Heading from Fiji to Melbourne we landed late at night and came out of the airport to get a ride to our hostel surprised by the cold! July in Australia is in fact winter! It’s winter in Fiji as well, but that felt like a cool summer to us, actual winter was a shock to us wearing shorts and t-shirts! We were able to finally secure a maxi-taxi to get us on our way and unpacked our winter gear in earnest! In the morning we hopped the train up to our first international house sit! They welcomed us warmly with dinner and new friends!
Castlemaine
We were pretty lucky in our timing to arrive in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia right at the beginning of term (as they call it here, the beginning of school and all kinds of other classes for kids). We were able to jump right into things like soccer, circus class and ballet. We found a local Pioneer Scout Hall and promptly signed the kids up for the equivalent of Cub Scouts in Australia. We also attended church some at the local Mormon ward in Bendigo, where we more than doubled their primary attendance.
Most influential though was a local homeschool group that was kind enough to let us join them for a couple months! We made fast friends in the group meeting weekly and met up during the week for play dates. A highlight of our time in Castlemaine was the homeschool group theater production we were involved with. We put on an adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia – Lion Witch and the Wardrobe – but Castlemaine style, dubbed Castle-Narnia.
The slow travel has paid off on this stop and we were very happy to be able to quickly integrate with the community. A great community it is too! Castlemaine is close enough to Melbourne that many commute, but it’s also far enough that it has its own character. It has a feel almost of a liberal college town and a small town at the same time (reminding us of Athens, GA) while also having some rich history with the gold rush. It also has ancient history with indigenous people in the area for something like 40K years.
There were even a couple community events we joined in. A game night, town lunches and soccer social kicks (adult tournaments). Combine all this with all the other activites and field trips we made, it’s amazing we did it all in 8 weeks!
Though one of our goals is to not tourist, our flights went through Suva and Nadi, and gave us a lot of time to kill in each city. We had about 8 hours in Suva and 23 hours in Nadi! We did not want to hang out in the airports all day for two days so we went out to see what we could find.
After landing in Suva and taking a break to recharge phones and look up what we could do in our window of time and playing card games to corral the kids, we went out to see what there was to see. We hired a taxi van because a family of 6 can’t fit in anything smaller. We had looked up a couple things, and rather than go to the touristy markets, we went to a rainforest park. There was a little hike down to the river with a waterfall and a swimming hole. It was awesome! Not only a swimming hole but a rope to swing off the top of the falls and drop into the water hole at the bottom. We tried our hand and enjoyed the swing, but also enjoyed watching some locals doing incredible flips and tricks. There were a couple of friends that were olympic material. One would swing out and swing back and pick up the friend and swing together, then they’d jump off while pushing off each other and spiral twist back flips all the way down into the hole! Another guy climbed the tree, up above the rope knot and just jump into the water, it had to be 50-70 feet tall! We really enjoyed the cool water and playing in the creek above the falls. It was a great break between airplane flights, it was nice to see another part of Fiji as well. Talking with our taxi driver was humbling as well. His small wages and the house he pointed out and the nicer if hours he drives. 60+ hours per week and earning the equivalent of $20 a day. We got back to the airport when we wanted to, but I’m reality we had a couple hours to spare. It took all of 10 minutes to get through security and check in for the flight, so we played cards for a couple hours and made friends with the security and airport staff.
We arrived in Nadi and headed to the hotel we had booked. We’d heard and read that it was very family friendly, and it was. But it also felt a bit fake to me. After being in Vorovoro and seeing real Fiji life, the ironed shirts and matching sulus, drinks delivered on platters by smiling but silent servers felt detached. It felt like a production or presentation at Disney world. Don’t get me wrong, Disney world has its place, but it’s certainly not a place where you get an authentic experience with real people and real culture. It’s all pretend, and that’s the point there… Disney isn’t real. It was great to have a pool and to relax most of the day in it and reconnect with friends and family. It was also an awkward and stark difference after the cultural experience on the island. Having Fijians serving us and drive us around when we didn’t know them or share kava or live with them was hard. It felt like a sterilization to placate the wealthy tourist who doesn’t want to be aware of the culture or the people, who doesn’t want authenticity, who is not comfortable with seeing the economic divide in their face. Fiji is a beautiful country though, I hope people learn too that Fiji is a beautiful people as well.
