Today was a kick back day. We just walked around Nelson, went to a beach for lunch and a short walk, and then took a drive back towards Picton. On the drive we took a gravel side road for about 4-miles up a mountain that offered some neat views and a bit of adventure. That evening we had the $5 Thai food for dinner and planned a trip to swim with the seals the next day.

Took the ferry from Wellington to Picton (on the South Island) and then drove to Nelson. It was a beautiful ferry ride. It took about 4-hours from loading the car to unloading. The drive to Nelson from Picton was on the most convoluted, windy road we've taken to date. It was gorgeous scenery but a very slow trip.

We had booked reservations at the Paradiso hostel. We found a Thai food trailer in the parking lot of the Paradiso. It comes by every evening to offer $5 Thai meals. That was good news for me! We both had Thai items from their $5 menu.

We met up with a young Canadian friend, Thomas, at the Paradiso. We had first met him in Fiji, later in Auckland and now in Nelson. We invited him to join our road trip for the remaining time in the South Island of New Zealand.

Later in the evening Thomas and John engaged in conversation while I tried out the hot tub and the sauna and met some of the other people staying at the hostel.

From Ohakune to Wellington
Today was another packing - moving day. As usual, got everything packed seven minutes before the 10:00 am checkout time, bought ice, got gas and made reservations for the ferry crossing to the South Island and for a night's stay at a hostel in Wellington.

John wanted to visit a "Lord of the Rings" filming site that was supposed to be very near to Ohakune. It turned out to be a beautiful drive. We missed the site on the way in and dead ended at a "closed for the summer" ski resort at the top of a mountain. The views were great with low lying clouds covering some of the hills in the distance. On the way down, we found the site we were looking for. It looked very much like the terrain from the film even before we found the sign for it - crystal clear water and in a beautiful stream. This is the site where Gollum was hunting for fish and also, a short distance off the stream, the site where Sam and Frodo had one of their scenes.

We started our journey to Wellington, deciding to take a route along the west coast. We stopped at very small town restaurant and got a hamburger, fish burger and a hugh newspaper of fries for about $6 US. The food was pretty good and, for the first time in my life, I left some fries cause there were so many!

I think our air conditioning has conked out in the car. Oh well, this time of year it shouldn't be too bad without it.

We checked into our hostel in Wellington. It's always interesting to see what they provide for you. This room has two bunk beds, a sink and a bathroom that is shared with another twin room. We have a window that, if we stick our head out, we can get a glimpse of Wellington harbor.

We made dinner tonight and it turned out quite well. Pasta, salad with "Paul Newman" balsamic vinegrete (sp?) dressing, garlic bread, and a real ginger sweet dessert that John discovered earlier in New Zealand. They have a communal kitchen with a walk-in refrigerator for your food, several gas stoves, microwaves, sinks, pots, pans and utensils.

We board our car on the ferry at 12:00 pm tomorrow and head for the ferry port at Picton and then drive on to Nelson where we plan to stay for the night.

Tongariro Crossing hike today... I woke at 6:15 a.m. to make my breakfast - scrambled eggs on toast, fruit flavored yogurt and a soft drink. I took a shower and forgot to wake up John first, so by the time I returned to the room we had 11-minutes until the bus left. Oops! John responded to the emergency and, after picking up a few other passengers, the bus returned for John.

Tongariro Crossing is a classic hike in New Zealand. You can do the 11-mile spectacular, but grueling hike in 7-8 hours. It crosses one of the newest volcanic areas in the world. It currently vents steam and sulphur fumes. The last eruption was a few years ago.

We started the hike with a low clouds hanging over us, but shortly they burned off. The sun came out and remained with us the rest of the day. The hike up provided awesome views of "Mt. Doom", the volcanic cone they used for "Mt. Doom" in the "Lord of the Rings" movies. The hike up the first part is quite taxing and a few people just turned around and walked back out, but the views as you climbed were wonderful. This brings you to the top of a large, flat crater, which we crossed. This provides some relief before the next climb to the highest point of the crossing. From the higest point there were awesome views of Mt. Doom, lime green lakes, and alien volcanic formations.

