Pacific Harbour

Trip Start Mar 10, 2007
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143
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Trip End Jan 08, 2008


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Flag of Fiji  ,
Thursday, November 8, 2007

Travelling on the bus was actually easier than I had expected.  I was ready on time (becoming disturbingly commonplace as a phenomenon in my life) and I just sat outside the hostel waiting for the purple bus that would take me to Nadi bus station at which point I would transfer onto the Suva bus.  I learned something immediately.  There are very few actual bus stops in Fiji, for the most part, if you want to get on the bus, you stand somewhere along the route and stick out your hand as the bus trundles toward you.  It is also exceptionally cheap - only 65c into the centre, and only $8.50FJ to travel 150km to Pacific Harbour.  I would however, question the term 'express' in the title of the service, as we rarely moved at a pace above twenty miles per hour, and that speed was only in very tiny sections of the road, and it stopped at just about every point that there was a passenger.  Welcome to Pacific time.

We stopped for about ten minutes in Sigatoka, I did not get off the bus though - I worried that it might leave without me.  It is good to know that the trip here is only an hour though as there is a hill fort just out of town that I would like to visit when I get back to Nadi.  After a couple more hours sitting on the bus, which seemed to slow down once it exited Sigatoka (if it is possible) I almost missed my stop, as the "adventure capital of the Pacific"  appears to be quite small, commercially speaking.  I discovered as  well that I will not be able to visit Beqa island as I had planned because it is far too expensive.  It is not possible to do a day trip there either because that would mean chartering a boat, which would be horrendously expensive as well, so instead I had to settle for writing this entry into my journal sitting on the beach looking across at the island.  I was not tempted to swim, there are masses of sharks in Beqa lagoon, such a swim would be foolhardy - it was also quite far.

I went back into town and had a look around the arts and crafts village where I had my first encounter with a cannibal fork and was able to see some items of traditional Fijian weaponry.  The most intimidating of these was the Timoku, a spiked wooden club which, when used by a skilled warrior, could pierce the skull of an adversary without smashing the skull.  These skulls were highly prized and were used by priests as yagona (kava) bowls.  The body of an adversary killed in this was was cannibalised.  I do not know much about cannibalism in Fiji other than that it occured for a long part of history prior to European contact, and for a limited time afterwards, but I am hopeful that some of my questions will be answered when I visit the Fiji Museum in Suva.  I will be there sooner than I had anticipated now that I am not visiting Beqa, but that is not a problem, I have more time for Taveuni, Rabi and Kioa, if those options open up now that I am ahead of schedule, and if they tag on at the end of my trip, I can do the tourist thing for a few days.  All in all, its not a problem.
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