Week 53 - Fiji

Sunday and Monday were relaxing beach days.

We're now officially into our bonus weeks. I did some planning work on Monday, finalizing our activities for this week, and scoping out things to do in Hawaii..

Tuesday we were able to have a Fijian cooking lesson. Our host arranged with a woman she knows to show us how to make some traditional foods. We helped husk and scrape the coconuts.

We prepared several dishes, boiled cassava and taro roots, a cold dish of a native fern called ota with coconut milk, shrimp, and onions; a fish and coconut stew; and rolo, which is taro leaves cooked in coconut milk with onions and garlic.

Wednesday was my 47th birthday. We didn't have anything special planned and it was a perfect day. We did our regular routine, the kids slept late enough for me to take a walk and relax on the balcony.

How's that for a birthday present from the universe? Then breakfast and school. After lunch we went to the beach, J took a walk, and the kids and I stayed in the water playing the whole time. It was fun, simple, and just the right way to spend the day.

Thursday was much busier. We got our wonderful driver to pick us up. I had originally planned a botany day, based on the information I could gather from Google, but our host and driver had a couple of suggestions I didn't know about. Savusavu is one of those places where Google isn't very complete, so we're really lucky to have people steering us in the right direction.

The first stop was one I had picked but knew wouldn't be that exciting for the kids. It was a botanical garden featuring a huge collection of rare palm species. J was really into it, S hung in there with us, but C was hot and bored. Actually, it was quite beautiful. There wasn't a tour, but we got a page of printed information that was quite detailed, and we did pretty well following along.

The next stop went right along with my botany theme, but I wanted it to be second because I knew the kids would be into it. We got to tour a sustainable cacao farm and learn all about the chocolate-making process. There were samples at the end, so that was definitely a hit.

Chocolate is made from cacao nibs which are bitter, but the fruit surrounding them is also edible and really yummy, but not at all chocolatey, it actually tastes like citrus. Once it's fermented, dried, winnowed, and aged it gets made into chocolate.

The chocolate from this place is all 70% cacao nibs or greater and contains only cacao, local sugar, and in some cases a small amount of locally sourced flavor, such as sea salt, chili, or chai spice. It was delicious, and we bought some to take with us.

After that, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant recommended by our driver. We never actually ordered. We had earlier, when asking for a restaurant recommendation, explained that I'm vegetarian, J and C love fish, and S loves french fries. The driver called ahead, so everyone's favorites were ready and waiting by the time we arrived. I felt like royalty. 

While in town we did some errands, C needed a new pair of shorts, which was a great, easy 15-minute experience, again at a store recommended by our driver. Then our driver, who really is so much more than a driver, took the kids to the playground while J and I got some groceries.

The last stop on the way out of town was a hot spring. This was a place I thought looked interesting, but the Google reviews were terrible so I wrote it off. Turns out the city council had just done a great job cleaning it up and putting up informational signs so our host recommended it. I'm glad we went. This was a really hot spring, not like the geothermal baths in Iceland, but with actual boiling water. People bring pots of food to cook in it, which is what you see in the last picture.

That was a pretty cool stop. It was a very educational and fun day.

Friday and Saturday were more relaxed. C and J did algebra on Friday, and S and I did his lessons. The kids explored outside. They say they found a little cave. Saturday was the packing and cleaning day. I did get a chance to walk on the beach both days. Friday, like most days I didn't see a soul.

Saturday I chatted with some local fishermen. If J ever gets his way and we live on a tropical island this one would be ok with me. I'll never love heat and mosquitoes, and I would miss the snow, but I do like pristine natural places in any climate. Fiji is so nicely undeveloped, and while we've seen poverty in the sense of people living on very little, we haven't seen hunger, because there are so many opportunities to forage from both land and sea. The water is clean, the roads are good, kids go to school, and people can have a good life here. We haven't found many places this pristine and yet with amenities for the people who live there. Fiji definitely gets high marks. 

On to Hawaii, we'll be back on US soil.