The weird thing was, the descent from the highest point was down a narrow ridge of steep, loose gravel and rocks. There were dropoffs on either side. We finally discovered that the best technique to descend was to jog down, digging in your heels and making short ski-like moves through the gravel as if it were snow. One you got the hang of it, it worked pretty well. It was still a very physically taxing maneuver and my knees were not quite up for it. I was in pain afterwards.

We took a rest at the bottom of the slope next to these lime green lakes and ate our PB & J sandwiches and drank water. It was quite beautiful. After a walk across another flat crator, we made our final climb to the rim and started the endless hike back to the pickup point. It's about 4-hours of hiking. It passes through several zones, the virtually plantless volcanic top, the grassy, bushy middle section, and finally the lower down semi-tropical forest.

Even though we were quite sore, it was a great hike! The weather couldn't have been better!

We left Rotorua for the Waitomo Glow Worm caves. I started driving, for the first time, in this left-handed driving rules country. Like John found, it takes a little while to get used to where to position the car within your lane. Because of the position of the steering wheel, on the opposite side of the car, everything look different. After scaring John a few times with being too close to the left hand side of the left hand lane, I kind of got the hang of it.

I'm sure John will update you on the Glow Worm Cave trip. I didn't take the tour this time.

We then headed for Tongariro National Park. We planned to do the Tongariro Crossing hike the next day, so we thought we'd explore part of the park. As we we're pulling in we saw scenic flights were available and decided to check them out. We ended up taking an awesome flight over the Tongariro Crossing mountain and around Mt. Doom. The cool thing about it was there were just the two of us on the same side of the plane so we constantly got to see the best views. The weather was crystal clear and the landscape was unearthly and very beautiful.

After the flight we checked out the park visitor center and took a short hike to a beautiful waterfall.

Rafting on the Kaituna River.
John went to Hobbiton today (in Matamata) while I booked a rafting trip on the Kaituna River. This is toted as having the largest vertical drop over a waterfall of any commerical rafting trip in the world. The river itself is very beautiful. It has steep walls covered with semitropical vegetation. It is also quite narrow. At one point we could have pinned our six man raft if we had turned it sideways. It is of volcanic origin, like most of NZ.

We stated off the trip with our guides saying a Maori prayer for safety and courage. We rafted through a 3-foot and then a 9-foot drop. Nine feet is basically the length of the raft, quite impressive in itself. The rafting guides said another prayer just before we did the 21-foot waterfall. That got my attention! I was in the very front and it just looked like you're going to become submarine for quite a while. Our guides were telling us to "smile" all the time. Take a look at the photo on the web site. The only one I see smiling was the girl in the back who fell out of the raft. It was really fun, just not the kind of "big grin" type of thing until after you successfully make the drop.

After the 21-foot drop we had a chance to "surf" a wave. This is where you get some extra people in the front of the raft, aggressively paddle into a small waterfall and catch the front of the boat into the falling water. It sucks the front of the boat down and brings the back of the raft about 5 or more feet out of the water. I'll have photos up of it later on.

It was a fanastic trip! And all in all, I think it is fairly safe. It was a pleasant change from some of the rivers in the southeastern USA where you have many rock hazards, undercuts, and some very aggressive water flow.

By the way, the water was at flood stage, if it was any higher they would not have been allowed to run the trip. In the case of this river, I think the higher water was a good thing!

After John returned from Hobbiton, we took a trip to a small game park and trout farm. The main reason I wanted to go there was that they had two lion cubs that they said you could "pet". We arrived an hour before closing and were able to enter a large cage with an attendant and one of the lion cubs out in the cage with us. There we five people initially, but soon there was just John and I and the attendant. We petted the 4-month old lion cub, called Aslan, who was exploring and doing his usual lion things. At one point I knelt down and the cub put both paws on my knee. That was an amazing experience! He tried nibbling at my wallet in my pants pocket, but the attendant quickly reprimanded the cub. The cub was so adorable, but also so huge compared to a domestic house cat. I guess he probably weighed about 50-pounds.

