Friday 1 October 2010

Picton Castle at anchor at Suva, Viti Levu, Fiji; Friday 1 October 2010 בס"ד

On Wednesday, I caught the 0800 skiff ashore, and with Brad and Rebecca we got in the rental truck and headed off. First we stopped at a gas station to grab some snacks, and then we stopped once more in the first town outside of the city to grab some postcards at a post office. It was about 45 minutes or so then to the town of Pacific Harbour, where Dan, Dave, Davey, and Georgie had stayed at a resort called Uprising which had hostel-like cheapo dormitory sleeping. We all hung out for lunch, or brunch I guess, and then left for Sigatoka, a city about an hour or so further west. Dave, Davey, and I sat in the back of the truck with the surfboard gear and a lot of beers. We were driving a while and stopped at some resort called The Beach House (I think) and pretty much just waltzed in and took over. Played some ping-pong, some billiards, swam in the pool, etc. Funny story happened when one of the resort staff came out with an order of fries for Georgina, and since she was out swimming, we bros playing pool took it in her behalf and ate all the fries. Then when Georgie came back, we apologized for eating all her fries and went to buy her more, but she was like, “I didn't order any chips.” We were confused, and then we found out that this one girl and her friends were sitting at this table with very impatient looks on their faces and it turns out one of those girls was an Aussie named Georgina and we ate her fries, so we apologized and bought them fries and I bought them sodas as well (since they were drinking sodas already). Anyway, what are the odds of two Georginas in Fiji? Better than one might think. We soon took off for Sigatoka, and we stopped at this nice little handicraft shop. The one guy who worked there saw my Maagen David and told me that his name is Binyamin, which was pretty cool. I bought a shirt, and we left again and made it past the city to the sand dunes that lie near the coast. At one point as we were just about there, we were driving down a small road through a village and we passed by a group of people. One of them saw me in the back of the truck, saw my Maagen David, and shouted SHALOM to me. Go figure, I'm in a rural Fijian village and people are greeting me in Hebrew. We made it to the dunes, and climbed up to the top and attempted sand dune surfing, but I guess surfboards don't work that well or we needed to coat them in something in order to go down quickly, and so we ended up just slowly sliding down on the boards. What was more fun was rolling down the dunes and getting dizzy. Did that for a while, then drove back into Sigatoka proper to stop and have dinner at an Indian restaurant. The place was pretty empty, and after we ordered, the owner (I think) and a local guy were outside having a kava ceremony and invited us to join. So I learned the customary way to drink kava in Fiji, which is to have a scooper person scoop out a cup for you in a coconut shell, at which point you clap once, say “Bula” (the universal Fijian word), drink the kava in one chug, return the coconut cup, and clap three times slowly. Had many several cups of it, and it does taste a bit like dirty water, but not in a bad way, and it makes a comfortably numb (Pink Floyd?) sensation in your lips, gums, and tongue. Had a delicious dinner, and talked with them about the big important rugby match that would be going on Saturday. Then we left for Pacific Harbour again, and had a great ride there. Luckily it didn't rain, since me and Davey and Dave were still sitting in the back of the truck. Every time Dave would move, sand would fly off of him and get in my face. We eventually made it back to Uprising and got the dormitory room, which was like $35FJD a night (cheap). Chilled out on the porch with some English people who had been living at a village for a few months, and made our own kava and just relaxed. One by one, people started going to bed, until it was just me, Dapper, and this girl Lara staying up until like 0400ish drinking kava and shooting the shit. Then I climbed into my bunkbed and passed out.

Woke up a few hours later and Rebecca had taken Georgie, Dave, Davey, and Brad back to Suva in the truck (this was planned of course since they were the on-watch), and Dapper and I had breakfast there. This old guy who was also staying in the dorms joined us, and everything was cool until he somehow got into a half an hour long tirade about how 9/11 was an inside job and just rattled on to an obviously unpleased audience. At first you just smile and nod, but after a while when he's still going on and on and on, I decided just to be like, “We have to leave,” instead of telling him to fuck himself, although retrospectively I wish I had just told him that right from the getgo. We caught a cab back to Suva, and dropped off our stuff at the yacht club to go back to the ship. Then we went into the city on a quest for books. It didn't prove very fruitful though, as the bookstores are kinda weakly stocked in anything interesting. We caught a playing of Hot Tub Time Machine at the cinema, and after that we went into provisioning mode and started stocking up on rum, hardware, and other miscellaneous things. Went back to the ship, had dinner, and then went back ashore after. Caught a cab with Bracken and Dapper into town, and I headed off to book a hotel room so I could have one more night with high-speed internet (something I'm unlikely to find until Bali) and upload all my photos and videos. I was going to go back and meet them at the bar, but it started to torrential downpour and so I just stayed at the hotel and got online uploading. I also managed to download a few of the hit songs from the movie Dabangg. In the wee hours of the morning, I was able to Skype the USA and I spoke with Jo and then called Karla after. Karla told me that Camille had passed away. Even though I knew she was in the hospital and that she was sick, the news was still pretty unexpected, since for most of my life she wasn't very healthy. I'm very glad I got to speak to her one last time the other day, and Karla told me that she thought she was cool shit talking to her grandson in Fiji and had told all the nurses about it. After this phone call, I called it a night and went to bed.

Woke up, got breakfast, and caught a cab back to the yacht club to catch the skiff to the ship. Once aboard, I was put on galley duty with Sophie. We jammed out to Dabangg tunes and other music all day. For lunch we made sandwiches and salad, and for dinner we made braised carrots, creamy chicken mushroom pasta, and Sophie made some delicious pies. I'm glad I was on galley with Sophie today since she's pretty much the most pleasant person on Earth and I was able to do stuff today without being terribly sad about Camille. Dan and I volunteered to do the 2100 skiff run with Sophie, which turned out to become an adventure of sorts. Dan was the coxn to the yacht club, and when we arrived, we picked up Dave, Davey, Robert, and Leonard. Dave and Davey begged us to take them to the ship so that they could get appropriate footwear to go to the nightclub and then return them ashore so they could go out. It took a lot of convincing the higher-ups, but we got the go ahead. There was a quiet smiling man holding our bow line for us for all of this, and we assumed he worked for the yacht club or something. Then as we loaded our passengers, Davey was like, “Oh, this is our new friend and he would like to drive his skiff out to his boat and stow it and if we could pick him up from his boat and drop him off ashore he'd be most grateful.” We were like Oh boy, but the poor guy tried explaining to us himself and he was obviously a straight-outta-Moscow little Russian dude with mediocre English and we're just like okay, since we're headed back anyway. So I pilot us back to the skiff, Dave and Davey grab their shoes and we go on the return trip. I'm still the coxn, and I asked which yacht was his and they said it was a small yellow one. Well, it was dark and there was more than one yellow yacht, so I drove us around the mooring field from boat to boat until we finally found him. We came up alongside, and the little guy is struggling for dear life to crank up his skiff by himself, so Davey hops out and gives him a hand and it was a bit of a fiasco getting that little dingy up into his bow. Then we load him up and head back to the yacht club. It turns out, he is going to be in Fiji for a few months and he's going to screw off into the country somewhere and not need to return to his boat, which is why we we're doing this. Anyway we dropped him and our bros off, and then Dan piloted us back to the ship. We made it back at 2200, making it an hour-long skiff run, which is now called Mission Bropossible. Now aboard, and going to bed.