At the beach

I'm sitting on the beach on the last day of our trip.  We're staying at the Outrigger resort on Fiji. It's a very nice place and quite upscale; we got a decent deal because it's the off season.

Definitely a very different world from the eco lodge in Navala! When we got here, something felt strange, then I figured it out - the place is full of white people! (Fijian skin is quite dark.) But it's been a nice place to unwind and do the beach bit. Everything is done quite tastefully; it doesn't feel Disneyish at all. I went snorkeling for the first time today, and saw many different kinds of fish plus a very cool blue starfish.

This afternoon we take the bus to Nadi, and then get on an overnight flight to L.A. I like Fiji, and can see coming back here someday.

In the hills of Fiji

I'm writing this at Bulou's Eco Lodge in the hills of Fiji near the village of Navala. This area is, IMHO, drop dead gorgeous. Very lush, hills of green with rocky outcrops, lots of flowers.

To get here, we were the only white people on a  bus from the small city of Ba. It was an hour long, bone jarring ride on a dirt road in a bus that had seen a lot of miles. But the views along the way were spectacular.

Bulou's is a very simple place, run by Tui, a Fijian man, and Bulou, his mother. Tui does almost all of the work since the nother is quite old and had a stroke a couple years ago.

We are staying in a small cabin called a bure. It has running water but no electricity. The windows are louvered and without screens, so we sleep under a mosquito net. Unfortunately, some of the little buggers got to us anyway. That, the heat, and some very loud birds made it a bit hard to sleep sometimes.

Tui is a great host. He cooks all the food, and when the guidebook said it was offered in staggering quantities they were not exaggerating. The should call it the Eat More Lodge!

The nearby village of Navala is one of the last places where almost all of the houses are built as bures in the traditional manner. Tui is related to the village chief, so when we went there today we visited him and his wife in their bure. There were some other visitors there, and they had brought some kava, so we drank some in the traditional ceremonial manner.  As guests of honor, Suzanne and I sat on each side of the chief. Three other men mixed the kava on a large wooden bowl.It was then served in coconut shell cups, and you are expected to down it in one gulp. There were three rounds of this, tho I noticed that each of our rounds was smaller than the one before it, probably to be nice to us newcomers. There was a lot of banter back and forth in Fijian.
I found the kava's effects to be fairly mild and relaxing; it probably helped us take a nap later on.

Tui said that it was time to go, so we said many goodbyes and Tui showed us around the village.  Each family has two bures, a sleeping bure and a kitchen bure. Both are very simply furnished and decorated. There is a church (Catholic), and a school (also Catholic). Both are simple buildings of concrete block and corrugated metal.

The village is on the cusp of change. A hurricane blew down a number of bures last February, and some of them have been replaced with concrete houses. And electricity is being brought in; we saw poles waiting for wire. They say they may be on the grid by Christmas. So the place may be very different in a few years.

We had the shake, now the bake (well, steam)

I'm writing this while sitting in the geothermal hot tab at our hostel in rotorua. We're spending a few days in the central plateau of the North island, a geologically active area with thermal pools, bubbling mud, geysers, and hopefully dormant volcanoes.

We spent the first two nights in taupo, a resort town on a large lake that sits in a crater formed when a volcano blew up some 1800 years ago. We stayed a an Airbnb place with a very nice hostess. When we offered to pay her admission to the Orakei Korako thermal park in exchange for driving us there, she readily agreed.

The guidebook says that the park is "arguably the best thermal area left in NZ". They say "left" because the best one was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 1886. In any case, it's quite impressive. Water at temperatures from tepid to boiling comes up from the ground and cascades over rocks, leaving mineral deposits in several colors. There are pools of bubbling water in different colors, some with jets that spurt up one or two feet. Steam wafts up around you, and you hear bubbling and gurgling all around.

Another post, finally!

The aftershocks seem to have faded; we are in Nelson now, staying at the Quaker meetinghouse there. It's a simple old place, musty but cozy. It's hard to believe it's been only a day and a half since the quake.

Nelson is said to be the sunniest city in nz. It was raining when we got here last Friday, with lots more in the forecast. We had planned to take a bus first thing in the morning Saturday to Marahau near the Abel Tasman park. But there would be nothing to do there if it kept raining. So we changed our plans and rented a car, so we could have some flexibility.

Of course, this meant learning to drive on the other side of the road :-(
It was pretty stressful at first, but after a while I began to get the hang of it. It was actually more stressful for Suzanne as passenger than it was for me as driver. For both of us, the really hard part were some narrow twisty mountain roads.

On the way to Marahau, we stopped at a bunch of interesting spots, including Mapua, a small town whose old wharf had been redeveloped into shops and eateries. I got some very tasty locally smoked fish. We also stopped at a unique and whimsical cafe called the Jester House, featurung, among other oddities, tame eels and a giant house of cards.

We got to Marahau, after surviving the aforementioned mountain road, and checked into a very nice room complete with a small but well set up kitchen. They even did the dishes for us!

