Elizabeth is in Fiji!: Spring Break 2015

Hi everyone and happy belated Easter! I’m back in Dreketi now after being gone for about 10 days. In Fiji, Easter weekend is a public holiday so we get the Friday before and Monday after Easter off of work making a nice four-day weekend perfect for traveling. I also find it funny that Easter is the longest holiday we have in Fiji but that’s life in a Christian country for ya. To take advantage of this long weekend a group of other PCV’s and I went to Taveuni Island.

Traveling in Fiji is completely different than how I would ever travel in America. For example, in Fiji it is totally normal for me to sit on a bus for four hours roundtrip just to go to a grocery store. To get to Taveuni, we boarded a bus at 3:30 am in Labasa (closest town to me). From there, we stopped in Savusavu around 6:30 where we picked up some more PCV’s. Bus then continued to Buca Bay where the Taveuni Princess Ferry leaves. We got there aroune 8:30, left around 10 on the ferry and got to Taveuni between 11:30-12. Overall, it was almost 9 hours of traveling which in America I never would’ve agreed to for just a four-day weekend, but here in Fiji it seems totally normal.

The Taveuni Princess - Ferry between Vanua Levu and Taveuni

There are two PCV’s currently living in Taveuni and they served as our official tour guides. They both have done a really awesome job of integrating into their island community as we were walking around it seemed like they knew everyone we met. The first two nights we stayed at this really awesome hostel that was actually inside a village and right on the beach. The village is called Lavena, so the hostel was Lavena lodge. Attached to the hostel there is the Lavena Coastal Walk, which is a hike that goes along the coast and through the jungle. The hike ends up at this beautiful waterfall where we all cooled off.

Beach views in Lavena

Village Hostel in Lavena

Village Boy caught octopus that we had for dinner that night. (Photo thanks to Melissa!)

Lavena Coastal Walk!

I love my Peace Corps family.

In Fiji, little girls don't play with dolls, they climb coconut trees.

After leaving Lavena, we went to stay at this really small, family run hostel called Waimakare. The compound was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The family grows their own fruits and vegetables including avocados, papaya, cucumber, mango, cocoa, bananas, cassava, and the list goes on and on. We all agreed that it felt like eden with all the lush fruits and veggies growing, there were even parrots flying overhead.

My PC family eating dinner together at Waimakare.

The stretch between Vanua Levu (my island) and Taveuni Island is called the Somosomo strait and it is home to the world famous Rainbow Reef. This reef boasts some of most beautiful fish, coral, and underwater life in the world. We spent our last day in Fiji scuba diving and getting a glimpse at the underwater beauty Fiji has to offer.

PCV Melissa hanging out on the dive boat

Caitlin (one of the PCV's in Taveuni) looking out over her kingdom.

The International Date Line runs through Taveuni Island... Here I am straddling the line between today and yesterday.

My absolute favorite thing we did in Taveuni was hike the Bouma Falls. Bouma is a long hike that shows you three magnificent waterfalls. It’s much more “interactive” than the Lavena hike seeing as how we had to cross rushing rivers, climb rocks, and quite literally bush trek through the rainforest. It was so worth it though because the falls were beautiful and the climb takes you high up into the jungle with some of the most breathtaking views of Fiji I’ve ever seen.

These pictures are all thanks to Melissa, she took some amazing pictures in Bouma!

Ricky and I looking for the best place to jump

Love these girls, and that view!

(Also this is what we look like after hiking 6 miles through the rainforest, crossing two rushing rivers, and bush wacking our own shortcut)

One of the most amazing views I've ever seen

Post-Hike eating cocoa at Waimakare

When our four days in Taveuni were over, we all headed back to Labasa together where we had a three day Peace Corps training. We got to stay at a hotel where we had our own rooms, aircon, and even hot showers…posh! Generally Peace Corps trainings are not my cup of tea because they pull me out of site too much, but this one was really nice. It was a smaller group, only the 7 of us in the north, and it took us through the process of grant writing and project starting.

Peace Corps Training

By the time training was over, we had all been together for almost 9 days and all of us were itching to get back to our sites.

Now comes a bit of a tangent:

Having been in Fiji for 7 months now, most of us actually feel more comfortable around Fijians than “kai va lagi’s” (Europeans/general term for white people). After spending over a week together we were all joking about how we were getting sick of hanging out with kai va lagi’s and we wanted to head back to our villages. Not only were we sick of each other, but other kai va lagi tourists as well. Taveuni is known as the “Garden Island of Fiji” and it is one of the most beautiful places in Fiji. Because of this, there are tons of resorts and tourists traveling around the island. Peace Corps volunteers in Fiji are in this unique middle ground where we live with locals, speak the local language, and get paid like locals, but we still stick out as kai va lagi’s and we are often presumed tourists. When we’re on vacation in places like Taveuni it would be easy for us to pretend we’re like all the other kai va lagi’s coming through but when we try to relate to them, we realize we’ve become Fijian. While staying at Lavena, we ran into a couple from America who was staying at one of the nice resorts in Taveuni. One of my fellow PCV’s was telling them about how they have electricity for most of the day and then it turns off around 10:30 for the night. One of these Americans we met made the comment “Don’t you get hot at night when they turn the generator off.” We were confused for a second and then realized that she was referring to our aircon (which doesn’t exist) which would turn off with the generator. We all kind of took this as one of those more obvious times that we clearly could not pretend to be like the average tourist to Fiji, we are locals.

By the time training was over, I was so ready to head back to site. I was however, extremely lucky to convince one of the peace corps staff to drive me back to Dreketi so that I (1) didn’t have to take the bus or pay bus fare and (2) could pack his truck full of stuff to take home with me without lugging it on and off buses. I took this as an opportunity to finally move some real furniture into my house!! Enjoy some of my house progress photos! (For before pictures look at my old posts)