I made it!

Hey guys, I made it to Fiji safe and sound.

My ticket was wrong about the time of departure by about forty minutes, so we left at 8:15pm instead of 7:35pm, no biggie. On the plane, my "window seat" was one of two window side seats that were missing the window. The plane was a little one too. It was the same size as a westjet plane, three seats on either side of one isle, that's it!

There were only two of us in our three seats during the first flight, and after the seatbelt sign had been turned off, we noticed that the people that had been sitting behind us weren't there anymore. So, my seatmate moved back one and we each had three seats to ourselves for the rest of the flight. It was really nice for sleeping, and am I ever glad I had that pillow with me, i had it against the wall, and then I used the three little pillows to protect me from buckles and other such things.

The two in flight movies were 'Definately, Maybe", and "21". I had already told myself that I had to go to sleep after the first one (which was really, really cute, btw), so I didn't get to see "21" which I've been wanting to see for ages. Oh well, such is life.

So, then we got to Honolulu. We just had to get off the plane, so they could refuel and change crew. That was fine, until, when they were refueling the guy that was in charge of it spilled about 50 gallons or so onto the tarmac. Apparently there's a device in place that stops the fuel when it reaches a certain point, but the guy who was fueling overroad it and then decided he wasn't going to pay attention. Way to go buddy.

So, we got to wait, and watch, while these guys threw, I think it was salt, onto the gas to neutralize it, then they had to clean the salt up. This all took them an extra forty minutes, or so. After what seemed like forever, we got back onto the plane and we left by I think it was getting close to three in the morning Honolulu time (which was six in the morning for you guys, I think).

It ended up that the plane was empty enough again that I got the same three seats to myself, again. I'm pretty sure I slept, I dreamt anyway. My back is a little sore though, and I'm pretty tired, although that could be a little jet lag, what do you think? :P

The story continues after I'm through customs and baggage claim (which also took, forever). I tried to reconfirm a tour booking for thursday, but there was something funny about their computers or something, and they said they would call me here. Then they got me to the shuttle, but it ended up being the wrong shuttle. I was taken the a place called Sky Lodge, when I really wanted to go to Smugglers' Cove. The shuttle driver got me a taxi, which would have been a five or six dollar ride had I not accepted his offer to take me on a small tour, of the first Fijian village and the second biggest Fijian city.

It was loads of fun! The taxi driver's name was Jai (no comments please). He was very nice and pretty easy to talk to. We talked about loads of things, from the roads (which are crap), to what it's like to live in Fiji (which is hard), to the rain, christmas, and bread fruit trees (which are all beautiful. There's loads and loads of farming and almost all of it is sugar cane. They have machines that can harvest it, but only if it's a flat field, otherwise, it has to be chopped down by hand, stacked by hand, and then taken to the mill by either train or truck. There was sugar cane pieces all over the roads too, beside the road where we might have lots of branches after a wind storm, they have sugar cane.

Another big industry in Fiji is fishing. We drove into the dock area, and the men (and only men) were bringing boats in, bringing fish in and talking and trading amongst themselves. Jai said that a piece of fish about a foot long would cost you about $20 or so.

When we were driving into the city, the name of which I still can't remember, you could smell the sawdust from a pine tree sawdust mill. It was a sour burnt sort of sweet pine smell. Then as we got closer to the city you could smell the sugar cane mill, that was a bizzare smell. It was sort of sweet and sour, like the sawdust mill, but it also smelled kind of musty or something. Not an unpleasant smell.

We parked along one of the main roads, and we decided we'd meet back at the van in an hour and a half, which was 12:30. Jai recommended an a place called garma, it was all indian food. It was so yummy, I had a bowl of rice with three different sauce things, along with chippati bread and a papadum and a candy (which was pure sugar!), and a mango lassi that made me grin like a mad woman. It was delectable.

After food I went walking around town, going into a number of shops. There's heaps of shops full of cheap sweatshop items. I got a bottle of perfume for $4 FJD. I have to admit, it smelled much better in the store, oh well. In every shop you go into, there are three or four more salespeople than there would be at home. Whenever you walk into a store a salesperson follows you around the store like a shadow, almost daring you or begging you to buy something. I probably got it as much as I did because of being white, fair enough though, I look like an american, and if an american is travelling here they usually have some money to spend. Unfortunately for these people, I didn't have much money to spend, I did what I could though.

Another thing that's really noticable here is that, as a white female, I got stared at by men ashamedly and all the time, by just about every Fijian man I saw. I quite often make eye contact too, which brings me to my next exciting event, I was stalked! I made eye contact with a man at one point, soon after food, then i saw him waiting outside all the shops i went into. He seemed harmless, and I felt safe enough because I knew what was going on. Nothing came of it. The last three or four times I past him I didn't smile, and then it was time for me to meet Jai back at the van.

My time on the computer is almost up, so, I'm going to wrap this up.

One thing I didn't mention earlier was the price of gas here, $2.33/litre. Hope that made you all feel better about paying in and around $1.50/litre.

Love you all,
Thinking of you lots,
This place is beautiful,
And I love my camera!!!

xoxo

Mo