It was nice to get away to Fiji for a short break but the veneer of the tourist trap of Denerau Island starts to wear thin after a while and the actuality of everyday living in such a nation becomes apparent when you leave the sheltered apparatus of the high class resorts and venture into the everyday life of this South Pacific country that many Aussies know so well.
I went to Fiji to attend the wedding of my nephew and it went off very well, the bride looking beautiful and the groom handsome and there was enough of an exotic feel to the situation that all involved felt privilged and happy to be in attendance. I was lucky enough to be able to stay for a few days afterwards and get out of the resort on a couple of occasions, enough to get a taste of the culture and form a opinion of the place through the small prism in which I found myself. I’m still not sure what to make of my experiences with the locals and I guess like everywhere else in the world good and bad comes in equal doses and the tropical location of Fiji is no exception.
I wrote down a few remarks in a journal on a couple of occasions and I will record my words here for anyone who may be interested in what I encountered on my trip to the South Seas. This is part 1.
Thursday, August 30, 2012, 10.00pm (Fiji Time)
A Long Day Closes
I’m ensconsed in an “Ocean Breeze” room in the Sheraton resort, Denerau Island, Nadi, Fiji.
It’s been a long day of travel. I never sleep well before a flight and last night was no exception. I was awake at 3.40am, 4.40am, 6.00am, progressively and that was enough to call time on bedroom living and make sure I am good to go with relevant travel documents, locked luggage and anything else I may require. No breakfast which is not unusual for me on such days. Airplane travel makes me skittish and the thought of forcing down toast and cereal makes me feel ill. Linda has no such reservations and seems an altogether more easygoing soul when it comes to these things than I am.
It could have turned into a hectic morning. Megan is doing work experience and I have been dropping her in Phillip everyday to Woden Plaza where she has been doing her time at SpecSavers.
This morning, whilst conveying her to her destination and thinking about the short turnover time we had in Sydney today, I lost concentration and almost rear-ended another car on the Sulwood Drive roundabout. That really would have made my morning! Luckily, I pulled up in time and made it home in one piece just before my father arrived to take us to the airport.
Getting to the airport in plenty of time I shuddered when I saw it written on my boarding pass that our Qantas service to Sydney would be operated by Eastlink services. I knew immeadiately what that meant. Our airplane would be a Dash 800 or something with such designation. Prop driven, likely to be thrown around like a rag doll who is a victim of a toddler’s tantrum in the high winds and turbulent air which was par for the course on today’s passge to KIngsford Smith airport.
The flight was a bit bumpy but threatened to get seriously narky as we did a huge loop out over open ocean to line up for landing. A bit of rock and rolling of which Elvis would have been proud and I’m looking about wondering why everyone but me appears calm and reserved. We are about to plunge into Botany Bay, our bloated bodies floating to the shore over the coming weeks, battered and broken, DNA being required to identify arms from legs and which head belongs to which torso. And everyone is calm!?
Ultimately we survived and LInda and I successfully made our Pacific Air connection with no problems.
The flight over was tedious. Odious children and ugly Australians were fore and aft of us and the Indian-Fijian girl squashed into the window seat beside me in her leather pants squirmed in her chair the whole way across. There didn’t seem to be enough room for her and the multitude of bags of duty free shopping in her posession yet she managed to successfully maintain her position, albeit with some apparent discomfort.
Finally we are here, free of Canberra’s freezing mornings for a few days at least. Every one of the locals we have met so far has been very friendly and the resort seems top notch. And so we begin our Fiji adventure and we are looking forward to a relaxing and enjoyable week.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 