Bula!
Fiji is pretty much amazing. I landed yesterday morning and have met the most wonderful people here. You don’t even need to tip anyone! Seriously, that includes cab drivers, bar tenders – anyone!
Yesterday I got in around 5:00 AM and found my way to the hostel. Once there I laid out in the sun for a few hours to make sure I was pretty stinky for my trip into town (I wanted to fit in). I picked up some water and bread to hold me over for my 2 days at this hostel. They have a full service restaurant but it’s around $10 a plate and that just doesn’t work when you’re trying to live on $30 a day! I talked my way into a cab driver taking me to town for free but he made me make a quick stop at an ATM once we got there. I picked up some grub and headed back.
Time for a quick walk along the beach. I got no more than 200ft down when a native dude called me over and told me to sit down. Why the hell not? So I plunked down and he took an old-school cleaver, raised it up and sliced the top off this crazy huge fruit. The inside looked like a coconut but the outside looked like a honeydew. He told me to drink the juice inside. Never one to turn down a free drink I turned the bottom up. It was actually pretty good. Then he took the fruit back and chopped it open for me. He peeled out the fruit inside and told me to eat that. That wasn’t so delicious so I told him I would take it to go. Of course then he asked me for money cause he has 6 starving kids of something. As always, I wasn’t carrying any cash so it was pretty easy to slip out of that one. Thanks for the free drink!
The rest of the day went by pretty normally. Night came and the bar opened up. Oh, there is a pretty nice bar at the hostel too. I grabbed a beer and tried to mingle with some people on the terrace but they were all with the friends and weren’t very friendly. I decided that they can just shove it so I wandered out to the beach and laid down on the hammock. Not 15 minutes later I opened my eyes and saw a group of locals walking in my direction. A little freaked out but I shouted “Bula!” and they all just smiled. Turns out they were just walking back from collecting their fishing lines and were headed just next door to grill up some dinner. They absolutely insisted that I come along. I’m not one to turn down free food so I hopped out as quickly as I could without making a fool of myself (at least I thought so). I ended up falling out of the hammock anyway but who cares, they had food!
We all sat down on this schooner they were fixing up and threw two huge fish on a grill. The guy cooking announced it was done and everyone waited for me to dig in first. I just sorta stuck my hands in and pulled out a huge glob of meat. It was delicious! Didn’t taste fishy at all! Turns out they also had some beer stashed on the boat too. Who would have guessed! Anyway, we sat around for 4 or 5 hours and talked about the different islands of Fiji while they passed around a guitar and played songs. It was pretty cool.
They all invited me back to the boat tonight as they party every Friday night. Apparently there will be some more fresh fish, lots of beer and anything else one could think of that island locals do when no law enforncement exists.
On a side note, I’m trying to check emails but I don’t have wireless access for my computer right now hence I can’t check voice mails. That also means I can’t post any pictures right now but I will as soon as I get back into civilization.
Off to catch some sun before the rest of the hostel wakes up.
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