Thursday, June 24, 2004

bula-licious

greetings from fiji! we're down to our last few hours here in the tropics... had a great time.

last week we were in a remote part of the country, the yasawa islands, site of the infamous lagoon where brooke shields lost her innocence. it was only a 2 hour ferry ride to the small island but we felt much further away than that when we were there. there was literally nothing to do but lay on the beach and play new zealand edition of trivial pursuit. even the kiwis couldn't answer most of the questions. the place was a very low key resort (our room was a "luxury" tent complete with mattress), the reception office had sand for a floor and the communal dining area was a big grass shack on the beach. there were one or two activities each day ranging from learning to tie a sarong to traditional song and dance show and a visit to the local village for fijian church services. we had no idea what was going on but we understood when
to put our money in the collection plate. at the aussie beach bbq there were party games with big ticket give-aways. we won a bottle of champagne after a blindfolded russell was able to identify rachel's knees in a lineup. party indeed. the snorkeling was absolutely incredible just right off the shore, beautiful reef and coral like we've never seen, nice tropical fish and a family of squids.

we spent the last few days in the southern "coral" coast of the main island. we rode the local bus to get down here, passing fields and fields of sugar cane. there's a fringing reef here about 100 yards offshore that breaks up all the waves and makes a tranquil bay-like lagoon for miles. underwater is a different story (a more appropriate name might have been the "dead-creepy-get-out-while-you-can-was-that-a-sea-snake?" coast) but from the beach you'd never know it. for whatever reason the resort we stayed at was virtually empty and we had the place all to ourselves.

today we went to a fijian zoo and saw endemic birds and iguanas, but the highlight was definitely the two fruit-bats getting it on. i think we might be permanently scarred.

tomorrow we're off for new zealand where it won't be 85 and sunny, but we're very excited. more adventure to come...

hope all is well with you all. happy summer!

much love and bula,
R&R.

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