Wayasewa is Fiji

This is the mantra uttered on all the staff Sulus, or sarongs if you´d rather. Dive...Trek...This is Fiji. They wear these things, male and female, about 80% of the time all over the country. Very interesting and some of the tourists take to this style for their stay. This is usually fat, bald, white men that have turned red because of all the sun but i can see why the Fijians do it with all the heat they have to deal with year round. However i do remember that while in Sigatoka Mani had to buy socks because it was too cold and getting down to about 16 Celsius at night. That is a complete guess but it sounds somewhat accurate. This island is great and is where i spent the last half of my time in Fiji. Beautiful island about an hour and a half boat ride from the mainland but of course i couldn't do it the easy way and had to miss the hotel boat. That was alright though since i caught a supply boat headed for Kwata (island 1k from Wayasewa) and the guy said it would cost $10 which is much cheaper than the $60 that the resort charges. So my ride was about 4 hours long on the front of an overloaded boat holding onto diesel canisters. I met Sans on the ride over and he is the first Fijian that i met with dreads and only for that matter. He was going to school to be a carpenter and will graduate in winter. He seemed a good enough guy but tried to charge me $20 when i finally got off. I held strong and the original $10 worked out. We got some pix together and he really wanted one in front of the boat where we got one of us with our sunglasses switched. It was classic!! It of course worked out fabulously and since i was camping it didn't matter that the resort was full when i got there. They did give me quite a look and ask how i got there but i played it cool and ended up the big winner at this place.

The thing i like about Fiji is that you get 3 big ass meals where ever you stay. It´s quite nice not to have to cook for yourself and eat that many times a day with morning and afternoon tea of course. In Oz and NZ i was used to eating once or twice (jk mom) and that usually consisted of noodles or for the last 5 days in NZ eggs since i got 30 for 3.99. The Wayalailai resort was situated under some giant cliffs of rock that was supposedly loose enough for the govt to move the village but it was alright that tourists are under it i suppose. Since the tourists do keep arriving on the planes every day and are a highly replaceable (renewable) resource. This is their number one industry but all of the money is shipped out to American or Japanese firms. I decided to stay at a resort run and owned by locals. The village where they lived was literally 100m away from the resort and you could smell the burning rubbish and hear the roosters crowing.

There is some good diving and snorkeling out here with reef right off the beach. The snorkeling is difficult because you have to get about 50m off the beach and there is no clear path through the coral. This teaches you to swim in about 1.5ft of water without touching the coral (otherwise you get sliced like a razor to the jawbone). The corals were great and this is known as the soft coral capital of the world. The variety and colors down there were simply astonishing and with only a mask and snorkel i felt truly lucky. I was out for about an hour at a time and some of the beach goers thought i had been lost at sea since the typical in water time seemed to be about 20 minutes. The diving was quite nice as well and since i made friends with Joe the dive instructor my dives were free. They should have been $130FJ but nope not for this guy. Just gives me more money to spend on rum, kava, and stupid souvenirs. The dives were okay but really about like the snorkeling. Saw my first sea horse which was the bomb!!! I later saw another snorkeling but my first spot was my best and everyone was quite impressed. The current on the dives was interesting since there was none in Australia. You would come around a rock or mound of coral and the current would just sweep you away. Kind of fun but tiring and makes your dives shorter since you breathe more when you have to work. First somersault entry as well and it was off a pretty shoddy boat. The thing was canoe like with a motor on the back and the equipment was about the same. I talked to some folks beforehand and everyone said the stuff was fine and of course my dive class taught me to test the stuff myself.

Good hikes up to the big rock and the wobbling rock for sunsets and sunrises. And a 2.5 hour hike to cross the entire island. The first hike was with the mad Dutchman (self proclaimed as any madman would) and was quite slow but we stopped to take in all the vistas as is required when hiking a new place. On the way up he proceeds to tell me about living alone, what trouble womans are, and how the govt can and will screw you at every turn. This guy has been travelling his whole life with a few years on each continent and was actually on holiday in NZ and ended up there for the last 23 years or so. He is an electrical engineer and enjoys his alone time and invents things that he needs. Like a Kaymaran which is 2 kayaks put together like a catamaran so he and another could go together with plenty of gear around Stewart Island. Other on the spot items are a drawer dishwasher (this was for a company and is being sold worldwide), a gravity cat feeder (for this trip), a sweet as alarm system with barking dogs and sirens, etc, etc. He really thought a funny idea was to have the mailman sort the mail into real mail, advertisements, and hate mail. The latter would be burnt, the middle returned, and the former would give a reward to the mailman for bringing it. Something along those lines. Interesting fellow whose company and stories I quite enjoyed.

Participated in a swim race one day from Wayasewa to Kwata the island a little over 1k away and that's a long way to swim. Props to Matt for the triathlon stuff. I made it in about 30 minutes which seemed too long but i was powering through some good current and the whitecaps were filling my gut with sea water. Also got some good coral cuts on the other side which still aren´t healed about 2 weeks later. There was a boat following us asking if we were ok and of course i was because i am quite strong but it would have been so nice to be in that boat. Umm i think i need to get some exercise.

Other than that just layed on the beach and read and explored and played some cards and other games. I gave tours up to the rock at sunset since the resort charged $10 per person but i charged 1 beer per trip. I got quite a bit of business but usually got lost on the way down in the dark. You get what you pay for. Played some dominoes in the electric light till it went off at 930pm and had a good couple of nights on the kava. One night they did Fijian dances and singing which just looked ridiculously silly because i had seen all the dancers moments before in modern clothing and then they go and put on grass sulus. It was nice though and we had a lovo that night which is the traditional Fiji meal of buried and cooked meats with Kasava, Taro, and Pumpkin along with some other random stuff. This dude Rob who i was drinking kava with ended up trading his livestrong bracelet for a Nike respect bracelet and was quite distraught afterward because Lance is his sports hero. He figured it a good story but not worth it in the end. This place had a generator for electricity but it only ran from 630 to 930 at night which made it difficult to do anything but sleep at night. There were quite a few people around but after 930 they buzzed off into their rooms and i to my tent. I left the top open every night so that i could fall asleep looking at the stars and every night i woke to rain on my face and another scramble to pull the rain fly back on. Quite a bummer and one would think that i would learn but it was worth it for the breeze and good view whilst falling asleep.

The return trip was once again a problem with the propeller falling off the motor about halfway back to the mainland but it was a dual motor boat so we made it in just over 3 hours. Sweet as hey. Nadi sucked and i went to the airport for my first Fijian shower and it felt nice. Got on the plane and off to LA. I got stuck in the middle of some larger persons on the plane so i had to make up for it by drinking several rum and cokes. Seemed to work out well since i finally got a couple of hours of sleep. That's all folks.