3 Days on Robinson Crusoe

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


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Monday, December 3, 2007

It is a tiny island.  You can walk around it in about twenty minut, as long as you do not mind fighting your way through a patch of mangroves, It also has masses of biting insects, so that if you are without sunscreen or repellent for even half an hour, you gett bitten and burned - lots.  It is a basic resort.  The showers are buckets suspended on a rope which have taps welded into the bottom, which you turn on and off to get your water flow.  You fill the bucket from another bucket, which is filled from a tap outside the shower unit.  The water is cold.  I actually really enjoyed it.  We were not supposed to use more than one bucket per day, which was not as difficult as it sounds, because the only pressure is gravity, and you simply switch on the flow as you need it (no leaving it running while you wash your hair.)

Other than the showers, which are rather fun, there is not all that much to do here, which is why my whole stay is comprised in one entry.  I have tried, along with two Australians, to kayak around the island twice.  The first time, we came to the windward side and were blown back at every attempt to paddle onto the lagoon there.  Any break in paddling meant that we were blown back beyond our starting point on the leeward side.  We tried several differant approaches to combat this; paddling single flie to minimise wind exposure (taking turns atthe front), beaching ourselves when we wanted a rest so that we didn't get blown back, pure brute force against the gusts.  It made no difference, we could not make any headway.  In the end, we gave up.  We tried again the next day, but this time we were thwarted by low tide, which revealed a huge and unpassable sandbar where the ocean had previously been.  We tried edging our way out in the very shallow water to see if we could get around, but we just ended up beached in the uncovered slime.  In the end we conceeded defeat and edged our way back to the lagoon.

For the rest, I sat and read and attempted to make coconut jewellery, but gave up when the piece that I had evisaged was too rounded (from the shape of the husk) to be feasible for my design.  I had not enjoyed the experience much anyway, too much dust and virtually no satisfaction derived from it.  Everyone else enjoyed it though.  There was also a display of Polynesian dance on the first evening of my stay.  It was entertaining enough to watch the dances, but the displays that really caught my attention were the cane knife throwing (these are really big knives, a bit like machetes) and twirling, and the flaming batons.  There is a hypnotic quality to the rhythm of dangerous objects being spun and whirled in close proximity to the body.  It was that performance, in preference to the hula (Fijian version), that I would have liked to learn, but I did not have the time, and I was disinclined to try and learn in a day.

My time on Robinson Crusoe was relaxed and pleasant, certainly better than another three days in Nadi, but of the two more tourist oriented resorts that I have visited, I certainly preferred the Beachouse.  I have reached the conclusion that I would not make a particularly good castaway, too much sitting around!!

The bucket shower was fun though.
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