Not being good at touristing, making friends with taxi drivers and security officers and not wanting to be served drinks on platters as we sit by the pool is a sign that we are doing something right, right? Maybe we were just missing our new island family.
We did have a little scare at Nadi airport checking in to head to Australia. All our boarding passes printed fine at the kiosk but one kept giving an error, so we had to go to the counter to figure that out. It turned out that even though our electronic visa application had been approved, it had since changed! One of our six visas to get into Australia was revoked… How exciting! Then they said it was only because the birthdate was wrong on the application compared to the passport. So, we had to reapply before we would be allowed to enter the country. This significantly added to the stress of the day. (After spending hours at the airport and not seeing any of our last 4 flights in Fiji board until flight time, we didn’t feel pressed for time, so we were a bit later than the recommended 2 hours for international flights.) Reapply for a visa to entry the country which you are currently about to board a flight for, no big deal. Luckily Australia has a fast and electronic application process, so they let me use their computer to get on and reapply really fast, and it actually worked! I just had to correctly enter the birthday and pay another application fee (luckily it’s only $20 Australian). My best guess, since I honestly do a decent job remembering my kids birthdays, is that I entered the date American-style (month, day) whereas it’s required to enter in like-literally-the-rest-of-the-world-style (day, month). Luckily they approved us with enough time to run to the gate and board the flight! If it hadn’t worked, we had already decided to leave 1 kid behind, I’ll let you think on who it was… (feel free to guess in the comments!)
In Fiji, as in all our travels, our goal is to really get to know the local culture rather than just visit as a tourist. Bridge the Gap shares this same vision and it was very welcoming to be able to participate with real people in a real village. We made friends, learned about their traditions and respectfully followed these traditions as guests. There were no natives serving us drinks on platters or other resort/Disney-inspired representations of their culture. We were there and worked along side them to prepare meals, wear their traditional clothing and learn their phrases. We were able to help in a couple construction projects, learn about the medicinal uses of the plants, fish with them and more. We also laughed a lot with them, played games and volleyball and spent many hours on the kava mat.
Kava
As I mentioned before, in Fiji we spend a lot of time on the Kava mat. The time is well used to visit and join in music together. There is a lot of tradition and ritual surrounding Kava.
Living on an island for a week certainly included lots of time with the water and sand. Even getting there was a water adventure since we had to take a boat to get there, no roads! We were able to swim anytime, since we slept literally 10 steps from the sand. The waves were pretty calm since the reef breaks most of the big waves further out. Watching the tide change was interesting, it was a very big difference in seeing the coral bottom all uncovered vs the waves coming right up to our hammocks. There was snorkeling equipment available to borrow and we were able go out multiple times. We even went out to a reef one day to snorkel that had much clearer water and more aquatic life! We did some fishing too. I will have to do better next time at catching more fish, but I at least caught one. I didn’t learn to spear fish, but that’s more my fault. I should have gone out with Api to harpoon some fish or set some traps/nets. He did this multiple times and he was really really good at it!
