After waking pretty early and heading down to breakfast, we looked outside, noted the great sunshine, and walked to the dive shop. Diving at Namale starts with a bumpy trip to Savu Savu, the biggest town, followed by a smooth boat ride to the diving spot. Sam, Abi, and Lai’s boat seemed to be made of tin, with spots for something like 16 divers, and two big engines in the back.
This was the best diving we had done, ever. Waters were shimmering with iridescent fish – electric blue, yellow, parrot fish. Cleaner shrimp climbed into our guide’s mouth (which we had seen before) and plate-sized coral colonies housed a dozen tiny tropical angel fish (which we had not seen before). Garden eels were abundant; huge schools of foot-long snapper cruised above us. A small, 14-inch white ray glided beneath us. It was fantastic.
Upon returning tired, cold, hungry, but excited, we ate lunch perched on a patio overlooking the blow hole in the coral reef.
We recovered from our dive with a long nap, then took a run up to the waterfalls to wake us up. Will has been just dying to get into the infinity pool in our Dream House’s front porch, so we turned on the gorgeous blue lights and took a dip. It was very cold. We dressed for dinner and enjoyed another night of kava bowl and the band. Finishing the evening, we made some popcorn and turned on Ratatouille on the big-screen projector that is also in this fantastic house.
For our first morning in Fiji, we woke early and headed for breakfast, which was located very near to our Dream House. Will had Indian scramble and I had a veggie omelet with cheese. Turns out you can make anything taste about the same if you add enough ketchup and Tobasco sauce.
At breakfast, we spoke to Emosi, the dive master and head of activities. He suggested that we do not go out diving, as the seas were pretty rough. Instead, we headed over to a coconut demonstration (Will: “Way more interesting than I thought it was going to be”). We ate coconut at several different stages – young and ripe – and drank a bunch of coconut juice. Fijians take their coconut very, very seriously. We are also using coconut spa products, making us coconuts inside and out here. We were most impressed with the young man’s ability to use a huge machete to open the coconut, swinging it without regard for life or limb.
Following the coconut demonstration, we had lunch in the second restaurant and then headed towards the reception bure for our tour of the village. Emosi, the head of the recreation department, took us. It was a short bus ride to the village, and the small distance reminded me how close the luxury of Namale sits to relative poverty. Houses in various stages of disrepair were made of wood with corrugated metal roofs, and barefoot children played hide and seek with us, laughing.
At the village, we picked up a Fijian mask for Anna and Nathan from one of the women:
Returning from the village, we spent some time walking the beach and looking at hermit crabs, which were more populous than I had ever seen before.
Following the village tour, we still had some extra time, so we headed down to the dive shop to see if we could go swimming. The dive guys hooked us up with a kayak to paddle around the bay, and also with Lai, who would become our Namale buddy. We paddled into the bay, up a river, under the Hibiscus Highway, and tried to go all the way up, but at some point we got stuck in the plants and had to turn around.
Tired but happy, Will and I left Lana’i on Saturday afternoon, surprising the Lodge at Koele staff by filling our “private transfer” Cadillac SUV with our last remaining family members off to the airport – Auntie Brenda, Uncle Craig, Catherine, Aiko, and Kung Kung. We’re all about doing it “family style!”
The small plane back to Honolulu was also filled with our family. Will and I said goodbye at the airport, and headed back home to Kailua. After a very welcomed home-cooked meal at Grammy’s house, some heavy-duty laundry, and watching Planet Earth with Auntie Brenda, we headed towards Waikiki.
Mom had reserved a beautiful room at Outrigger on the Reef for us, and we were welcomed to the hotel with cold champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries. We drank the champagne and ate the strawberries on the balcony overlooking the beach, listening to the waves. It was wonderful.
In the morning, as we woke early to catch our 8:00 AM flight, we looked out our glass balcony doors again to watch the surfers stretching before going out.
As soon as we stepped on the airplane, we were greeted with “Bula,” the Fijian equivalent of “Aloha.” The airplane to Fiji was a full-sized jet, yet was only about a third full. Not only did we score exit row seats to fit Will’s legs, but also had an entire row of three seats to ourselves. I slept for nearly all of the six-hour flight.
When we stepped off of the plane in Fiji, greeted by a singing Fijian band, I was struck with how much Fiji is similar to and also how different from the outer islands of Hawaii. The temperature, humidity, speed of life, and casualness of formality is so much like Lanai, where we had just been. However, people are a little different – there is a very high Indian population here, and the haole folks tend to be from Australia rather than America. There are very few Asians here, and no Japanese tourists. Fijian dress uses lots of tropical print and Aloha shirts, but nearly everyone wears wraps instead of shorts or pants, and women’s wraps are always long – below the knee.
We took a little plane from Nadi to Savu Savu, the airport on the second-largest island. Because the planes are so small, they weigh you to get total weight:
As we flew over Fiji, I was struck with how green and verdant the islands are, with most areas covered with mountainsides and forests – again, similar to Hawaii. However, unlike Hawaii, most of the areas not covered by forest are separated into agricultural plots, and nearly all the towns I saw remind me of Lanai City – small, sleepy, with plantation-style wooden houses.