I was really glad I did this. They were raising the cubs for another zoo and said that once they reached 8-months they would no longer allow contact with the public.

We came back and we had dinner at a small "gourmet" burger restaurant. The burgers were actually very good! I had a egg, pineapple, hash brown, onion, pepper and tomato burger with plum sauce. Try to find that one in the US!

About 3-hours after dinner I discovered that I didn't have my camera and knew I had left it at the restaurant. It's just one of those sick feelings you never want to have while on a trip. I raced back to the restaurant, which had just closed and sneaked in the door. A really nice lady knew what I had come for and pulled out my camera bag from behind the counter. I was so thankful! I offered her a reward but she wouldn't take it. My hats off to another kind New Zealander, like others I have good fortune to met before!

Kayaking at Bay of Islands, The Big Trees - Kuira Trees
As usual, the frantic packing to make it out of the hostel before the 10:00 am checkout time. We drove a few blocks to the beach at Paihia to a kayak rental place and rented a two person touring kayak for 2-hours. A touring kayak has a rudder which makes it a lot easier to steer and also have real back rests. John and I paddled out to three different small islands, getting off and exploring two of them and also tried to make it to a waterfall that was up a river that came into the Bay of Islands. We paddled a ways up the river. I imagine it was there somewhere, but we just didn't have time to make to it and get on the road at a reasonable time. It was still a beautiful paddle!

We decided to head back on the west side of the North Island to see the giant Kuira trees. They're really quite impressive. John has a good and accurate description of them so please check his blog to get the details.

As an added treat, we found a free park on a point of land that went out into the ocean that was quite fascinating. It had steep cliffs, sandstone trails, lots of interesting vegetation, and gorgeous views of a blue-green bay. It was quite cool!

We continued on back to Auckland to our familiar hostel, Auckland Central Backpacker. A friend I had met earlier picked me up to explore some of Auckland, including a park called "One Tree Hill" that has a great nightime view of Auckland Harbor.

In Paihia. I called to book a boat trip for the following day, but they had a cancellation today, so I took it. We just had 25-minutes for John and I to get ready and be down at the dock. It was a beautiful day. We toured some of the inner and outer islands in the "Bay of Islands" and then headed out to "Hole in the Rock". This is a large rock with a hole in it bigger enough for a tour boat like ours to make it trhough, under the right conditions. I would guess our tour boat could hold about 100-people. Unfortunately the swells were too big for us to make it through, but John and I did get some spectacular pictures of the hole with the waves coming through it.

We stopped at a beautiful Island for lunch and got to spent 1 1/2 hours there. They have snorkeling gear in case we were able to "swim with the dolphins", so I tried it on on beach and a surrounding beach. The water was "refreshing" as they say. After being in Fiji water for a month, it was quite brisk. The visibility was poor, but the beauty on the land part of the island made up for it.

John and I took a hike following sheep paths (sometimes teh sheep were on it right in front of us!). There were some great views of our bay and surround ones. Photos will be available on our web site.

After the lunch and the island stop, the captain lowered a large net that slightly dipped into the water and let us jump in in and be dragged through the water. Like a kindler, gentler form of being keel hauled! It was quite a lot of fun. The captain would reverse engines from time to time and everyone would get pigpiled to one end or the other of the net. John has some pics that'll be on the web.

After that we search for dolphins. We, and other boats had not seen any in the morning. We were the first to find a pod in the afternoon. We think there were about 40-dolphins! Because they had young we were not able to swim with them, but they performed some amazing acrobatics in the open ocean for us! I used teh video capture mode of my camera to get some footage. I'm pleased with it and hope to have it posted on our web site.

