Hello from Nadi, Fiji – Part 3

Hello from Nadi, Fiji – Part 3

Blog posted:  Wednesday Evening   May 1, 2013  Fiji time (Third travelogue of this trip).

I forgot to mention working on my dive watch.  In one of the earlier posts, I mentioned getting the tool to remove the bezel of the watch so that I could replace the battery and O-ring.  Well, things are never as easy as they might seem – especially for me {grin}.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not hold the watch and remove the bezel.  I found some maintenance folks and tried to convey to them what I wanted to do.  Finally, I got the point across that I needed a vise.  They took me to the maintenance shop and allowed me to use their equipment.  That did the trick.  Replacing the battery would not be intuitive, but I had downloaded the instructions off the internet.  All went well.  The test will be when I dive Friday and, hopefully, the watch will be sealed.

Prior to leaving on this trip, I converted two PADI diving course videos to DVD.  It has been a couple of years since I last dived, I used the DVDs to help me recall all the important techniques that must be followed to make a safe dive.  Hopefully, I am good to go.

Now for the fun part of this travelogue.  Today we took the Sigatoka River Safari tour (information).  What an absolute fantastic tour it was.  We drove from our hotel to Sigatoka, Fiji (about 45 miles).  This was a very scenic drive.  At Sigatoka (map), we checked in and signed the waiver.  We then drove about 20 miles on a gravel road to our boat dock.  The boats had two engines.  I am not sure what kind of engines they were (boats built in New Zealand), but they were very “throaty”.  Once the boat got on plane, they really went fast.  The “captain” put the boat into several drifts going around the bends in the river.  On the way back he did several 360 “turns” in the river and got all of us quite wet.  It was a ton of fun.

The boats took us to a rather remote village (map).  (Note:  I had to do some searching, but I am pretty sure this is the village – you may have to zoom in).  The village has about 200 people living there.  They welcomed us will a full “ritual”.  The best part of the ritual is that I was the visiting “Chief” (via my elderly status).  I got to sit with the village chief and be served the first cup of Kava.  We were then served a great meat, consisting of all kinds of food (fruit, vegetables, meat, etc) raised by the members of the village.

 On our way to village

Jim and the Chief

Our meal in the village

I was not sure what to expect when drinking the Kava.  It is supposed to knock you on your tail.  I had thought it was a liquor of some sort.  Then I had been told that is was a mild narcotic.  I had two cups and did not feel any effect.  I did a bit of searching and found a great blog post on Kava (here).

That is all for now.