FIJI:

BULA FROM FIJI!
Sorry it has taken us so long to find internet here, we have been busy on our adventures and hindered by the recent flooding that has caused many things to close...here in fiji they work on 'fiji' time so things arent fixed quite as soon as they might be back home! I was suprised when I changed my money at the airport to see the queen staring back at me on their notes and coins that resembled ours very closely. It seems fiji became a colony originally after being sold to England to pay off debts. The debts were actually concurred by an American family who sued them after their house was burnt down and they were chased out of town for starting an enterprise the Fijians were not so happy with..! And I guess that is how I get to see the queen on the notes while I am here!

Despite the recent flooding however we were extremely lucky with the weather, apart from the first day when it rained quite a bit, we have stayed dry and mostly in the sunshine. With that of course comes extreme heat and I think I have sweated out most of any alcohol I have consumed over the past few days.We were picked up last Saturday for our 'FEEJEE experience', it is called feejee, as that is how captain cook famously misspelt the island of 'viti' (its original name) in his journal. Im not sure how it became fiji from feejee, maybe it has something to do with the water here, which is proportianely expensive-targeting us westerners too afraid to drink the tap water!

Our experience was great, we learnt so much about fiji life and everyone was so friendly, from the locals to the people in our bus. We travelled as a group of 8 in a minibus, originally it was a group of 35 in a large coach but many cancellations came after the flooding so we were lucky to have a much more personal trip. We visited local villages, went sandboarding, tubed, went on a boat ride and spent time reading on beaches and by pools as we journeyed from beach resort-cum-hostels along the way. We were given many interesting factoids too-which I always love to hear and regurgitate to annoy people-most prominent has to be the history of cannibalism, which fijians seem to speak of quite proudly, and frequently, making Ruthie and I feel a wee bit uncomfortable at times! Also part of the traditional way of life is the mysterious drink 'Kava', drunk at a ceremony round a large wooden bowl this drink consists basically of mud water. Not sounding too appealing we were nonetheless forced to try some at a local ceremony in the village for fear of being eaten alive if we did not comply. The last person to be eaten alive was an English priest just over a hundred years ago for disgracing himself in this same type of ceremony. So we forced ourselves to down a good 6 bowls of this mud water, and as un-appealing as it sounds it does not taste any better-especially the morning after many beers and in 90 degrees of sticky heat!

Thankfully we survived the ordeal and are now back in Nadi to enjoy our final day of sunshine before we leave this evening for Melbourne!