The next day was supposed to have less rain, so we decided to do our planned hike. This involved taking a water taxi to a beach about 12 km away and hiking back. The taxi ride was something of a white knuckle experience - the sea was rough and the boat went fast. But we made it intact, they dropped us on the beach, and off we went.

The hike was long but mostly interesting, with many opportunities for great views and lots of waterfalls, big and small.  The trail was wide and smooth most of the way; somebody must work like dogs to keep it up. mud was a problem in some spots. It did rain once in a while, but never heavily. We were very glad when we finally saw the sign for our hotel!

We ate a simple dinner and then went to bed early, exhausted.

"Steve! Are you shaking the bed?"
"No!!??!? It's an earthquake! Go outside!"
I bolted for the door. After what seemed like minutes, the shaking stopped. We got on the internet and learned that a "severe" quake had struck about a couple hundred miles further south at 2 minutes past midnight. We also learned that bolting for the door was not the recommended action; you're supposed to drop to the floor, get under cover, and hold on to something sturdy.

We were up on a little hill, and we heard no warning sirens, so we figured that we were not at risk for a Tsunami. We went back to bed, but it took a while to get back to sleep!

The next day we drove back to Nelson. It rained most of the way. We did stop at a cafe started by a very old community, called riverside. We did a quick walk around and learned a little bit about the community.

We got to Nelson ok and returned the car (good riddance! ).  We then set about figuring out our next move. The quake had messed up a lot of transportation. The original plan was to take the bus to Picton and then the ferry to Wellington. But the ferries were suspended and the bus wasn't running either.
After some web searching I managed to get tickets on a flight from Nelson to Wellington, and for a little less money than the bus and ferry.

That evening we got together with half a dozen people from the Quaker meeting, and had a very informal talk about ecovillage (and many other things).

We spent the next day in Nelson. It's a nice town, about the size of ithaca, and for once the weather cooperated. We spent a bunch of time in the Queen's Garden, with lush plantings and some very large trees from all over the world. The climate is mild, without hard freezes, so things grow fast and big. The Chinese garden, designed in cooperation with a sister city in China, was particularly nice.

We went back to the meetinghouse, had dinner (including one more aftershock) and went to bed thoroughly tired. Next stop is Wellington.

Earthquake!

We just felt an earthquake!  We are in Marahau NZ and woken up just now by the bed shaking. It went on for a pretty long time.  Checked the web and there was a 6.6 quake quite a bit south of us.

Update the next day: the epicenter was a couple hundred miles south of us.  They now rate it at 7.4.  Tsunamis hit the east coast, but here on the north coast of the south island we were spared.

Steve

Here we are

In Fiji, sitting outside early in the morning. It's still cool enough to be comfortable in long pants. the sun is shining on the hills across the valley. It touched the tops first, and now covers the hillsides and is starting to shine on me. Birds are singing, though not especially melodiously. Buses and trucks rumble by on the road in the valley once every few minutes. Many trucks carrying sugar cane; it's harvest season. On the way out here from the airport we saw a sugar cane train. The engine and cars were small, almost like a backyard railway. The rails are only 2 feet apart. But the train was plenty long!

We're staying at a hillside resort a little ways outside of Nadi. We just got here yesterday but it feels like a week ago. The flight was long - almost 11 hours - but we did manage to sleep.

Yesterday we went on a hike in a rainforest. It was great but totally exhausting! First, we had to get there, about 4km away. We started walking down the hot dusty road, in the sun, and without sunscreen because we'd forgotten it.  I said "this is going to be too much, let's go back" but just then a bus came by. We hopped on and rattled down the road. They dropped us at a side road and we started down it. It was pretty far, maybe a mile, and we weren't sure just where this place was, but we did find it. They wanted 20 Fiji dollars each for the hike, but only 10 more for a guide, so we hired a guide, who was a woman in her 30s. She brought along 3 sisters, or maybe nieces, and an impressive machete.

Our goal was a waterfall up in the hills somewhere. She led us up via the "short cut", which was a narrow and arduous track, often clambering over rocks. But, as Suzanne pointed out later,  those women moved like dancers, placing their feet in just the right spots with no hesitation, and giving us a hand up when we could use it. Sometimes the sun shone, and it was hot. Sometimes it was cloudy, which was a relief. And a few time it rained, but never hard enough to be unpleasant.
All the while we talked about all kinds of things, and learned about each others lives. I feel grateful to have opportunities to connect across cultures like this.

The waterfall was nice, tho nothing to awe someone from the finger lakes. The three young women jumped into the pool and swam. They knocked some fruit off a tree that looked like mangoes but tasted more like apples.

We did not take the short cut back, but walked on a broader path and then a road. Much easier but less interesting. They found a mango tree and managed to knock down some fruit, which were ripe and very welcome.

Heading back to the main road, the people in the houses would wave to us and shout "Bula" (hello) as we passed. At one house, three small boys and their mother came out and we shook hands.

At the end we were so exhausted that we called for a taxi rather than wait for a bus. Next time I will try to have more water, some food, and sunscreen. But we were only a little sunburned, and we had an experience we will not soon forget.

Steve