The Fiji Islands by Daniele Somenzi

The Fiji Islands by Daniele Somenzi posted by iviaggididaniele [26/01/2009 11:25] Fiji Archipelago

The Air New Zealand Boeing 767 carries Nicola and me to the Fiji islands in the Pacific. We land in the morning and, as soon as we're outside the airport, we start asking around for a place to sleep.

So we load our 2 Graziella bikes onto the rental car we have for 24 hours, but we leave them packed; for the moment, with the car available, we don't intend to use them.

We head towards Lautoka, where we discover there's a well-defined area, complete with a barrier to get in, where luxury reigns: a hotel with every comfort, naturally for all the tourists arriving from Europe and the USA. I never understood why Fiji was so famous in Italy, given the distance, and it wasn't so for many nearby islands also at the same level, if not better, like the Cook Islands or Vanuatu.

And in these days of staying I try to understand it.

Here the high tide makes dozens and dozens of metres of beach disappear every day; Nicola and I walk down there at low tide and see thousands of little crabs with one big claw and one small one that patiently filter the sand with their mouths, extracting the vital supports for their existence. But when I approach they run into their little hole in the sand, where they also stay when the tide submerges them.

Tonight's hostel is very nice, a new little wooden house but with 4 bunk beds inside in a small space; it doesn't matter much, we say, since it's for males and females; in fact we discover there are a couple of girls, and this can only please us.

But we soon discover that they're unpleasant and we hate them to all intents, that evening, because they had no respect for us who were already sleeping when they came back late, turning on the room light in our faces and talking loudly.

That's why we always try to sleep isolated.

Since the 2 girls were staying several days, the next day we check out quickly; we want to sleep at night, and not give in to the rude ones and make ourselves bitter.

We take advantage of the car to visit the island, so we go first north and then south; from Nadi we head towards Suva, but at Sigatoka we decide not to go all the way to the capital — too far, and in any case we've got an idea of the island. Sugar cane plantations everywhere.

At the time of colonialism the English, who at the time held both India and the Fiji islands, deported Indian labour to this archipelago to work the sugar cane, since the locals weren't suited to this kind of work; but then, once the English invasion ended, after a generation, the Indians and their children born here couldn't be sent back to India — too much time had passed — so even today half the population is local and half Indian.

And since the Indians have greater entrepreneurial skills than the Fijians, they soon took the reins of the country in hand, and so there was even a kind of revolt when the elected prime minister was an Indian. The Australian Queen's army intervened to pacify tempers then.

Anyway, here too we understand that outside the tourist villages, as on all the Pacific islands except Hawaii, poverty and degradation reign. And what I say is said by a disinterested person who has eyes to see. And so far I have visited: New Caledonia, Polynesia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Micronesia at Pohnpei and Palau, and finally the Marshall Islands. And even in Guam there are poor parts, though American.

While we have the car, we go to the small port from where the little ships regularly depart for the Yasawa islands, for mini cruises of 3 and 7 days.

Nicola and I decide to go the next day on the ship of the Thomas Cook company, an Australian company operating here in Fiji.

We sleep that night in an isolated hostel and discover that in the big dorms full of bunk beds there's no one, very good. We ask whether they'll keep the 2 bikes for the period of the cruise, promising to come back there to sleep when we return.

The Thomas Cook people come to pick us up with a minibus and take us to the port for boarding, very good.

Here it's a whole other story; as soon as we're on board, the whole Fijian crew welcomes us, putting flower garlands around our necks and greeting us one by one; our cabin has a terrace with a sea view. In the evening we see that at dinner we're about fifty and that we dine divided among large round tables, together with the other clients; indeed that evening the captain dines with us. A few minutes after the introductions, I crack jokes in English non-stop and everyone laughs. Nicola, who knows little English, is supported by my translation into Italian. He immediately spots the single girl from Perth and would like to get to know her better. But unfortunately, despite the evenings at the bar and various attempts at chatting her up throughout the cruise, she doesn't give in. A shame for him (but also for her).

That night the ship departs but stops shortly after an hour offshore, where it drops anchor. The route around the archipelago isn't much. After breakfast the next day we start doing the various excursions that will accompany us for all the days, namely going ashore with aluminium boats and swimming and snorkelling on the beautiful beaches surrounded by corals.

The second evening, on shore, we attend a typical Fijian dance; we dance with them too, and this just after eating a grilled fish, all included in the price.

Luck wills that throughout the cruise the weather is fairly good. Nicola takes the chance to do a dive with tanks, since he recently got certified; I don't feel up to it — snorkelling is more than enough and saving a hundred dollars is better.

The clients on board are few and everyone quickly gets to know each other, especially the staff, who one by one greet us, shaking our hands, when at the end of the cruise we go ashore. Their minibus takes us back to our hostel, where we assemble the 2 Graziellas and pedal into the centre of Nadi to send the usual postcard to Gilberto in Casalmaggiore and see a bit of what it's like. We quickly get out of the polluted chaos of the little town and return to the quiet of the hostel. The Indian owner of the hostel buys the 2 bikes from us so she can rent them to the hostel guests, on the day of our departure. No problem, since we didn't need them anymore. That evening we take a taxi to the airport, and this time a Boeing 747 jumbo is waiting to take us away.

bye bye