We arrived in Namale again to the sounds of singing. After a week of receiving a lot of attention, the last thing we wanted was … more attention. However, the music sounded great.
That evening Vili showed us to our rooms. It is amazing – everyone here knows our names, but unfortunately for my poor husband, immediately after convincing everyone to call him “Will” instead of “William,” the staff began calling him “Wili,” something like our friend Vili. Hence, in Fiji, Will is “Wili.”
The wonderful travel agency was able to get us an upgrade, and hence at check in, we found that we would be staying in Namale’s one “deluxe villa,” or the Dream House. Vili took us around our new digs, which included two separate bedrooms, a luxurious living room filled with covered patio beds, a spa hot tub, an infinity pool, a gorgeous shower. Most luxurious are the dozens and dozens of cut tropical flowers, either in vases or simply lying on counters. Staff here is so sweet – they leave messages written in flower petals on the towels, bed, or door mat.
Dinner featured a band and Kava Bowl in the main restaurant. Kava is a powder made from a ground, dried root that is placed in a sack, soaked in water, and then squeezed out. The result is a rather tasteless fermented drink that makes your tongue numb and gives you a nice buzz. During the kava drinking, musicians that reminded me exactly of a Hawaiian jam band played for us – two guitars, a rather weak ukulele, and an interesting bass box played by stretching the string like a rubber band. We would take breaks from the music to all sit around the kava bowl and drink together.
Thank you for your presence and well-wishes for our wedding on July 16. We have been blessed again and again.
250 of our favorite wedding pictures have been uploaded to my Picasa album here. Thanks again to John Hawkins, Dee Garrett, my parents Donna and Robin and sister Ashley, and Ellen Robinson, who contributed the bulk of the photos posted here. The professional photos were done by Garrett Nose, a fantastic photographer and my dad's high school classmate (http://www.garrettnosephoto.com). Incidentally, he also took photos of my parent's wedding.
If you have photos that you would not mind sharing with us, the best way to do this has been creating Picasa albums that we can download and save, and then emailing us the link. Thank you to all those of you who have already done this.
As a musical theater kid, who also rode horses, I have to say, this is an AMAZING toast. Note the A Chorus Line choreography halfway through, which I learned as a junior as Connie Wong, the Asian American typecast.
Lauren has the hiking bug! After reading a description of the 9.75-mile Maunawili Demonstration Trail hike in her copy of Oahu Revealed, Lauren thought it sounded like the one for us.
We pulled off the side of the road at a hairpin turn on the Pali Lookout...
...and then proceeded to hike for 20-30 minutes down a false trail.
To our credit, the bogus trail started immediately to the right of the Hawaii State Parks trailhead sign, and it looked solid enough at the beginning. But as the mud rose to our ankles, and as we crossed a stream for the fourth time, and as we found ourselves increasingly uncertain about where the trail actually was after coming around a bend -- well, we pulled out our photocopy of the Oahu Revealed pages saw the trail described as "very well-maintained," and wisely decided that we must have screwed up somewhere!
Once we trekked all the way back to the car, I noticed a little footbridge 20 feet down the road, which was the start of the real trail. And it was everything the guidebook promised. Well-maintained, scenic, a challenge over the course of the day but only steep for very short stretches.
We hiked for the next 4-5 hours, enjoying the incredible views that popped out every once in a while between trips through lush forest. We went through all the usual stages of hiking: enthusiasm, hunger, PBJ satiation, optimistic distance estimation, pessimistic distance estimation, boredom, singing, deep boredom ... and finally, victory!
One of the coolest things about the hike from this Florida boy's perspective was that we could look back from the end of our hike, and see the entire curve of the mountain that we'd just traversed. You don't often get the opportunity to look at so much terrain back home.
Here are some of my favorite shots, starting with a short video.
[As my discerning readers are doubtless aware, PBJ improves any vista.]
Last but not least, huge thanks to Grammy for picking us up at the end of the hike and driving us back to the car we'd parked at the trailhead. I was not eager to hike the 9 miles back. :)
I'll be posting all the pics I snap from the wedding and honeymoon trip to this smugmug gallery, and all the pics from this hike are up there.
Quick blog post today: we spent all day on what Lauren's sister, Ashley, would term "wedding slavery." Went our separate ways, packed and shipped boxes, got hair styling consultations (this does not involve any actual cutting of hair), etc. etc.
We actually had fun with it, finished ahead of schedule, and had some downtime to nap (Lauren) and catch up on the internets (Will).
Big payoff at the end of the day was dinner with Robin at Ono Hawaiian Foods. They were out of laulau, but their Kalua Pig and poi was just as good as everyone remembered. Lauren promised herself going in that she would limit herself to only TWO bowls of poi this time, after The Incident from our last trip...
Great food, great to have some quality time with Robin.
