Tuesday, December 9, 2003

Fiji! (8 of lots)

We'd been issued flashlights for walking back and forth to our bures, and tiki torches ("Fire Equals Life") lit the way to the toilets.  Upon returning to my bure for bed, my flashlight caught a spider walking around just inside the door.  Up until this point, I'd been a good little girl and took off my shoes when inside my bure (to keep the mat clean).  At that point, though, I thought, "to hell with this," and wore my little flip-flops until I was safe in my mosquito-net cocoon.

Next morning, we were offered a last-minute snorkel -- seems the crew spotted some manta rays cavorting nearby and offered to take people out to see them.  I'd had enough of the salt-water snorkelling, so lounged around sunset beach on a hammock when everyone else went.  (As our public relations officer said, "This is Fiji.  You don't have to do what you don't want.")  I think I made the right call -- a lot of the gang ended up getting bit or stung by some unknown sea critters.

That day, we were supposed to sail (not engine, sail) over to another island to see a real Fijian village (and have kava!  Yum!) but we didn't have any wind so we were sorta just sitting there in the water.  Someone said it was kinda hot, and asked the crew if we could go someplace for a swim rather than have the boat just float around aimlessly.  Crew agreed, powered up the engines, and took us to a spot a distance away from the village.

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