(written on the 16th from notes taken previously)
Quite the eventful day today!
Despite not having an alarm, I was up and out of our little dorm room before anyone else had even gotten up (of course, part of the speed at which I was able to leave was a result of having packed everything up last night 🙃).
I brought all my stuff to the lounge area of the main building, an open air restaurant/front desk/game room/lounge area.
With absolutely zero connection with the rest of the world, and continuing to be completely unprepared for such circumstances, I just sort of wandered around and waited for time to pass with only my mind and legs to keep myself occupied. 🙃
Having chosen another day of snorkeling, I wasn’t stressed much by the fact that I couldn’t tell time, as I had other flatmates who were going on the same trip as I was, and I was already awake anyway, so it would be pretty much impossible to miss the shuttle from our accommodations over to the dive center.
It was more just… wandering around to pass the time, and then once other people got up, it was feeling awkward, like a bother to others, trying to make conversation with them.
With some people, conversation is super easy, and with others, I just… feel like I’m bothering them.
I chose not to eat breakfast, as I was afraid of needing to use Micro John on the boat or in the ocean, neither of which even had a Micro John.
The lady running the dive shop said that was actually the first thing she removed from the boat was the toilet because they only do two tank dives, so she figured there was no sense in taking up that space on the boat, nor did she want the responsibility of having to dispose of other people’s waste. 🙃
Can’t say I blame her, but boy, it would be nice to have the comfort of a bathroom on board.
Perks of getting older. 🙃
She did tell me that in an absolute emergency, one can just use the ocean like every other creature in the ocean does. 😅
The shuttle to the dive shop came and picked us up, I think five of us from the same resort/hotel/motel thing going together?
I noticed while scratching the top of my head, that my scalp was burned.
😶
Never in a million years would I have expected that I would get a sunburn on my scalp, but I guess snorkeling out in the ocean with the same spot open to the sun the whole time with my hair plastered against my scalp opened me up for a pretty good burn up there.
Oops. 🙃
It was a simpler process for me today, as I had been there yesterday, so I didn’t have to fill anything out, and just paid my money.
They even remembered the size of fins that I used yesterday, so I was all set to go.
It was fun to be out there with some of the same people as yesterday, like the two older ladies. It was also fun to be there with the Belgian couple whom I’d met on my way to The Blue Lagoon resort in the Yasawas.
I was a little nervous, hoping they would enjoy the experience at Rainbow reef and with this particular diving company, as my suggestions played a part in their decisions, and I always want people to have a great time and not be let down by my suggestions, if taken.
Day two of snorkeling had similarities, such as the boat having engine issues just trying to get us out to the reef. Today’s issues were actually a lot worse than yesterday’s, and some of us wondered if they were even going to get the boat started after it died a few times after we were well out into the ocean.
It had died, of course, many times yesterday, but never as badly as today. 😅
Eventually, they were able to get it started and going and were able to keep it going, but it put us a fair bit later getting started with the dives than normal, and I with a looming afternoon flight back to Nadi to catch. 🙃
If I remember correctly, there they mentioned today that there are something like 100 different named dive spots along the reef, and my first snorkeling trip today was in the area known as the Zoo.
I had a different guide today than yesterday, and I didn’t have a very good experience with him on the first dive. When we dropped into the water, instead of snorkeling along the reef, he kept heading out into Open Water where there was nothing to see.
I didn’t understand what was going on, and I eventually got frustrated enough that I just left him and started exploring on my own.
It seemed as though he was treating the trip as sort of babysitting, hanging around while I explored.
It was quite different from yesterday’s experience of my guide leading me along and pointing out different creatures–the sea turtle, various fish and coral species, etc., as we went along.
If I were to rank the three trips to that point, this third one was the worst in terms of experience with the guide, but probably right in the middle of the three in terms of experience with the reef itself.
Things got a little livelier when I decided to start trying to learn how to free dive a bit, and so I purposefully tried to engage the guide, asking him questions and practicing diving down.
At one point, I dove down pretty far without equalizing, which hurt in my right ear pretty good.
I don’t know how far down I actually was, probably not far at all, but really far for me. I would guess maybe three meters, though my guide thought it was a lot less.
