Fiji Time

A few days before departing for Fiji we got a message from Siem, asking if we felt like hanging out. We had been doing nothing for too many days already, so the prospect of hanging out with Siem appealed to me. Just as we were preparing to go out, a guy from our hostel asked if we were going out, and if so if he could join. We told him we weren’t sure what exactly we were going to do, but he was welcome to join if he wanted to.
Turns out Siem was keen on going to the internet café to play some games first and so we headed out. At first our new friend didn’t feel like playing with us, but when we changed to playing Counter Strike he became very eager to join indeed. Turns out he used to play this game a lot back home and proceeded to kick our ass for a while before we headed out to drink.
We weren’t going to let the fact that it was Wednesday spoil our fun and followed Siem as he lead us to a nice bar he’d found the other day. The bar was pretty empty and emptier still by the time we finished our first beer, so off we went in search of another bar. When we entered the next bar Sebastian (the new guy) was called over by some girls, and the rest of the group moved over there while I went to order our next round. When I’d paid and collected the beers I returned to their table and found that of the 6 girls there were only 2 left, and one of them was leaving to play pool. I’m still not sure what happened but Jasper took the blame for chasing all the girls away. Eventually we all moved to a table close to the pool tables and it didn’t take us long to scare away the last girl (Jasper took the blame for this one as well). She was going to “sit with some friends”, not mentioning that these friends were imaginary and occupied a small table outside in the cold. Ouch.
We then moved to a really tiny karaoke bar where a bunch of preppy kids was busy raping “material girl” by Madonna, and ordered our next round. We joined the group in shouting incoherently to the tune of Madonna before a couple took the microphone and rocked a couple of songs. After a while most of the people left and so we decided it was a good time to call it a night. Because Siem knew the way we only walked in a circle once, all the while 3 out of 4 were complaining about having to go to the bathroom. We decided we’d stop by the McDonalds for a quick toilet break and a burger. To our horror we suddenly remembered that the toilet in the McDonalds close after 10, so we just went in some dark alley.
We went to the McDonalds nevertheless for a quick burger and an ice-cream, during which we had a nice conversation with a bunch of random people.
The following day we went on a little sightseeing tour with Siem, he said he knew a nice place with some old defensive cannons. On the way there we ended up on a nice little cliff at the edge of the ocean, but nice though it was it, was decidedly not the place with the canons nor even remotely in the right direction. Prepared as we were we didn’t have a very detailed map of the area and decided to just backtrack until we reached something recognisable.
We soon found a point which we recognised on the map, took a wrong turn and found an excellent spot to pull over and make a u-turn. Only we didn’t notice the giant pothole in the side of the road so Siem drove straight over it, or well. . . straight in it is more exact I guess. We then backed up, through the pothole, surprisingly the only damage was to the exhaust and it wasn’t even real damage, just something that popped out of it’s rubber clamp.
After this slight mishap we headed in the right direction and after one of the scariest rides of my life, past endless drops without guardrails and sheep on the road, we arrived at the gun placement site. We parked the car and headed towards the cannons, apparently this used to be the NZ defence against a Japanese invasion. After about 20 minutes we arrived at the guns, or rather at where the guns used to be. Of course the government wasn’t stupid enough to let the actual guns in place. . . unfortunately.
Still, we had a great time exploring the bunkers that accompanied the guns and me and Siem did a great rendition of the Egyptian we learned from Alex at the Milford Sounds, Jasper recorded it with his camera but unfortunately the video got lost along with his camera.
That evening Outi and Netta were also arriving in Christchurch and were planning to go to the same hostel as us, they asked Siem if he wouldn’t mind picking them up from the bus stop.