We rented a car in Auckland today and John took on the task of driving in this left-hand driving country. He did a good job, though in the beginning he was frightfully close to the left side of the left lane.! We made a 4-hour drive fom Auckland up north to Paihia. Paihia is a small tourist town in the middle of the "Bay of Islands". Aptly named, there are lots of islands. We plan to rent a sea kayak and tour some of the nearer islands. Tomorrow we will probably take a boat cruise to some of the further islands.

Auckland Update... I'm very happy to be in New Zealand again. I defintely can use the cooler temperatures and a return to the trappings of civilization. It's taken two days to restock, do laundry, and try to figure where we're going in NZ and how. I've reserved a car to rent for 27-days here. We pick it up tomorrow and head up north to Paihia. We made reservations at the Centabay Resort for two nights and will be figuring out what we do there when we get there. I've volunteered John as the first designated driver to practice left-hand side of the road driving. Insurance has a $1,500 U.S. deductable which you leave as a deposit on your credit card. I am choosing the additional $7/day coverage that reduces your total out of pocket costs in case of accident to about $150 U.S., since neither of us are experienced "other side" drivers. I think gas costs are about $6/gallon. It may turn out the cost of the gas for the car is more than the cost of the car rental. I'm looking forward to this 27-day road trip, including a ferry crossing from the North to the South Island. Should be an adventure!

We're planning a little night on the town this evening. This is probably the biggest city we'll be seeing for quite a while!

Second day in Auckland, NZ ...
Today was mainly a shopping day, but also included a short walk through the pier area of Auckland harbor. We had generated a wishlist of items and had also been traveling enough to need restocking of some items. Amazing how long it takes to find all the different types of things, compare prices, and purchase them. Auckland was actually a nice, clean city to do it in.

After purchasing most of our items, we ran into Thomas near the dock area and took some time to sight see along the piers of the harbor. I spotted a small penguin swimming near the pier and fortunately John and Thomas saw it as well. Otherwise I don't think either of them would have believed me. The penguin was chasing and catching small fish. He was quite fun to watch. A photo of the penguin should be up on the web site shortly.

Auckland harbor is filled with beautiful sailboats, some awesome pleasure boats and sleek tour vessels. I was trying to convince John he should take the offer we saw for free 7-10 day passage to Australia if he volunteered to crew on the historic sail boat making the crossing, but he just wasn't gonna go for it!

We made good use of the excellent Internet access and answered email, reviewed and emailed photos to my cousin for posting on the web site and took care of financial matters though our PC banking accounts. The Internet is our "home away from home". The PCs here are very fast, have card readers for 4-different types of camera memory cards, a CD burner, accessible USB ports, headphones for audio, and they all have small PC type video cameras! What more could you ask for? (Maybe if they were free to use?) Actually the rate here isn't too bad, about $3/hr NZ or about $2 U.S. The same card you use for the Internet also works as a international phone card. Pretty slick! (Please excuse my moment of geekness!)

We also did laundry. Mundane, but definetly necessary when you're travelling with three T-shirts and two pairs of pants and all of them are dirty!

We went out for a few drinks with a new friend we met who works at ACB, since he wasn't going to be around this weekend. I discovered "Lion Red" beer (on tap), which was refreshing good, especially after the "Fiji Bitter" that was the mainstay of Fiji.

By the way. John's sick of me bitching about Fiji. We have some fundamental differences about our experience there. I thought it was way too expensive for what it was. I can't help but compare it to Thailand, which I've always found to be exotic, cheap and friendly. New Zealand is definetly more expensive than Fiji. But it's appropriate for the service and quality you get. Whatever, I'm sure it's not the first time we will have differing opionions.

