Coasting on the Coral Coast

All hopped out we were back on the boat for the last time and returned to the main land. We had had a brilliant Robinson Crusoe type week. Met some fantastic people, the lads from NY, Raymond from the Dam, Friedrikke from Deutschland, Kathleen from Canada  to name but a few and somehow we really enjoyed the level of basic-ness. Not having water and electricity on demand really makes you stop and think. Seeing how the locals live was a real reality check for us westerners and not forgetting our horribly worrying night on that summit waiting for the dreaded tsunami.

We had a transfer bus waiting for us when we arrived back to take us from Nadi port to our hotel on the Coral Coast, around an 1 1/2 hour drive. Our driver was a Fijian-Indian. He showed us points of interest along the way. Over 50% of the population is indigenous Fijian mainly of Christian belief and around a third Fijian Indians either Hindu or Muslim. The FIs are descendants of labourers bought in to work Fiji's sugarcane fields back in the late 1800s most of which were fleeing poverty stricken India. The two cultures live separately never really mixing socially. It's thanks though to the industrious Indian residents that today's Fiji is deemed a relatively developed third world country although still many native Fijians still choose a 'live for today' type attitude with a strong belief that they do not have to work in the western sense therefore life here moves at a slow, slow pace, which the locals love to call 'fiji time'.

The road from Nadi to the Coral Coast is named the Queens highway it runs south from Nadi round to Suva which takes you through the Sigatoka Valley known as 'Fijis Salad Bowl'. Both sides of the road are heavily flanked with patchwork flat green fields full of vegetables. From Suva the road turns to the Kings Highway which runs north from Suva right back round the Nadi. It's said that if a Fijian misses a turning he just carries on around the circular Kings and Queens highway, a roughly 9 hour journey, until he gets to his turn off again. Fiji time.

Our latest digs just outside Sigatoka village is made up of lots of individual beachfront bures. All the basics here (or is that luxuries) of running water constant electric and much more, even an outdoor bath and shower. We were are almost stunned into silence on arrival. The sacrifice being at a place like this though, minus the views, this that you could really be sat in any hotel anywhere within the western world.