Beach
It was amazing to spend so much time on the beach. It was all ours too, there is even a place on the island called secret beach. It’s not that secret, just around the bend. But a great little walk and we found a lot of wildlife. Plenty of hermit crabs, but also baby birds, sea snakes, eels, fish, lobster, jellyfish, crabs, starfish, coral, etc. The kids had so much fun catching all the creepers they could: hermit crabs, and sand crabs mainly. Don’t worry, no coconut crabs. They did this for days on end! We also swam in the water, and it was sweet relief. While it was winter in Fiji and the locals were wearing jackets and were actually cold, we were still pretty warm. It was probably 70-80’s during the day and pretty humid. Mid-afternoon was usually a couple hours of oppressive feeling heat, but the water was a good remedy. Walking along one day I lifted a leaf and in under it was a pile of hermit crabs, I started my camera in time to see some of them scatter:
Fishing
We were able to go out night fishing and it was great fun. Besides the fact that 2 of the boys fell asleep on the boat because it was, well, night. They had played all day in the sun though, and one was actually feeling pretty ill (dehydrated). The way to go night fishing in Fiji though involves a hook on a line wrapped around a plastic bottle. Any bottle will do, you use it as your reel and manually turn the bottle to let the line out or pull it in. Casting is as simple as throwing the bait on your hook out. If you’re fancy you can even swing it around your head and launch it, we tried and might have ended up hitting each other in the heads with our bait once or twice. And then you wait in the dark and feel the line between your fingers until you feel a nibble. Api was the best to be with on the boat, he would basically talk the fish onto his line! Really, he’d say, “here fishy fishy fishy, just the big ones!” and minutes later he’d pull one up. He spent most of his time untangling lines and cutting bait for everyone else, but he still caught 6 times more fish than the rest of the boat combined! 6 to 1. I caught the other fish, and it felt nice, but he was too small for anything other than cutting up for more bait. We had to watch out fishing because the hooks were getting stuck regularly on coral and things at the bottom. Our Swedish friend Max actually caught some coral rock!
Snorkel
Snorkeling was great and seeing the numerous fish. I won’t even try to name the kinds we saw (mostly because I don’t even know), but I can say we saw lots, including swarms of jellyfish, and a few sharks, plenty of coral, bright blue fish and some clown fish even. Thinking of all the varieties of life and considering the size of the ocean really puts our own size into perspective. We’re just small creatures too, finding our place in it all. There are so many fish in the ocean, and so much sand on the beach. It’s so great to be in it, and connect with it, and just take it in. Along those same lines, is another part of Fiji that I absolutely loved, the stars!
Stargazing
Being on a remote island with the only “civilization” light from town to our back over the jungle peaks, we saw more stars than I can ever remember seeing. We could sit at the beach and see billions of stars! I didn’t count them, but my kids told me there were that many. We could see the milk in the milky way! You’ll have to take our word for it, because the photos never turned out. The best was when there was no moon, because then we could see so many more stars. One night though we were out looking at the starts and could see Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all lined up across the sky along with the moon. It was magical. It continually made us think of simpler times when all people on earth shared the stars and formed their own belief systems about what the stars meant and their personal, yet small place in the cosmos.
Our time in Fiji was amazing! We were on a small island that is a couple kilometers square and stayed for 8 days. It’s just north of Labasa, on Vanua Levu. We Flew to Labasa, took a taxi to the coast, and then a boat (like a little motor boat) to Vorovoro. We stayed in a vale (hut) with 6 beds so we all had space. Our vale was steps from the beach on the edge of the village. We had compost toilets, bucket powered showers we filled with collected rainwater, solar powered charging stations and communal meals with everyone (courtesy of Misi) and kava on the grog mat every night. We went snorkeling and fishing and played volleyball and swam at the beach and enjoyed the company of the Fijians and the wildlife. They had an injured pet fruit bat (Becky) in the kitchen hut where we could pet and take care of him. There were chickens wandering the island with baby chicks. A guitar and ukulele in the grand bure. Plenty of hammocks around the fire ring and along the beach. We enjoyed walking along the beach and finding hermit crabs and shells, walking into the water and looking at the coral and fish and even snorkeling right off the beach and finding more. Mat weaving Fiji style, visiting the primary school on neighboring island Mali in the village of Lingalevu,
We went one day out to a reef and saw loads more fish and beautiful coral and even sharks!
The food
Fiji was colonized by the British, and to farm sugar cane they brought over a large population from India who knew the crop already (and they had also colonized). There is still a large Indian population in the area, and they have greatly influenced the cuisine. They eat curries and rice all the time on Fiji, but they have their own treatment with local vegetables, we mostly had fish curry and chutney. It was delicious, and not usually as spicy as the Indian food I’m used to, but it was still really good. We ate coconut, fish, chicken, fish, rice, curry, chutney, pancakes (which were more like scones or donuts), bananas , oatmeal/porridge.