Leaving Fiji ... First evening in New Zealand...
We packed all our stuff for the umpteenth time. This time to make the flight to Auckland, New Zealand from Fiji. Turned out to be a nice sunny day in Nadi. We got to the airport early and I tracked down the Air Pacific office to see if our reimbursement for our lost luggage would actually happen. Amazingly it did! I had receipts and all and the lady at the office returned with $200 FJ dollars (About $120 U.S.) New Zealand is very strick on importing any type of food, so we either ate or ditched whatever was foodlike on the plane. It was a nice 3 1/2 hour flight. Even got a hot meal (fish curry for me)! Not a lot except water in between Fiji and New Zealand.

We checked out transport to Auckland Central Backpackers and had a choice between a private van shuttle for $39 or two $13 airport-city bus tickets. We opted for the bus. Took a while to get into Auckland proper due to quite a traffic snarl because of construction.

Auckland Central Backpackers, or ACB as I'll refer to it from now on, is huge! It's at least an 8-story building with hundreds of rooms, dorms, and large facilities for backpackers, like a huge kitchen (with utensils, pots, pans, sinks, stoves), a 6-washer, 10-dryer laundry and a 25-terminal fast-access Internet cafe. The check-in desk sometimes looks like Grand Central.

We found an Asia fast food court a few hundred feet away and were served a hugh plate of rice and soup for a very reasonable price. We had the leftovers for dinner the next night. We haven't made the transition to cooking our own food yet, but who knows?

We ran into one of our new friends from Fiji, Peter, in Nadi and he ended up staying at ACB as well. He was just going to be in New Zealand for six days so he was pretty busy planning while he was here. We also met Thomas, a Canadian friend we had met on the first days of our trip in Nadi. It was great to see him again and hear of his adventures and mis-adventures on Fiji.

We actually hit the sack fairly early on the first evening in Auckland. Somehow the travel/flight things kind of wears you out.

2nd day at Tubakula Beach Bungalows
We packed up our things in preparation for going back to Nadi in the afternoon. Breakfast was egg on toast, one of my favorites! We took a morning snorkel in the bay in front of the bungalows. It's amazing how beautiful and interesting the fish are when you're snorkeling! I saw the complete body of a moray eel swimming near the coral. Usually you just see a part of it's body peeking out from a hole in the coral. This one was the Full Monty!

The tide was quite low and we were skimming over some of the weeds on the coral at times. The best thing was that we were so close to the surface that the colors of the fish were absolutely brilliant! There were so many flourscent blue fish that they were the "common" fish.

On the other side of the coin, the sea worms are some of the ugliest creatures I've ever seen. I guess they're the ocean floor garbage collectors. They look like moving intestines with a grotesque tentacled mouths. I hope I never step on one of these things!

John waded out in the bay later on with his camera and took some neat photos of all types of sea critters from the surface, including a moray eel.

Lunch was Spagetti Bolognaise for John, kind of very dry spagetti with meat and carrots with a dash of sauce. I had the vegetarian dish - Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Herbs. Mine wasn't too bad, though Prego and Ragu have nothing to worry about from Fiji!

We had been told the bus to Nadi comes by about every half hour. In actuality, shortly after noontime when we were ready to take it, the next bus wasn't due until 2:30 p.m. Oh well, "Fiji Time" gets us again!

The bus had "Fiji A/C" which means no A/C but all the windows were open. It was a nice ride from the bungalows to Nadi. We hit the ATM in Nadi, bought some soft drinks and caught the 5 pm local bus ($0.60) to our lodging for the evening, the Beach Escape Villas. The villas were pretty nice. They had good AC, a refrigerator and full kitchen facilities (no microwave). The only issue with ours was it didn't have the A/C remote control. This might seem like a luxury, except that there were no identifiable controls on the A/C unit itself. It was running full bore and later in the evening we didn't have enough "blanket" to keep us warm. Had to shut if off "cold turkey" so to speak.

We had learned out lesson at the Villas, the lodging value was quite good, but the serving of meals at their restaurant led one to believe that every meal was made individally from scratch. This may sound like a good idea, but when you wait an hour or more to get your meals, it kind of blows any other plans you had for the evening. We ate at another hostel and were able to spend some time trying to catch up on Internet stuff, like trying to get our U.S. ticket agent to send us the tickets we would need before leaving for Australia.

