Fiji day two

Tuesday, January 6 2009. 8:05 local time (I think).

Today was an amazing day. We went to town (Rakiraki), went snorkeling by the drop-off, and it was B's birthday.

The only bad part of today was that I woke up and spent the day with an allergic reaction. I think it's to the sunscreen I used yesterday (I _told_ my dad it wasn't hypoallergenic). My cheeks, arms and legs are all red and bumpy, and radiating heat. It's only gotten worse throughout the day, because now my body's on haywire and reacting to everything (chemicals in the pool, the good sunscreen, etc.). It's not nearly as noticeable as it sounds, but still annoying. Itchy and stingy.

Well, I'm sure you would much rather hear details about my allergic reaction than you would about Rakiraki and snorkeling, but just to torture you I'm going to move on to those.

Jai drove us to town this morning, drove around the main (and only) loop and dropped us off at a farmer's market. It was amazing. Each booth/family had amazing tropical fruits and vegetables in heaps on cloths on the ground or on wooden tables. The only way to buy anything was by the heap (incredibly inexpensive-- 7 mangoes for about 60 cents US) which was nice sometimes, but also meant we ended up with a lot of food (I bought a heap of spicy peppers thinking we'd use some of them, about 5 cups for 1 Fiji dollar, which is about 60 US cents. When we were making dinner I cut one open, touched it, ad licked my finger. I downed most of a bottle of water and my tongue still was on fire. We're using them for decoration now.) Everybody there was saying "bula" and offering us food. One woman decided to teach us some Fijian, explaining many times "Bula. Means good morning in Fiji," and what goodbye is (I forget, sorry). After we got a giant shoulder bag and everybody's hands full of bags of fruit, we went to lunch. On the other side of the loop there was a curry house (Fijian Indian restaurants) above a store. One extremely nice part was that it was semi-air conditioned, so although we were still hot it wasn't as unbearably sweaty. The food there was amazing. It was spicy and salty and sweet and strong. I love Indian food.

After everybody stared at the only five white tourists in town for a couple hours (that's actually not true-- we saw another couple in the supermarket that were caucasian), we came back to local home. After cooling off a little (trying to at least) and putting the food in bowls, we decided to don our masks, snorkels, and flippers and go out to the ocean. After walking/swimming a couple hundred yards, it started to get beautiful. There were bright blue sea stars, hundreds of little fish, sea cucumbers and bumpy grassy/corally mounds. That didn't even compare, however, when we got the the drop-off of the reef. Swimming out, suddenly the coral got brighter and the fish got bigger. It got deeper but where we could still see the bottom, very three-dimentional with coral and rocks. Then, just beyond that, there was nothing. Just blue haze for forever. It was terrifyingly fantastic. I can't even think of words to describe how beautiful the reef was, because it was so colorful and foreign and perfectly nerve wracking. I was constantly scared I would kick something that was poisonous, or be swept by the current into the blue abyss. That amount of adrenaline just made it better.

For dinner we were brought another giant fish, this time by Jai. He came with his wife and brother to clean it for us. It was delicious, even better than last night's. Again, we froze half of it, and still had leftovers of the fish we did cook. We also had taro root and long beans from market, which were fantastic. I like the food here. We have so much fruit in our house right now we could feed half a school. We have watermelon, mangos, limes, passion fruit, bananas, and many others. Some of it we have no idea what exactly it is, just that it tastes yummy.


I am exhausted, so I'm gong to bed. Pleasant dreams, ancient dinosaurs of the past.