The Language
Tui Mali – the chief of the Mali tribe.
Bula – Hi (literally it means life or health)
Bula Sia – The local way to say it on Vorovoro and the surrounding area of Labasa.
Vinaka – Thank you
Yadra – Good morning
Kerekere – Please
Tulou – Excuse me
Moce – Goodbye (pronounced Mo-they)
Sulu – The traditional skirt everyone wears.
Kava – The traditional drink of Fiji. Also called Grog.
Tanoa – The traditional bowl where kava is mixed.
Sevusevu – Ceremony when you arrive at a village. You bring kava root and present it to the chief.
Cobo – (Thombo) the deep handed clap you do on the kava mat
Oh ya – What men say as they approach a home.
Manavanduuu – What women say as they approach a home. They say this right after the men would say Oh ya. It’s kinda sung and trails off at the end like an echo.
Bongi – What everyone says at night as you first approach a home or kava mat.
Dondo – When on the kava mat, men sit cross legged, and women sit with both legs to the side on the knees. Sitting there for hours and visiting is great, but your legs get very tired, so the chief can call a rest by saying ‘dondo‘. We had a good joke going around the village that we needed a ‘full body dondo’
Kerekere vaka cangu – What you’d say on the grog mat when you’re ready to go to bed (not sure the exact spelling or meaning, but basically means, can I please go to bed?’ you ask the chief after you get everyone’s attention by cobo-ing three times, and he will say ‘Vinaka‘)
Lovo – The underground oven meal/feast. Super heat rocks in a fire and place them in a hole covered with food to cook. Including fish, chicken and veggies and then you cover with banana leaves and then dirt to keep the heat it and let it cook for about an hour and a half. The fun part is digging it up without burning your hands too bad!
Kava
Kava deserves it’s own section here. Every evening after dinner will be a time everyone comes together in the big pavilion called the grand buré. Kava is a root, which they will pound into a powder and then mix with water to make a drink. Kava doesn’t necessarily taste good, but it’s not that bad either. It makes your tongue and mouth go a bit numb and tingly at first. They say it relaxes you and that once you’ve had it daily for a few weeks you can get drunk off it, though there is no alcohol content. I don’t remember the word in Fiji, but it sounds like “lambchop” in english and someone once confused the two, so now they just say that. Not like a crazy drunk or a sloppy drunk, but a mild mumbly laughing drunk. We never felt anything other than a tingling in our mouth though. But it’s not just a cup or two, they will sit for hours and hours on the mats, basically from dinner until bed, all night even sometimes. They combine the crushed kava root (they just use stones or metal or anything hard to pound the root) with water into the tanoa. Then they use a coconut shell as a cup and dish it out for everyone one at a time. They will pass the cup from person to person, and to receive it you cobo once, and after you drink you pass the cup back and cobo three times. There are kava guards that sit next to the tanoa and pass it around to people and keep the kava stirred and mixed. They will pass to everyone there and then take a break until the chief calls for another round usually 5-10 minutes later. There is a special kava ceremony when you arrive in a village called a Sevusevu, where the visitor presents the chief with a wrapped kava root and states the intention of the visit, then they are received by the chief as family (literally one of their own) and he will speak for the land and the ancestors in welcoming you to the land. There is also another similar ceremony when you leave , we were able to participate in a couple and see a few more of these types of ceremonies and it was nice to learn the rhythm of it all.
Off the Grid
We were off the grid because we did not get cell service where we were, and there was not much electricity anyways. There is a charge station for phones and things, but half our stay the solar panels or batteries did not work, so we were always trying to conserve our charge. IT was really nice to not be connected to things like Facebook and instagram, though some of you worried about us going dark. We did find after a couple days that there is a peak you can hike to that we did get signal on, so we would go and post photos and send messages to let everyone know we were still alive.