Siem didn’t mind, and we said we’d come as well, but considering his past successes with parking inside Christchurch Siem decided it was probably a good idea to pick them up on foot. When the girls arrived the first thing they asked was “Where is your car?”, they didn’t look too happy when we told ‘em we were on foot. But we helped them carry their stuff and soon we arrived at our hostel. Siem had to go back to the house of the family he was staying at, not in the least place to fix that exhaust. We hung out at the hostel the rest of the night. We had to leave at 5 in the morning to catch our flight and as it progressively got later and later we decided we’d just stay up all night. Though eventually/ the girls got really sleepy and we all sort of dozed off. At 5 the alarm went and we quietly packed the remainder of our stuff, said goodbye to the very sleepy Fins and hopped into the shuttle. We picked up a few more people before he dropped us off at Christchurch airport, from where we’d fly to Auckland to catch our flight to Fiji. We checked in our luggage and headed through the security gate without problems. Well, almost without problems. Jasper was called over to the side and one of the security personnel reached inside his backpack (his small one) and pulled out his pocket knife. The look on Jasper’s face was priceless. Apparently he remembered to take his knife out of his pocket but instead of putting it in his main backpack he put it in the one he was going to use for hand luggage. Fortunately the lady was really nice and said he could just check his bag in as main luggage and wouldn’t have to hand over his knife. So while he did this I waited. . . and waited. . . And they called out that our seat numbers were asked to board the plane. . . and I waited. . . And they called out that the other seat numbers could board the plane. . . and then finally Jasper showed up and we raced to the boarding gate and went to our seats. We made it!
After falling asleep a dozen times we arrived in Auckland where we couldn’t check-in for another 2 hours. We called home with our BBH phone cards, and Jasper managed to use up all his credit in 10 minutes. Not so surprising because he was calling to a Dutch cell phone.
After a while we could finally check in and headed to one of the bars to have a drink. We barely managed to stay awake until boarding time. This time we managed to safely get through all the security checks and when we boarder the plane we were greeted by the Fijian flight staff in their colourful shirts. That and the tropical music they were playing made us feel as if we were in Fiji already.
A sleepy plane ride later and we touched down on Fijian soil. The exit walkway was outdoors and as we exited the plane a wall of hot humid air smacked us straight across the face. The sky didn’t look too promising though, it was grey and cloudy with vague promises of rain.
After we managed to get through customs and all the other safety checks with only marginal problems (we only stood in the wrong line once or twice, and Jasper couldn’t find one of the declaration cards he filled in earlier) we found that it was now night. In about 30 minutes the sky had changed from light to pitch black. We asked a man where we could find the pick-up for our resort and after he’d lead us to the appropriate spot we started to talk. After he found out we didn’t have a set plan for our trip he immediately tried to get us to go to a resort which probably belonged to family of his. About 10 minutes later our ride arrived and we headed out, along with two other girls. We suddenly came to a stop because there was a truck blocking the way, after waiting for a minutes for the truck to go away the driver decided to just go around it. Then his headlights suddenly moved over the reason for the truck; a car had missed a bridge by about 2 meters and had driven straight into the ditch, little did we know then, but this wouldn’t be the last time we’d find evidence of bad driving in Fiji.
A short ride later we arrived at our resort where we’d booked 2 nights in a 2 bed dorm (so basically a twin room), but upon arriving found that something went wrong in the booking and they’d put us in a normal dorm room. It wasn’t a great start of our trip but I figured it was only for two nights so I didn’t mind that much. It was a lot better than what happened to the girls that came with us, their booking didn’t even arrive there and they already paid as well.
We moved our stuff into the room and picked our beds, the room wasn’t especially luxurious and the bathroom was pretty crummy but I guess you can’t really expect the same quality as in NZ. We had dinner in the restaurant, which was pretty good and pretty cheap, before retiring to bed quite early to catch up on some sleep. The next day was quite warm, but not too warm, despite the grey clouds. We chose to spend it by hanging in the hammocks and swimming in the pool while we contemplated on where to go to next. The original plan was to go to the island group to the west of Fiji, which is apparently where everyone goes, but after talking to a Finnish guy named Tuomo we decided against this. Instead we headed south and east to Pacific Harbour. We had to take a taxi to another hotel to catch the bus to Uprising Beach Resort in Pacific Harbour. As we walked up the driveway to the resort we passed a security checkpoint where the “guards” were very friendly and all shouted “Bula” at us as we passed them. The staff behind the counter was equally friendly though it took them a while to check us in, and when we asked about the shark dive more than a few minutes passed before she’d called the company and told us they were booked full for at least a week. This was a bit of a setback because we had grand plans of touring the country and were on a tight schedule.
