Oli Reveals: IV

Another installment of Olis round-the-world emails:

Here I go again, same me, different place

Just had a pretty hot curry in a recommended curry house in the capital of
Fiji, Suva. Had Ben sweating, but it was oh so good. Since I wrote to you
lot last time, I was just about to leave Maui. Decided to go Pearl Harbour
the next day, as it was our last full day in the Hawaiian islands- quite
intresting to see the USS arizona memorial and view the short cinematic of
the events that made this place so famous. It’s one of those places you
have to see, but isn’t that special (in my opinion anyways). Blagged
ourselves onto the Marriot Hotel roof, using their pool for the afternoon
and went to the doc to confirm that I’ve screwed my ear…antibiotics are
lovely.

Jetted off to Fiji on the 24th, finding a nice hostel which feels more like
a resort than a dive, makes a nice change from some of the places we’ve been
in. Checked out the local town of Nadi, its temple, the beach etc….We
decided to hire another car, a toyota starlet? Whatever it is, it’s well
small, like Dave’s suburu but without 4wd!! Convinced Ben that we should
take it up a jungle trail suitable for 4×4’s only, giving the shocks/exhaust
system and sump a run for their monet\y. We got loads of funny looks
tanking this little shed of a car up into the hills. Did a jungle trail in
flip-flops and board shorts, found a nice waterfall and ate with the
villagers. We then drove around the north of the island, down on the coast
road from the mountains and stopped in some colonial hotel in some
agricultural town for a night.

Next up was a place on the ne of the island callled Rakiraki, where there’s
awesome scuba diving off the penisula. We checked in for a night there,
done some sea kayaking, snorkelled the reef and did a two-tank dive on a
couple of dive sights, one aptly called “breathtaker”- saw some black-tipped
reef sharks!! Spent this afternoon driving east, then south to the capital
(we’re gonna do a complete loop of Fiji’s main island). The load was gravel
and mud with so many ditches, pot holes and huge gaping rifts that we beat
the sh*t out of our car- again this road is only recommended for high
clearance vehicles, so every local in a passing car or on foot would give us
this smile, like “what the hell do you guys think your doing? Bloody
tourists have no idea….”. Yep, they were probably thinking that. Great
fun to drive thorugh the forested hills, dairy pastures and rivers, but it
was a relief to finally get to the capital.

Food’s great, weather’s great and from what I’ve seen, this place feels more
natural and has more culture that Hawaii. The people are so friendly- I
managed to get half the village to pose for a picture, while they were
waiting for a bus!!

All the best,

Oli