By the way, I had a "banana split" which consisted of three scoops of Vanilla ice cream surrounded by a quartered banana. No sauce. Is that you're definition of what a banana split is? Oh well, it wasn't bad. Who can complain about ice cream? And it was supposed to come with a saucew per it's description. I just didn't want to ask her about it and have her come back with sauce floating on a cup of milk. Ice cream doesn't last long in solid state in Fiji!

Our taxi driver was a young Fijian Indian (family from India) man. He said his brother worked in New Zealand. When we asked if he might visit him he said it was extremely difficult for a Fijian Indian to get a visa to New Zealand. I don't know what that's all about.

Forcing myself to make a blog entry. I'm quite overwhelmed with how far behind I've gotten in my blog entries. I apologize. I was out of touch with the Internet for two weeks and at the end of it got violently ill. The global term is "Delhi Belly", a kind of stomach/intestinal thing that I may have gotten from water/food who knows what. I tried the "let is pass through" for a few days remedy and then I went to a medical clinic and was given antibiotics. Those took care of it in a kind of all out stomach battle. I totally recovered now, and hopefully a little more resistant.

Fiji has been mostly enjoyable, but it's probably not one of my favorite places. It's not really all that exotic, it's expensive, and it's a weird mix of very laid back for the locals who are on "Fiji Time", while being very rigid on the tourists. When they say check out is at 10:00 a.m., I found two people at the door of my buree at 10:00 on the dot when I was sick and running a little late. At the beachhouse they have two dinner choices which your supposed to select by 5 pm. The day we went to Kula Park we were late reserving a dinner choice, so we had no dinner that night!

The Fijian people are quite friendly and fair while the some of the Indian Fijians are quite ruthless business people, charging as much as possible, and harrassing you to come into a shop and buy something.

I guess I'm a little frustrated in Fiji. Maybe I just haven't been in a place to be receptive to really meeting some of the local people. I don't know. I 've felt so far that everythings been a paid performance. I've felt like a tourist. I'd rather be a traveller than a tourist and that hasn't happened here.

Don't get me wrong. I've had a good time. I love beaches, water, snorkeling, sunsets, hiking and I've really loved meeting other travellers. I just haven't felt like I've connected with any of the native Fijians. Some of them have been really nice, just haven't really connected.

Colo-i-Suva Park
Yesterday, Saturday was market day, the busiest day of the week. Today it is very quite. Sunday most things are closed. No Internet access available. Most stores were closed. Lots of local people attend church on Sunday. We planned to take the bus to Colo-i-Suva Park. Beforehand we picked up some lunch from the local market shops. I had a roti wrap with "tinned tuna" and Indian curry and vegetables. It was quite good. It was so good I had a second one.

The local bus took about 45-minutes to make it the 11-km to the park. There were lots of stops. Local people can ring the bell and be dropped off right in front of their homes.

The park itself is very beautiful. It was about 1.5-miles hike in the road to the beginning of the trails. A couple of vehicles passed us, but that was it in terms of traffic.

The trails were filled with crushed rock or cut in the stone. There were handrails where necessary, made of local materials. John leaned on one and broke it on one of the small bridges. It was very lush tropical forest vegetation. Not a lot of light penetared in. There were upper and lower pools. The lower pool had a wonderful rope swing which the locals were using to the fullest extent. John and I had fun trying it out, though we never quite mastered the flying arts of some of local "human flying torpedos". The water was refreshing and it was a placed used by all ages of people. Pretty neat! We spend a few hours there before hiking out.