Didn’t make much sense to me that it could be a lot less, given that my body is nearly two meters, so going down just a single body length would be two meters right there, but whatever.
I’m the beginner, and he’s the expert. 🙃
No turtles or sharks this time, but just practicing free diving and seeing the corals and fish up close was spectacular.
The wide variety of colors of the coral that were already beautiful went from beautiful to stunning when swimming right next to them.
So cool! 😊
Little boy happy. 😁
I could stay out there snorkeling and free diving all day. I’m such a water baby, and the temperature of the water was fantastic.
Also, I didn’t get stung by whatever it was that was stinging me yesterday. I think maybe once today? but not the several times that happened yesterday. 🙏
I ate a little bit more of the lunch today than I did yesterday. Yesterday, I had sort of hung back and spent lunch time mostly talking instead of eating. Yesterday, I had only really eaten what was brought to me, but didn’t go over to the leftovers to eat more. Today was different. 🙃
The second snorkel trip today started out amazingly, similar to the second one from yesterday, surrounded by enormous numbers of fish of all kinds.
Unfortunately, unlike yesterday, our route today quickly took us away from the massive numbers of fish.
I think a lot of what you see and what happens depends on the currents on each particular day.
They tell you when you’re out in the boat that they don’t even know where on the reef they’re going to stop for the day until they get out there and see where the currents are.
I’m guessing those currents have a similar effect on the fish and other critters.
Anyway, during the second dive, I practice my free diving a lot. Down and then back up and down and then back up and down and then back up.
My guide was a whole lot more into the experience it seemed with me taking more of a leadership role, so to speak, diving to show him things that I was interested in learning more about.
He showed me some species of coral that I could actually touch, which was cool. My only previous experience with coral in my life, at least that I can clearly recall, was at Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt, where in the super shallow waters of the Red Sea, I had accidentally grazed two or three of my knuckles against the coral, which left me with swollen and itchy knuckles for I think days after that.
So it was super cool to be able to touch different species of coral then the one that gave me that unpleasant surprise in Egypt. Given the physical reaction I had in Egypt, and given the species present in that part of the Red Sea at Dahab, I most likely had an encounter with fire coral.
Fun story, at least. 🙃
Anyway, the second diving, snorkeling spot was called the Freeway, and apparently, I managed to forget to put sunscreen on the back of my legs– but we’ll talk more about that later. 😅
I made progress in my free diving, learning better how to equalize as I went down.
Wish I had done that on my first dive when I hurt my right ear pretty good. 😅 My ear wasn’t right the entire rest of the day, and even thinking about it right now, I’m either having sympathy pains, or my ear still isn’t quite right. 😆
I didn’t want that second dive to end. I wanted to keep free diving and free diving and free diving, and exploring, and just enjoying the incredible reef.
It’s not very often you get to go to world renowned snorkeling and diving locations. And I’ve managed to hit two world famous spots, almost by accident. 🙃
Dahab’s Blue Hole in Egypt was certainly a complete accident, and Fiji’s Rainbow Reef was mostly an accident, as I had originally zero plans to go to Tavauni at all. It was only after I had scheduled my trip to Fiji, and then decided to change my original plans, that I discovered Taveuni and the Rainbow Reef.
I’m a lucky feller sometimes. 🙃
I was happy to find that the young Belgian couple (I think they were maybe around 30 years old, so I guess not that young) had really enjoyed the diving trip, so that made me happy. 😊
I spent a little while chatting with them on the way back and a little while chatting again with the older ladies on the way back.
At some point, I mentioned I was from Utah, and the older ladies were also from the states, and one of them asked if I was Mormon, and I said yes.
I think they were both Evangelical, and hearing that I was Mormon, although they were polite and kind, it seemed pretty obvious that one of them was trying to not have a visibly negative reaction. 🙃
She did almost immediately mention a story about I think maybe her son-in-law? leaving the LDS church to become a Christian.
Of course, I consider myself Christian, but I’m well versed in the reasons why many Christians don’t consider Latter-Day Saints to be a part of Christianity, and I felt no need to defend my faith’s place in the broader Christian movement.
