. Enjoy the video.....the novelty obviously wore off for the kids....lol.

Our second weekend at the hotel, once we had gotten over jet lag (and the bonus end of daylight savings the first weekend). We opted to venture out of Suva and get our toes wet. Since most tourists are in Nadi, it was hard to find something out of Suva. I did find a beach trip with this company! They picked us up at our hotel and drove us to Pacific Harbour, telling us a lot of information about the area along the way, answering our questions about the different types of trees, pointing out the village where the Anaconda 3 movie was filmed, etc. Once we arrived, we went to one of the resorts the boat company operates out of. The resort had all these tiny frogs hopping around and the kids had to pick them up....seriously these frogs were the size of crickets!

We then boarded the boat and took the short ride out to the reef (we could see the reef from the beach it was that close, it is the white breakers before you get to the Beqa Island across the way)! The kids loved the boat ride.....and of course the water is all those shade of blue that you see in pictures!

We donned our rental snorkel gear and jumped in once we got to the reef. We saw coral, anemones, a giant clam, christmas tree worms, a sea turtle (everyone but me....I was in the water and they all saw it from the boat, sigh), and lots and lots of fishes (clownfish, parrotfish, butterfish, triggerfish, and lots of others with spots or stripes that I need a fish guide to identify.....). 

Mason really enjoyed his first ocean snorkel adventure (he snorkeled with manatees in a Florida spring back when he was 4ish but he doesn't really remember it). We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our dry snorkels that would make snorkeling with swells much easier.  Clarissa didn't do so well for her first snorkel attempt, I think she got a little frightened that she couldn't touch the bottom (which with her life jacket she didn't have to worry about that) and it was a bit chilly when you first jumped in. She did stick her face in the water and look around for a couple minutes. When we were later comparing what fishes we all saw, she would pipe in and announce she saw all of them too. Most of the time though, she sat on the boat enjoying multiple cups of a local drink called "I love my Juicy", she likes the mango flavor! (I would compare it to Sunny-D.....).

The boat company mentioned they have an all day trip that takes you to another island that has reef very close to the beach that you can walk out and snorkel to. Once our own gear and the prius arrives so we can drive up ourselves, we plan to try out that trip. I think Clarissa will do much better easing into snorkeling. On the upside, Richard and I had a lot of fun (taking turns).

After the snorkel trip we had lunch and then spent time at the beach. We found out in Fiji a flower behind your right ear means you are taken and behind your left ear means you are available (opposite of other places like Hawaii, but in my research to confirm the old wives tale, it is just that an old wives tale). You can't see Clarissa's flower, but apparently she is trying her hand at the ole kissy lips to get the boys....don't tell daddy.

On Sunday, we nursed some pink cheeks (refer back to above picture, note close location to equator....even with frequent sunscreen application some pink occurs, it normally fades within a day or so). We started another work/school week. I got all our things packed back up. We enjoyed a few more poolside dinners and sunsets.

On Thursday, we moved out of the hotel and into some temporary housing.....we still have one more move before we can completely unpack and feel settled but there is something to be said for really feeling like you are living some place when you are in a house with a kitchen and washer/dryer versus a hotel. 

fill flash would have been helpful here....

Welcome to our adventures in Fiji! The fun has just begun!