After some discussion we decided to wait there for a week, since the shark dive is one of the more memorable things to do in Fiji, and cross a few other locations off the list.
To keep ourselves busy during the week we booked another dive for during the week.
The resort looked nice, despite the grey skies, it consisted of a ton of small wooden huts called “Bures” and there was one big one which served as a dorm. This thing housed about 26 beds so it was a large dorm, but somehow it didn’t feel like it at all. The weather wasn’t good enough to swim, so instead we explored the small town of Pacific Harbour. It had a small tourist attraction called “arts village” but really, it was just a tourist attraction. The people were very friendly though, and every single person there yelled out Bula as you passed them. We pulled some money out of the wall and went back to the resort. It rained for the next two days, the grass slowly turned into swamp and the road was littered with deep pools. Mercifully the rain stopped on the day of our first dive. We had to wake up early to get ready in time for our pick-up. Our ride arrived 15 minutes late, Fiji time, and we and a few other people got in. As we started to talk to the others we found out that they were going for a shark dive, but this confused us as we were told that there was no shark dive with that company on that particular day. But we paid no further attention to it until we arrived and they were told that they were in the place. Two of them got back in the van to be driven back, and a third asked if they could wait while he made sure he had to be in the other place. After he was sure he was in the wrong place he went to get back in the car, but this had by that time disappeared. Unfortunately for him he had to wait for the car to come back. In the meantime we headed over to the shed to sort out our gear. We also had to sign a release form stating that if we were to be eaten by shark we would in no way be able to sue the company, after all we were the ones stupid enough to dive in waters where sharks are frequently spotted.
After we had our gear sorted out we sat waiting for the others to get ready and were soon joined by two Chinese and one Japanese men. One of them carried a huge camera, jokingly stating that with that thing he didn’t need any extra weights. After we got on the boat it was a short ride along the river past another resort, where we would pick up some more people, before heading out to our dive site. As I got talking to one of the Chinese men he mentioned these people and said that they were from “Lussia”. I tried to guess what he meant (Austria? Latvia?) but I had to wait for the newcomers to speak before I realised he meant Russia. Anyways, he was wrong because they were from Czech Republic. Evidently it pays to be rich in the Czech Republic because besides what appeared to be a family there were two fat old guys with two beautiful young girlfriends. After a short briefing it was determined that me and Jasper would get a guide for ourselves, which was nice because it meant we weren’t all going to swim in each others way. The Czechs and the Asians got their own guide as well.
Before we went to our own dive-site we dropped a guy off at an island where he would do his scuba discovery dive. When we arrived at our first dive site we all geared up and jumped in the water. The guides had told us beforehand that the water was quite cold, but it felt nice and warm to me and the viz appeared to be great. I spent a few minutes looking around trying to find Jasper and our guide, when one of the others directed my attention to some people under the water; they were waiting for me. Because my gauges were in imperial units I had no idea how deep we were going, and only an approximate idea of how much air I had left, so I was slightly nervous going into this dive. On top of this my gauge leaked a little bit of air, it didn’t seem serious but I wasn’t sure if this would affect the accuracy of its readings. It didn’t fortunately and after a few minutes I could relax and enjoy our first coral dive. The visibility was phenomenal compared to our previous dives and even in our shorty wetsuits the water was very agreeable!
We spent about 40 minutes enjoying the beautiful corals and colourful fish before heading back to the boat. Jasper had some trouble getting up because his BCD leaked, but we managed to get back on the boat safely. It was quite a wait before the other divers came up, especially the Asian bunch they must have stayed down for almost 70 minutes. After everyone was back on the boat we went back to the island where we dropped the guy off earlier and were told we could go for a quick snorkel if we wanted to. I wanted to see more so I jumped in the water and swam to the nearby reef. Unfortunately they didn’t have any actual snorkels with them so I had to contend with just my mask, needless to say I ran out of breath a lot and scared away all the fish because I kept popping up for air. Still, it was a nice way to spend my surface interval.
