Birthday on Fiji time

 We took our last big trip recently - and arrived in Fiji just about a week before my birthday. It is getting cold in New Zealand so a trip to the South Pacific was a perfect idea in June. Our first day at the resort was warm, humid, and grey. It rained on and off. We took advantage of the day to explore our surroundings a bit - the resort is located on its own island - and we took a few photos. In general, we were too busy swimming and having fun to take too many photos!

Here is one of the pools- it's the baby pool. We didn't spend any time here actually swimming.

Here is the larger pool where we did spend quite a bit of time. This is the pool where Jasper met his little girlfriend, Mackenzie.

We walked to the tip of the island, where there were a few private bures, or cottages, where guests can stay. Here Aidan is posing next to some generic Polynesian decor. Some parts of the resort felt a little like Disneyworld. I wouldn't have been surprised if this statue started to sing.

Here we are, walking around. The resort was generally well maintained and felt very safe to have the kids running around everywhere. The days got increasingly sunny.

The island had a lagoon side, which was sheltered and less windy, but more crowded. There was also an ocean side, less sheltered but often nobody there but us. Here's a photo of the ocean side.

Jasper and some volcanic rock on the ocean side

Another view of the ocean - this is where we snorkeled.

My three favorites

We'd never been to a resort before, in a third world country, no less. We did leave the resort twice -- and we are very happy that we did. We went to a fruit and vegetable market in Sigatoka, the nearest city. The area nearby - of the valley created by the Sigatoka river - is known as the salad bowl of Fiji. The women who sell at this market live in the surrounding area and sell so many types of fruits and vegetables - it's amazing. I picked up 8 papaya for about 1 dollar. The pineapples are smaller - and very sweet. That ginormous banana is something like a sweet-ish plantain. The oranges were very sweet, although green skinned. We kept a keen eye on the boys - with good reason -- as on more than one occasion, an enthusiastic merchant would drag a boy over to another side of the market to view his or her wares.

Ready to explore the ocean!

These were my favorite: blue sea stars! 

Jasper's favorite: the hermit crabs. At one point, we had a collection of three.

It my have been a bit windy, but I loved having this stretch of beach to ourselves to explore!

So that's the end of beach-y photos. Like I said, we really spent most of our time seeing the amazing fish, playing in the sand, hunting for hermit crabs, etc. Aidan asked if we had an underwater camera -- which of course, we don't. So we don't have photos - but we did see lots of fish. About half the coral on the reef was alive. There have been a few storms in the past few years that have damaged the reef, but the reef is very shallow and the boys could walk out very far, which made snorkeling pretty easy for everyone. Some of my favorite moments were walking along with a snorkeling boy, and hearing him exclaim with surprise or excitement through his snorkel when he came across a cool fish.

The rest of our photos came from our second and last excursion outside of the resort. We took a jet boat river cruise to a village up the river. Both Tom and I were cautious about this type of tour, as we worry about commercialism and damage to the villages, and the phenomenon Tom calls the human zoo. In the end, both of us were glad that we'd done it. I think the experience was pretty amazing. And here are some photos.

This is just some of the scenery we passed on our way to the boat. 

We did take a bunch of photos from the river, which was beautiful. We passed lots of kids wading in the river, women doing laundry and/or fishing. Surprisingly, lots of people with horses in the river.

I love how still and clear with water was.

Yes, Jasper is driving the jet boat. We have a video as well. Crazy jet boat driver!

Another one of my favorites from the boat

So we arrived at the village and I snapped two photos from the large room where we were received. They performed a kava ceremony, which involves everyone drinking this ceremonial drink made from a root that looks like Kahlua and tastes like dishwater with a local anesthetic. Luckily for us, we did not have to partake (Jasper and I had both tried kava at the resort.) I was surprised to see Tom volunteer to have some kava in this village. He did not get sick :)

Based on the ceremony, Tom and I think the man wearing green seated in the middle was the chief of the village. We understood not a word of all the ceremony that took place. We were told that the villagers didn't speak any English, yet we introduced ourselves in English and they politely looked like they were paying attention. This is what made us feel better about the human zoo aspect of things: We might have been the animals on exhibit at this particular human zoo.

Here is a second photo from the ceremony. I should have taken one directly forward facing. The room was filled with Fijians, mostly men, seated on the floor in rows and rows facing us. There must have been sixty of them.

Back to the resort: We celebrated my birthday on our last day. It was wonderful. We played badminton, snorkeled some more, and had a very nice dinner. I didn't know that Tom had ordered a birthday cake, which was super sweet. We waited a while after dinner for this cake to arrive. When I heard the waitresses singing "happy birthday," I couldn't understand all the words and I thought that "happy birthday" in Fijian sounded something like "di-uh-nik-ki." Then they put the cake down:

Seriously almost an hour later, and with apologies, the cake returned, this time looking like this:

I liked particularly the candy flowers they used to cover the holes from the previous candles -- and the obvious scrapings where "Diah and Nikki" had been

Tom was angry, but it was very funny - for us and the other folks in the dining room of the restaurant, who thought it was hysterical.

Here's a last one of me and Diah and Nikki's cake.Wherever Diah and Nikki were, and whenever their actual birthday is, I am certain they could not have had a better birthday holiday than I had.