While waiting for the bus with a couple of Fijians, a local resident stopped and offered us a ride. He was a really nice gentleman who spoke English and fluent Fijian. He was really excited, as most of the other Fijians, about the Rugby playoffs. Fiji had just beaten the Argentinians. He dropped of the other Fijians and then asked us if he minded if he made a stop to pcik up a newspaper, which of course, we didn't. He left us and the keys in the car, and when he came out he had three very cold soft drinks and offered them to us, he'd take whatever we didn't choose. That was so sweeeet! After the 1.5-mile hike out of the forest an ice cold drink was heaven! He co-owned a company that did materials estimating. His services were now so much in demand that his firm couldn't keep up with number of proposals they received. He wasn't complaining about that. A few years earlier after the coup, he barely had enough work to survive. He dropped us off at our hotel and refused any reimbursement for gas. That was very nice of him!

That evening we had a lot of rain. I think John journaled. I reviewed my photos on the TV in our room and then watched a National Geographic special on rafting through unexplored rivers of northern Africa until I finally fell asleep sometime during it. That was a long special!

2nd Day in Suva
John organized the "self-guided" City tour for us today from the Fiji Lonely Planet guide. I was limping most of the day. The dancing from previous night had re-awoken a knee injury, I think I still have a torn miniscus in my knee cap that gets irritated when I pound it too hard. We started at the marketplace, which was a bit overwhelming. How can there be so great a variety of food in the market and so slim a choice when you go out to eat? Still don't understand that... I felt a bit frustrated seeing all the food but not really knowing how to cook or use any of it. Later in the day I made a bold move and bought a bunch of bananas (13) for $0.60. I think I ate all but three or four before they went bad. They were quite good, though the skins look pretty sketchy on the outside.

There was a huge cruise ship, the Pacific Sun, in the harbor. Most of the vendors and taxi drivers thought we were part of that group. I guess I should have taken that as quite an insult. Me, a world traveller, being mistaken for a plush cruise ship aristocrat? LOL (Laugh Out Loud)
At one point it worked to our advantage. A pushy taxi driver asked if we were on the 5 or the 6 o'clock boat. I told him the five so that he didn't try to sell me any of his personal taxi tour ideas.

We had lunch at a local food court. John's meat-bearing rice plate was from the buffet table. Because mine was vegetarian, they had to make it fresh. It was much better! I gave him a lot of my rice. They had given me a huge amount.

We made it to the Fiji Museum. It was quite interesting and not too big. Part of it was had A/C, thankfully. A lot of the Fijian history isn't all that pretty. They were originally cannibals, who made things out of the leftover human bones. They had a fork specifically for eating human flesh. They built huge ships, called Drua, some up to 300 feet long and rolled them into the ocean using the bodies of human slaves as rollers. I think they're a lot friendlier than that these days.But when eating with Fijians it's always wise to be aware of what type of fork they set at their own table setting.

They also had a piece of the shipwreck of the ship the Bounty of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame.

They had a botanical garden as well that had fallen into pitiful state of neglect. The trees themselves were astounding. Huge with multiple species growing amoung the branches. But everything was overgrown and labels were tattered or completely missing. We were entertained by a mongoose who inhabited a tree in the garden.

It was hot after touring the garden and the predatory Indian taxi drivers were everywhere. They would slowly trail us as we walked and point out how very hot it was and didn't we really want a lift in their taxi? We opted to walk to the main road to get a taxi. A taxi U-turned to pick us up. We negotiated some, but still ended up paying more than double what we should have. I didn't realize how very close we were to where we were going. The taxi who picked us up didn't have a meter. We paid $4 for a ride that by the meter should have been $1.50. Not a big loss, but a learning experience for the future. Note the split in culture between the Indian Fijians and the native Fijians. The natives set a price, usually reasonable, and most often stick with it and refuse to negotiate. The Indians generally propose an outrageous price and then may bargain with you to something more reasonable.

That evening we ended up watching a quirky, Indian love story Bollywood movie. It was quite entertaining and actually caught us several times with clever plot twists that we didn't predict. It was on one of the four channels available in Fiji. One appears to have a lot of Indian programming, two are sport channels, and the last plays a wide variety of international programs and has the local Fijian news.