We mentioned our gear malfunctions to our guide and they managed to fix them for us and our second dive went perfectly.
The scenery was pretty much the same as on our first dive, but it was still very enjoyable.
After we came back to our resort we had a nice lunch in the restaurant and hung out by the pool. We then had 2 days to kill before our shark dive and as we started talking to some of the people there one guy told us he was going to take a bus to Suva the next day. After we did nothing that next day he came back and told us about it, and it all sounded quite nice to us. Because I wanted to see if they had any disposable underwater cameras I wanted to go as well and Jasper agreed with me, so the next day we got up reasonably early (10 am) to catch the bus. At the little shelter which functioned as a bus stop there were 2 people waiting, locals, and they told us all about the busses there. Apparently there were 3 different companies running busses to and from Suva all stopping at different places and charging different prices. We had no idea which was which but were kind enough to stop, what they told us, was the right bus. It looked pretty good for Fiji standards and they even had a Television in it! As I sat down I was curious to see what movie they were watching, but it seemed like the bus driver forgot to press the play button because the image wasn’t moving at all. It took me 10 minutes to realise that it was in fact still playing, but that the many bumps in the road were causing the DVD to freeze all the time. In the 30 minutes it took us to get to Suva the movie didn’t progress for more than 5 minutes. The bus drove us past dilapidated looking villages, across unpaved muddy roads. When we arrived in Suva it dropped us off at a busy bus station with people trying to sell their wares wherever you looked. It was a little bit intimidating but we decided to just start walking and see where we’d end up. After a while some guy came up to us and asked if we needed any help, I asked him where I could find an underwater camera and he immediately offered to take us to the best place in town. I knew he just wanted money from us, but I figured it would save us a lot of wandering through town and was probably worth the couple of dollars. The first store only sold non-disposable film cameras for a price I wasn’t willing to pay. The second one didn’t have any cameras at all, only shirts, but it was a “good store where the profit goes to the local villages”. Right. The one after that did sell the underwater cameras and despite them being slightly pricey I decided to buy one. As we were walking to a store where they sold scuba supplies, Jasper wanted to check for a mask and snorkel, I popped into the store that sold shirts to see if they had any that would serve as a nice souvenir. Most of them were garbage and so cheesy you could use them for fondue, but they had one which said BulaBong (Referring to the brand BillaBong) and this struck me as being surprisingly witty. I bought it immediately.
After some fruitless searching for a mask for Jasper we gave our guide a few dollars and decided to make a stop at the theatre. Compared to the rest of the city, which was crowded and dirty, the theatre looked amazing. But in retrospect it looked just like any other theatre.
We watched a movie called Centurion, which was pretty good, and all the while I was debating whether or not to go to a pharmacy. I had managed once again to get a cold at the worst possible time, the day before a dive we’d been waiting all week for. My ears were hurting and my nose was clogged, but the pharmacy was a long walk away and by the end of the movie I was feeling sorta better already. I decided to just take it easy, go to sleep really early and bring a handkerchief on the boat. On the way back our bus stopped at every little town we passed and even though the bus was already full every second stop an entire class of children would enter, and then leave 3 stops further. This whole thing seemed a bit bizarre to me, and it took us more than twice as long to get back than it took to get there. Eventually our bus stopped in pacific harbour and I was glad to get off.
