Today was a busy day to say the least. I woke up around 530am Fijian time, still a little jetlagged, ready to start my day. We had breakfast at 7 at Ohana, the usual, I ate a piece of toast and cereal. At 830 we moved out and brought down our luggage, ready to depart for Suva. We had a bit of a debriefing meeting to find out about the welcoming ceremony that we would partake in once we got to Suva. We learned about the Kava we’d drink, and how to sit and act during the ceremony. After we had our itinerary planned out, we boarded the bus and left for our trip to the sand dunes. Once we got their we met our tour guides, we had a choice of either doing a 1hour trek or a 2hour trek, being that it was so hot our first instinct was to lean towards that 1hr trek, but thankfully we decided to go for the two hours. The sights we absolutely incredible, words cannot describe, nor could pictures capture how phenomenal the views were. We hiked through the woods, up a series of hills until we finally reached the sand dunes. We took pictures, took in the sights, and then slid down (literally). We walked back along the beach barefoot, making sure to let the waves hit us in attempt to cool down a little; it was amazing. Once we made it back to the bus we attempted to empty all of the sand out of our shoes, clothes, ears, etcetera. I’m pretty sure that I will always have some of that sand in my sneakers, but I’m not mad about it.
We boarded the bus around 12:30, ready for lunch. After a 20 minute bus ride we came to an inn on the water where we ate lunch and watched the super bowl, yes, the super bowl. The food was great, but the sights and company were even better. I absolutely love everything about this experience so far, it truly is once in a lifetime. After lunch we boarded the bus again for our 2 hour drive to Suva. The bus we were on is no ordinary bus; all of the windows are open, and they drive with the doors open.. OH and they drive on the WRONG side of the road, with the steering wheel on the opposite drive. Honestly, the drivers here are worse than NY drivers, they will ride your bumper and pass you if they feel that you aren’t driving fast enough haha. But the drive was exceptional; we drove along the shore the entire way so there was always something to see.
We arrived in Suva at the University of the South Pacific at about 4:30pm. We dropped off our luggage and headed to the welcoming ceremony. Although we couldn’t understand what was being said, the ceremony was powerful. Our chief gave a speech and we all drank some Kava, which is water mixed with ground root, which is actually kind of numbing to the mouth, but interesting haha. Some had seconds, I opted out.
After the ceremony we were introduced to our host families. Evy and I met Emily standing outside of her Ford truck. We drove home and met the rest of the family and they were so nice! We sat around and talked about Fiji, and where we were from, what we had been doing since we had been here, and life in general. We had dinner, which consisted of vegetable stir-fry in flour tortilla’s, which here is actually more of an Indian type cuisine than anything else. It was amazing; I went back for seconds. After dinner we sat around as a family and watched television, I actually wound up falling asleep sitting up because I was so tired, but I couldn’t have asked for a better day.
I have to add pictures when i can connect my camera!
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