Gratefully, after I think the initial discomfort the one lady might have felt in learning that I was a Latter-Day Saint, we were able to move on and continue conversing about other things. 🙏
Once back at the dive office, I rinsed off in the shower, and then just sort of hung around while the diver spent time updating their dive journals and going through this fish species book to identify the different kinds of fish that they’d seen.
Because of the issues that we had had with the boat’s motor, struggling to stay running, we were indeed fairly late back to the dive office, so unfortunately, Belgian couple and one or two others who were neck deep in the fish-identification book had to stop early because I needed to be back at the hotel in order to be able to get to the airport for my flight, as I needed to be there at least 45 minutes prior to takeoff.
I was a little stressed out, also, trying to figure out how to get everything organized for the pickup of my rain jacket that I had left at the Blue Lagoon Resort and that was supposedly at the awesome Adventures desk at Port Denarau.
Gratefully (and I can’t remember her name right now 🙃), the woman of the Belgian couple let me use her phone to get in contact with Awesome Adventures Fiji, which allowed me to verify that, yes, they would indeed still be open late enough for me to get off my plane and get a taxi to the port. In fact, they were going to be open late enough that it might have been possible for me to walk all the way to the port, though I wouldn’t have had a map to get there. 😅
I was also able to verify via that phone call that they did indeed have my rain jacket there waiting for me as well. 🙏
Wahoo! 🥳
Originally, I had planned to walk to the airport, as it was only probably less than a mile down the road, so I had said goodbye to everyone, only to find that one of the other travelers at the hotel was on the same flight and had already called for a taxi to come pick her up, so it seemed dumb to not just share the taxi.
That also left me feeling a little bit awkward hanging around after I had already said goodbye to everyone. 🙃
Such is the way my mind works. 😅
I tried chatting with the person that I was sharing the taxi with, but she was… not easy to converse with. Either she wasn’t really interested in talking at that particular time, or she wasn’t really interested in conversing with me.
So the conversation that I tried to make felt forced and awkward. 😕
Oh well.
I think I’m also a little sensitive because pretty much everywhere I go, I’m the odd man out generation wise. Travelers are usually 20 somethings or retirees, and here I am mid-40s, the odd man out everywhere. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have great conversations with wonderful people all over of varying ages, it just feels a little awkward sometimes.
Once at the airport, I ended up spending a good chunk of time chatting with an older American couple from California who gave off the stereotypical California vibe.
It was funny how pretty much perfectly they matched the California stereotype. 😆
Cool people, fun to talk to. We chatted for a good little while there at the airport, and then sat next to each other on the plane back to Nadi, eye chatting with the wife for just about the entire flight back.
It was a beautiful flight back, similar to the flight over, seeing the gorgeous islands and atolls and reefs and ocean below.
The route back to the Big Island was different than the route we had taken to get to Taveuni. Flying from Nadi to Matei was basically a straight shot over the mainland and right to Matei.
This time, instead of flying over the mainland, we flew between the mainland and the second largest island to its North, not flying over land at all until right at the last minute in order to land at the airport.
As we were getting close to the airport, coming down into the clouds, there were some cloud formations that I’ve never seen in my life before. Oh, how I wish I had a camera to take pictures of what we saw!
The best way that I could describe it would be like seven scoop ice cream cones one after the other, or vertical fluffy skyscrapers one after the other, or maybe super tall goblin rock formations from Goblin Valley in Utah.
There were so many of them all next to each other one after the other but with nothing really between them.
Super cool.
As we were descending and relatively low to the water on the west side of the big island, just prior to landing, as I looked out at The Reef, I saw what looked to me like the shape of a manta ray!
I’m not 100% sure that it was one, of course, but there are plenty of manta rays around Fiji. The scuba divers had seen one on my first day of diving, and the first Resort I stayed at was named Barefoot Manta because at a particular time of year, the Manta Rays congregate in the channel between the two islands right next to the Barefoot Manta Resort.
Who knows, but it sure looked like one.
After landing, I bid farewell to the American couple and the Israeli girl with whom I’d shared the taxi.
Speaking of taxis, I wasn’t too keen on getting a taxi immediately at the airport, as I figured those would be a heck of a lot more expensive than ones that I could get in town.
