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You know that moment of realisation? The point at which you find yourself halfway up a rock face with no rope? When you start shouting at your computer before realising the whole office is watching you? The type of monumental dawning of the truth that male ballet dancers must get from time to time while wearing a leotard and doing the splits in front of 10,000 people...
Well, that´s pretty much the way we felt as we stood behind the door of our 5 bed dorm room on the stunning island of Waya in Fiji having just donned our outfits for the new year celebrations. While the whole island had been requested to dress up, with rooms ranging from $20 to $1000 a night on this tiny island of about 80 guests, our initial enthusiasm had subsided and we weren´t all that sure how well the request would be met...would we be the only ones wearing these ridiculous outfits?
We nudged the door open and eyed the bar where people in normal clothes sat drinking their cocktails, around the pool some people were still unmoved from their long day of lounging. Oh dear, we thought, oh dear, as we walked to the bar trying to look as normal as you can in a grass skirt and coconut bra. To make matters worse we ordered cocktails with umbrellas in.
Thankfully, a big group came dancing out of the large dorm room on the island not 5 minutes later, wearing their stuff. Soon, people were slipping off to their rooms with courage summoned by the joint powers of alcohol and peer group pressure to get themselves out of their trousers and into their grass skirts.
So, We´ve got a little ahead of ourselves, time to explain the whole grass skirt thing. We had made it to Fiji on a short hop from Australia and spent a night in Nadi, not a great place, before boarding the boat to one of Fiji´s 300 islands we had chosen through chance. The boat got no more than 5 mins away from the mainland and already the water was a perfect blue. As we progressed through the hour and a half trip we passed a couple of small, mountainous islands looking more like film special effects than reality due to their picturesque beauty.
Finally, we drifted into the crescent shaped bay of our new island home and as the waves lapped us into shore a bell rang, eliciting a stream of local Fijian staff from all parts of the resort to run down onto the beach. Some carrying flowers, some with guitars, they started up a song to welcome us to their island. This type of welcome is a tradition in Fiji and the staff at the resort all still live on the island. The island is theirs and it is their village chief who allows the resorts access to only parts of the islands and sets the ground rules. Despite the daily trickle of tourists on and off the island they are genuinely pleased to see people coming so far to visit them. The song finished with a loud ´Bula´, the Fijian welcome (literal translation is ´life´, so a bit like wishing someone good health). We had been warned on the boat, `no Bula, no room` so we all stood up and shouted back in return, rocking the little speedboat from side to side.
The island is a stunner. However, just our luck, cyclone Mick had hit the island group (called the Yassawa group) less than 3 weeks before. This had torn most of the foliage from the forest of trees enclosing the resort on the island and had ripped the thatched roofs from many of the huts (Bures). The villagers had all clubbed together to come accross and patch things up though and had miraculously managed to make everything, bar the trees, look good as new.
The warm welcome continued when, just before dinner, a traditional Kava ceremony began. Kava is drunk throughought the Pacific - it´s a member of the pepper family. In Fiji they grind the dried root into a powder then strain cold water through it, it is then drunk from a half coconut shell called a bilo. The ceremony involves sitting down in a circle around a huge bowl of the prepared liquid. The Fijian welcoming leader then fills the bilo with the kava and holds it out to you - if you want to accept it you clap once, shout bula, drink it down in one go and then clap three more times as a sign of respect. This goes round and round the circle. Lots of people say that the taste is one of muddy water but it isn´t althought it certainly looks like that and perhaps it is the expectation of taste that makes people say this so frequently. It really tastes a little like diluted red peppercorns, peppery, spicy and sweet. After a couple of bowls your mouth and lips go tingly and numb and apparently after a few hours you can end up feeling quite drunk. That said, the islanders keep the kava delibrately weak for us tourists and as such you would need about 60 bowls full before getting a little wobby on your feet.
The island is one of the most relaxing and friendly places either of us has ever been. The beach is beautiful and easily big enough to spread the 80 or so guests very thinly. The water is blue and crystal clear most days. Within 20 metres or so of shore the coral is plentiful and complex with shoals of small fish as well as plenty of larger fish out for lunch. The water near the shore is anything from 2 metres to 12 metres deep so you can go paddling or diving down deep depending on what you fancy. Each day, lunch is served up - all freshly cooked to order with loads of choice - kokoda (a traditional pacific island mix of raw fish cured in lime, coconut milk and mixed with onions and peppers), freshly caught walu fish fillet served grilled or as a burger with a homemade onion chutney, fish and chips, homemade beef burgers, fresh salads, cocunut marinated chicken...all delicious. The dining room is a big open sided room on the beach with big, rectangular 8 person tables set right into the sand so you don´t have to worry about getting the floor dirty and has the added benefit of giving you the chance to meet new people each day at the communal tables.
We therefore ate, relaxed and went SCUBA diving a few times, the first dive was a disappointment as the visibility was still poor from the cyclone but this settled a few days later and we went on a great dive through canyons and along a spectacular coral wall which fell off to about 60 metres where we saw one blacktip and two white tip sharks emerging from at various points.
Then, of course, came the reason we were there, new years eve and given where we were we were to be pretty much the first people in the world to see 2010. This meant fancy dress and with the whole island dressed up for the occasion we had an amazing new year celebration led by, apparently, Fiji´s number one band which drew in all the locals from the nearby village. New year was therefore spent listening to music, being shown how to do a Fijian war dance, chatting to the locals who sat in their circles around Kava bowls all night (the Chief has declared that the local villagers are not allowed to drink in the resort and as such they stick to the Kava) and watching the fireworks at midnight. There was also some raspberry vodka. This, I would rather forget about.
The other thing to point out is that Fijians are massive. It´s like the free weights corner of the local gym where all the bodybuilders hang out. The difference is, the guys here are happy to walk around with flowers in their hair and wear traditional wrap around brightly coloured, floral skirts. That meant that while us westerners walked around with our skinny little white bodies on show in our grass skirts we looked particularly pathetic next to the massive locals...so glad I never had to play rugby against a visiting Fijian school...
So, we left our 5 bed bure a week after we arrived having had a personal goodbye song sung to us around the Kava bowl the night before. This the locals sang to us in Fijian before re-singing a verse in English. They explained to us how important it was for them to welcome each person to the island as a genuine guest of theirs and to say goodbye properly. Traditionally, once they had been visited they would often have the favour returned by their guest but now they know this is not going to happen with people coming from all over the world. They say in their leaving song that they would like to visit us one day but they know it is so far away and ask:
´don´t forget us when you are far away´.
We won't. In fact, I doubt I´ll think of very much else if and when I´m back at my desk working out a financial covenant definition or correcting the finer details of a 200 page loan agreement...
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