**** not sure why this never made it from “draft” to “published” but sharing it finally ….
It is now 10:43am on Thursday June 8th, I only have an hour to write before a friend and his dog are coming over to have some coffee and dog biscuits with Fifa and myself. As the air pollution index in Buffalo has dipped below 100 for the first time this week we can even enjoy the outdoors. NYC and Philadelphia are in the 300 range today. Looks very bad this morning on the AirNow.gov website. They even canceled the Yankees game last night so I had to watch the Mets in Atlanta instead.
Alex took that beautiful but scary photo of the moon over NYC last night. I feel bad that after all of those years in Covid lockdown they can’t even enjoy NYC this free week between college and summer job.
Alex’s moon photo reminded me that the moon in Fiji looked strange to me, like it was oriented the wrong way. Years ago Alex had taught me that the moon aRrives on the Right (waxing) and Leaves on the Left (waning). But the moon in Fiji looked turned 90 degrees. I had no internet access when I noticed it there but now home I looked it up and YES the moon is opposite side in Southern Hemisphere and at Equator it is either on top or bottom, not side to side. Check out this nifty website!
http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/moon/hemispheres.html
And I like this explanation also, the moon is never unhappy at the Equator! Me neither, I have only the fondest memories of Equador, Tanzania and Fiji.
So…back to Fiji, 5 days ago I left the Maqai Beach Eco Surf Resort on a small boat as it started to rain at 2PM.
It was very low tide so the boat headed slowly east to the one opening in the reef out to the open ocean at low tide. One man stood in bow pointing left or right to direct the pilot around the reef heads protruding above the surface or lurking just below. Once we got around the corner of the resorts cove the other boat was moored there and there was a transfer of a boat driver and Rose and Jacob (and their garbage bag wrapped suitcases) to that boat as they were going elsewhere on Taveuni (not to Matei at the northern tip of island where the airport is). The resort staff pointed out some villagers who were fishing with nets at low tide nearby.
It was only a 30 minute boat ride once we got going but once we were away from our island and in the channel west of Taveuni the swells got large, it rained harder and I started to think about how long it would take me to swim to shore….video below..
I didn’t take many photos in the boat as it was so rainy but this spooky island caught my eye. Like all the other islands of Fiji it is an old volcano rising from the deep (over 9000 feet) ocean floor. Seems like a good hideout for a super-villian.
I saw a few large sea birds flying overhead , I didn’t think i got decent shots but the iphone 14 pro camera is so good that even after extreme cropping the iNaturalist app was able to i.d. them as female Frigatebirds, probably because their split tails are so distinctive. I had also seen them in the Galapagos, the males having giant red throat pouches. They are amazing creatures, they fly 200 miles per day and can stay aloft without landing for up to 2 months.
I was also sure that I kept seeing small blue birds flying low over the waves and then hitting them! It took a while before it clicked in my brain and I asked if there were flying fish in Fiji. The answer was YES, many types of them found in the South Pacific. I remember in some non-fiction books about people trapped on boats or rafts how excited they were to find the fish trapped aboard at night. Apparently they are very bony and have little meat though, probably why they are light enough to fly 150 feet. Below is a Google Image. I didn’t see any that close to the boat though.
When we reached the small jetty, the same pickup truck was waiting. Cathy (the resort manager) had come on the boat ride as she had some business in Taveuni.
It was then just a wade through 2 foot deep water in my flip flops to reach the truck, I was soaked. It may be hard to see in the photo but the reason why on my previous trip the driver had the windows open AND the A/C on became clear. The left window is missing or broken, he had it covered with a garbage bag for the rain 😉 It was probably less then a 30 minute to the airport. He definitely drove a lot slower on the muddy, puddled dirt road than when it was dry. It actually stopped raining before we got to the airport, when we dropped Cathy off he had me pull the trash bag into the truck and place it in back for safe keeping.
Here are some Google Earth screenshots, the boat ride was from Maqai to a little south of Deleni and then the car ride north to the Matei Airport.
Just to the East of Maqai on the next island over was the “Red Bull Island” where the owner of Red Bull first bought a huge island for himself from the Forbes family and then made it into a resort. It is a 7 Star resort. One of the outings offered from the Surf resort was a boat ride to see the ultra luxury, I passed, happier snorkeling or in my hammock.