My Hope was either to walk all the way to the port, which wasn’t really reasonable, or get a taxi from just a regular city driver. I remembered from my first night in Fiji, as I walked from my homestay to the grocery store, there were taxis lined up in a little pull out just before the little shopping center where the grocery store was, so I figured I would at least walk to that spot and hope to pick up a taxi there.
It’s just shy of a 2 km walk from the airport to that New World IGA grocery store, but maybe a block before I even got to the little taxi pull out, a taxi driver pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride. I asked how much he was going to charge me to take me to the port, and he said 20 Fijian dollars, and I was sold, as it was my understanding that a normal price from the taxi drivers at the airport was somewhere around $50 Fijian dollars for the same trip.
So my strategy appeared to be paying off.
The taxi driver was a super nice guy, of Indian background (lots and lots and lots of Indians living in Fiji), and we chatted for a good little bit. I was a little nervous, not sure if he knew exactly where I was referring to when I told him where I needed to go, as the drive took quite a while (much longer than I anticipated), but my concerns were completely unfounded, as he brought me pretty much as close as one could possibly get to where I was needing to go.
I also arranged for a return trip with him, so he stayed and waited for me while I successfully picked up my rain jacket from the Awesome Adventures Fiji counter, and then he brought me all the way back to Nadi to the grocery store parking lot (at first misunderstanding where I wanted to go and taking me somewhere different on the way back, but then taking me over to the grocery store).
Super nice guy. Offered to let me stay at his house that night and to give me a free ride to the airport in the morning, as I was a little stressed about getting to the airport on time, as I needed to be there by 5:00 in the morning, and I had no clock nor means of waking myself up in time.
I gratefully but politely declined his offer, planning on sleeping at the airport again, so is to nullify pretty much any risk of missing my plane.
I bought some water and yogurt from the grocery store and then proceeded to walk from there to the homestay that I had booked, the one that had turned me away the other day because that old lady supposedly needed a place.
I was only going to the Homestay, however, out of courtesy to let them know that I wasn’t going to be staying there that night. Of course, I had hoped to get out of having to pay for the night. It was non-refundable, but they had also canceled the previous reservation on me, so I had hoped that maybe they would let me out of this reservation since they had put me in such an awkward place last time.
I got there, and they thanked me for letting them know that I wasn’t going to be there, and they were totally fine letting me out of my non-refundable night’s stay (though I’m not sure the refund they told me that they had already put through actually got refunded 🤷).
They actually offered to let me stay the night there free of charge, for not causing a big stink after they canceled my previous reservation on me. When I declined, they offered to let me at least take a shower before heading to the airport, but I also declined that offer, thanking them for the offer, but wanting to just get my little butt over to the airport and call it a night.
I bid them good night and then remembering that my satellite view showed a shortcut through a field back to the airport, I headed north from their house toward the field, only to find the shortcut didn’t really exist. 😅
So I walked all the way back to the home to the Homestay and then back around the neighborhood, following the way that I had walked previously my first day in Fiji.
I got to the airport nice and sweaty, and with the back of my legs burning.
Remember how I mentioned that I forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my legs?
Yeah. 😅
At least the cold airport floor felt good on my heat-radiating legs. 🙃
I chatted a little bit with a German young man who was sitting on the bench next to where I had planted myself on the ground.
I ate my yogurts, and I think I had a couple of cans of baked beans that I also ate.
Gratefully, the young man was willing to watch my stuff while I wandered over to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the bathroom that was nearest to where we were parked was closed, so I had to walk all the way to the other end of the airport (after trying to go to the second floor, only to find there weren’t bathrooms up there).
Though I wasn’t looking forward to another night’s sleep on the floor of the airport, I was indeed grateful to be at the airport where I knew that I wasn’t going to miss my plane for lack of an alarm clock. I was also quite grateful that nobody in the airport cared that I was spending the entire night there on the floor. The last flights in the evening leave somewhere around 10:30, I think, and the first flights in the morning leave around 5:30, I think, so there’s pretty much zero reason to be in the airport for those 7 hours, but other people spend the night there as well, and nobody seems to give a care, so thank you, Nadi airport for not kicking me out. 🙏
What a day!
It looks like I’ve now survived the last of the stressful challenges that not having my phone has generated.
🥳
[sigh of relief]
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 