After dinner I went straight to bed, but the big light in the dorm was still on and I just couldn’t find the switch to turn it off. There must have been at least 12 different light switches there, and I tried all of them but none of them were the right one! After a while a girl came to drop her stuff in the dorm and she asked me if I was looking for something. When I answered that I was looking for the light switch she offered to help me, but even with the two of us we just couldn’t find it! Eventually a guy walked in and when we asked him he said “Oh yeah, it’s this one.” *click* It was in the least logical place imaginable, hidden behind one of the bunk beds at waist height. Anyways, I could finally go to sleep. I could try anyways, because the sounds of the party down at the restaurant were coming in so clearly that I could hear every word that was said. The next day we had to get up early again to catch our ride. There was a big group of people from our resort going, including the girl who helped me search for the light earlier. She was called Amanda, and this was going to be her 2nd dive after her Open water course. After we got to talking to the other people we found out that most of them had only done a few dives. This was a mile pole in our diving career! For the first time ever we weren’t the ones with the least amount of experience! On the boat ride over we received our briefing and it appeared that our dive would consist of 3 stages, each at a different depth and with different types of sharks feeding on the bait. Once we got the feeding grounds we all geared up and jumped in the water. We were told to follow the guides to the first feeding site where there was a small wall of coral behind which we could sit. There were about 11 of us so it took a while for everyone to get comfortable, but once we were the feeding started. They opened a container with pieces of fish that they’d placed there earlier and immediately fish started to appear from everywhere and it wasn’t long before the first sharks showed up as well. They varied in sizes from small to freaking huge and they weren’t shy at all, at times they would come so close you could touch them. But because of the risk of losing a hand or two no-one actually did this. The feeders would drag the bait towards us just as the sharks were about to chomp down and as they chased the bait they showed us their gaping mouths filled with razor sharp teeth. When the food was gone we moved up to the next feeding place where slightly smaller sharks were attracted by the food. There were grey sharks, white tips, black tips and nurse sharks. After this we moved up to the last place of the dive and then back to the surface. During the surface interval we discussed our dive excitedly over a cup of Milo and some cookies. When we were about to jump in the water for the second dive someone noticed some bubble like things in the water. They turned out to be organisms (they aren’t jellyfish apparently) of the same family as the Portuguese Man o' War, which can deliver very painful stings which can be fatal in rare cases. So in the end nobody was very eager to jump in the water and we waited a bit for the group to float past us. When they all seemed to be gone we were told to jump in the water and head straight for the bottom. Funnily enough we were about to jump in the water with a dozen hungry bull sharks and all of us were afraid of a small bubble like creature. We all managed to get to the bottom without getting stung though, in fact we didn’t see any of them again. This time we were told to lie on our bellies behind a tiny coral wall and to keep our down as much as possible because these sharks were the real deal.
After they opened the container with food it took a minute or two before the first shark turned up, but once it did there were a whole bunch more that followed. These sharks were big, bigger than any we’d seen so far, ranging up to somewhere between 3 and 4 meters and extremely fat. As they grabbed the huge chunks of fish they stretched their mouths open wide enough to swallow your average man without chewing. As I looked up to see them circling above me, I noticed a huge ball of fish slowly coming our way. When I looked closer I saw that there was a diver inside the ball and that he appeared to be carrying a wheelie bin. When I got over the surrealness of the situation I realized that this must be the next load of fish food.
For this dive I also took the underwater camera I bought earlier. It couldn’t go any deeper than 15 meters, so the first dive was too deep, and this dive was right on that limit so I hoped it would hold out long enough (it did and I got some nice pictures with it). The marine biologist that was with us to capture some footage swam over to us at some point and held up a shark tooth. He looked like he was going to give it to me but at the last moment he changed his mind and gave it to Amanda who was lying next to me, girls have all the luck.
When the dive was over we headed back to the resort on what felt like the longest boat ride ever. Me and Jasper both had to go to the toilet really bad (diving does that to you) and as we stopped on the river to catch a volleyball they accidentally threw in the water I nearly lost it.
Before the boat was well and truly tied to the shore we jumped out and raced to the bathroom.
There was an option to buy a DVD from the dive, but it was a bit too expensive for our liking. Fortunately for us Amanda bought it and promised to send it to us later.
The rest of the day we spent hanging out with Amanda and eventually with Leon, a German guy we drafted for our volleyball game. By the end of the day we looked at the list of activities they had available and noticed something called “Horse-boarding”, it was free too!
Apparently it was a bit like wake boarding, only then you would get pulled along by a horse.
Unfortunately we noticed this too late and we couldn’t do it anymore as we would leave the next day. We still had fun playing pool though, despite Leon totally kicking our asses.
The following morning we said farewell to Amanda and Leon and headed for the bus-stop to catch a bus to Suva and from there to Rakiraki.