There was also another private island resort that was owned by an Australian family for over a 100 years and had some connection to the Med4ourWorld charity. One of the 3 medical students from Australia working with us was in the family. Technically there were 4 surgeons on the mission but one only worked on Monday as then she and her husband were off to the luxury resort…..
I absolutely like a top notch hotel in Paris or London but for a tropical vacation I definitley preferred being in a small casual resort. Aroha had only 6 or 7 Bures and the small staff called me David from day one and made one feel as if just at someone’s vacation house. Paradise Taveuni with a capacity of about 50 people seemed almost too big after Aroha although the staff there also all called me by name immediately. Maqai Island with the staff hanging around for meals, drinking Kava, playing ping pong really felt so casual and enjoyable. I enjoyed speaking to everyone and learning where they had grown up, worked in the past, etc.
The airport had a snack/gift shop, a scale to weigh you and a very small office where they did have an actual printer to produce luggage tags… There was no security screening of any kind but I think they did look at my passport briefly. At the airport I ditched the throwaway shorts I had worn so far and changed into socks and shoes and my travel slacks (pickpocket proof with secret compartments for passport, etc.) and left my flip flops by the garbage can. I changed out of the sleeveless tech shirt later at the big airport.
The 90 minute flight from Nadi to Matei had been very sunny and hot and NOISY 2 weeks earlier so I made sure to have my noice canceling Airpods in this time (last time my backpack was thrown in the back of plane before I realized). It was now raining heavily again and I wondered if we would be going slower than the previous 150mph with all the water weighing down the plane (at least no ice at the equator!). The runway is short so the pilot revved the engines into a fury for a minute before releasing the brakes.
de havilland twin Otter, video below
The flight was a little choppy but not as bad as boat ride (I had taken a Dramamine2 (meclizine) at lunch). Mostly I was cold, i couldn’t nap between that and the noise so ended up reading my Kindle for the flight. It got sunny pretty quickly and I got some great photos of reefs.
And then more photos of the beautiful jungles and rivers and mountains of:
Viti Levu, largest island (4,026 square miles [10,429 square km]) of Fiji, west of the Koro Sea in the South Pacific Ocean. Its name means “Great Fiji.” Sighted (1789) by Capt. William Bligh of HMS Bounty, the island is split by a central mountain range with many inactive volcanoes. As with much of the world it was claimed for Britain by Capt. Cook
“suburb” of Nadi, Fiji’s largest town
Smooth landing and very quick luggage pick up (you can see the runway through the end of the baggage carousel). Then just a few hundred steps from the tiny domestic shack terminal to the very nice, modern, clean international terminal. They had daily flights to L.A. and S.F. but at least 10 to New Zealand and Australia. There are no direct flights to Fiji from Europe (they all either stop over or transfer in L.A.).
I don’t have any photos of the inside of the airport, it was pretty empty, I was over 4 hours early for my flight (since few connections from Matei) and most of the daytime flights for Australia/NZ had left and the red-eyes were all much later like mine. The airport was clean, well labeled (everything is in English, thanks Capt. Cook) and customs/security took around 10 minutes. I had “bid” on an upgrade to business class and gotten an email a day earlier confirming I had gotten a seat so had access to the Fiji Airways premium lounge although the rest of the airport was very nice also (more seating and dining and shopping options than would be expected at a similiar size one in USA). The Fiji Lounge was VERY nice. Giant wall TV showing rugby on one side and Fiji tourism video on other. The only bad thing was that as it filled up later I started hearing LOUD American voices (i had appreciated that most of the non-natives the places I stayed were Aussies or Kiwis), why do American’s talk more loudly than any other nationality? It’s certainly not because they have anything worth hearing. Luckily i could just switch to noise cancel mode on airpods and shut them out.
The flight was delayed around 30 minutes but when called to gate I actually still had a little of the movie left (I had read my Kindle for a long time before starting the movie, when I started to doze off I decided I needed more stimulation to stay up so late after my long day) but I wasn’t willing to pay for the non-free wifi on the Fiji Airlines plane so finished it later in Los Angeles.
The flight back was an hour faster thanks to jet stream. After eating my business class meal and some red wine I actually dozed off and missed dessert. I brushed my teeth, took a Sonata pill and then slept a solid 6 hours.