Bridge The Gap
As we mentioned earlier, we were on Vorovoro as guests through an organization called Bridge the Gap. They are in partnership with the chief and other tribal leaders to help the people live sustainably and adjust to the local challenges of climate change. Read more about their mission on their site. It was a great cultural experience to learn about the traditional of Fiji and get to know the people.
We’ll have a few more posts about our time in Fiji, so stay tuned! In the meantime, here are some more photos:
While having a blast at the reunion, we were also busy getting our final packing finished and the last purge. We had a few things to finally let go of, like our pillows and other random things, like our minivan…
We luckily found a great buyer who was in need of upgrading their vanimal and they dropped us off at the airport!
It was quite a strange feeling having just sold our last vehicle and jettisoned anything that wouldn’t fit in our suitcases and backpacks and to step onto an airplane! Very freeing, but also quite anxious. There were second thoughts and moments of panic, but we reassured ourselves that we’d done the planning and preparations and now was time to jump!
It was also very freeing to let go of everything society says we should have and accumulate and work hard to keep. We no longer are living the “American Dream” of owning our own house (and paying the bank dearly for it in interest and insurance). A yard to call our own to play ball with the kids, our own kitchen, and growing some veggies or spices. We do value that and are still interested in that, we just have a different dream right now. We want to travel light and experience different cultures and places, we want to go not as tourists, but as travelers and learn from the experience. We also want to learn to detach from the things and stuff of our commercial consumer culture. We want to JUMP! You can too!
Our first jump is to fly from SLC to LA to Nadi, Fiji to Labasa, Fiji, then a taxi to the docks and a boat to Vorovoro for a week of culture experience living sustainably with a Fiji village. More on that to come. The fun part was crossing the date line, in that we left LA on a Thursday night, and arrived in Fiji Saturday morning, yet only 12 hours later. So we jumped into the future too!
A great family reunion spent at Bear Lake on the border of Idaho and Utah. We had a washer-toss tournament, trivia, water games, world cup watching, card games and lots of food! It was perfect timing for us to be leaving right afterwards, it was like a sendoff party all week!
We had great visits with long lost friends and family going through Utah. We visited only a fraction of those we wanted to see, but it was a packed zip through the state. We were able to visit many old friends from Georgia as well as mission friends and cousins! A stop in with Thomas McConkie for some mindfulness practice, visit with Sasha and fam, Lunch with Zanne and Mica, playing at the park with Matt & Madeline and Elle, a hike with Stix and kids, visit with Nate and Amy little and fam, the Johansens, another hike but with the Lowry clan followed by gelato, visiting Stix at his fire station, and some Mullins cousins for lunch! We got photos of some of the gatherings, but not all.
Special thanks to Aunt Zanne for acting as our mailbox and letting us mail everything (including our passports) to her house since we no longer have one and didn’t want to mess with forwarding things from our mailbox!
Driving from Colorado to Utah is beautiful and I was able to literally “work on the road” again as we went, though some places along the interstate don’t have much as far as data connections. I was able to get my work done still. My kind of corner office… Coding + Roadtrip = Codetrip
We were heading to Utah and we wanted to return to Moab for some family hiking. We visited about 10 years ago and thought the kids would love it. As we pulled in the night before we decided to check the weather and we were a little surprised. We hadn’t put two and two together, that it was summer and we were heading to the desert. Not sure why we hadn’t even thought about that yet, but we had just enjoyed some beautiful weeks in Colorado. Anyways, it was hot than expected so we rearranged our schedule to hike early in the morning before it hit 100 degrees since it would stay above 100 until 8pm when it started getting dark.
What is this, a desert!?
We had a good hike to the delicate arch though and the kids became convinced we were trying to kill them with the heat already, so we called it a day and went to hydrate and swim at the hotel before heading north.
A visit to Colorado Springs can’t be complete without checking out the Garden of the Gods park. It’s free and it’s great fun to climb around the immense rock formations.
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We celebrated a birthday and visited lots with Aunt Teresa and cousins! We even made her a website: mykidneyhero.com. Also had a great trip to the movies (Incredibles 2) and some fun places to eat: Smash Burger and Rizuto’s ice cream!