April 2015 – Page 3 – Sean Shadmand

The king of the Kava ritual

Kava is a traditional drink of Fiji that has special sedative power and is used in daily social gatherings. Luckily for us, our hotel hosted a kava ceremony while we were there and we jumped at the opportunity to participate.

We were the first to arrive and struck up a conversation with the Wise, the host of the ceremony, while he was churning the kava filled bag in water. You can see his explanation of how the ceremony goes below.

Since I was the first one there I was bestowed the honor of being the Chief (I know I said King in the title – alliteration sounded better) of the kava ceremony. With that, my responsibility was to make sure everyone clapped appropriately to ask for their drink and determine when it was time to give the group another round.

Kava tastes like – tingling, numbing, dirt. It isn’t pleasant but the effects on the mouth after pushing back a coconut filled cup of the stuff is an experience. You have to drink six or more cups of this stuff and even if you get past the taste the sheer quantity of liquid consumed is hard to swallow. Everyone did their best to keep up but it didn’t take long for people to back out, myself included.

I was hoping for a peaceful deep sleep as the kava promises, but neither I or Jackie got one. I don’t think it worked on us, but to each their own.

First stop Fiji. Amazing snorkeling with warm oceans and private beaches

The first stop on our trip was Fiji. We used our Virgin America points to fly for free to Los Angeles and then took a direct flight from LAX to NAN on Fiji Airways using Webjet.com. The total cost for the flight was $547 each and took about 11.5 hours.

We arrived at 6AM and took a 20 min taxi to our hotel, First Landing Beach Resort. We stayed for 4 nights at about $74 per night. The hotel was quiet, the staff was friendly and the location was great.

After all the packing, moving and planning stresses it took to make this trip happen we promised one another that the beginning of our trip in Fiji would be low-impact. Our mission was to relax by the beach, read our Kindles and take it all in. We did a pretty good job at keeping to our mission for the first few days. 😉

One of the first things that excited us was the water temperature. The moment I dipped my toe in the near by ocean I couldn’t help but smile. It was bath water warm, and, after living in San Francisco for so long, I have yearned for a nice warm ocean experience for some time.

One thing you’ll notice when you get to Fiji is the lack of long beautiful beaches. I personally have always imagined Fiji to be full of them, but the ones on the mainland are mostly small, short and rough. At low tide the water is pretty shallow in most spots and the water line can be a bit far from shore.

There are magical beaches, though they live on the smaller islands surrounding the area. If you plan a trip to Fiji be sure to make time to tour the Islands. Per our promise to do very little while in Fiji we only chose to cruise to one island on one day. We are so glad we broke our promise to do so.

We took the Oolala cruise to Savala island from our hotel’s port for $100 per person. It was the highlight of our trip and totally worth it. On the way to the island we did some snorkeling.

We were so close to the fish we had a school swim up to us and eat out of our hands. You could feel the little nibbles on your fingertips. Imagine snorkeling in lukewarm water with a beautiful reef below and schools of fish surrounding you. It was a magical experience and ones we will never forget.

Next we hit the island for a BBQ and down time. Many of the islands around Fiji are extremely small and uninhabited, some only 100 meters long. Just being on a private island was an amazing experience. We kayaked and paddle boarded and laid out.

Oh no, the awesomeness of this day wasn’t over yet. We returned to our hotel to get dressed and make our way to dinner. We sat on the beach and ate pasta and pizza. Surprising note about Fiji, for some reason the pasta (and pizza) is really quite good – don’t forget to order it if it’s on the menu. We had a great dish (that had a few different ingredients than listed. Island style I guess) and took a walk to the bridge where a separate tiny island was attached. Long story short, we got engaged that night in Fiji. Like I said it was a pretty awesome day 🙂

Touring the Fijian town of Lautoka

After a few days in the sun we both decided to check out the nearby town of Lautoka to change things up a bit. Luckily there was a bus stop right outside our hotel entrance that took us there. The bus was right on time and we were on our way.

Note, as much as people joke about “Fiji time”, which roughly translated means “don’t expect things to be done on time”, everything we did was quite punctual.

It was a 45 minute ride that took us by a flour factory (which is probably why the pasta in Fiji was so good), a school, a few stops and small villages before we arrived at the town’s bus terminal. It was not that pleasant. The bus terminal was congested and smelled of exhaust. Bad sign? Nah, we ventured off anyhow. Block after block we were hoping we’d find a bit of the town’s heart beat, but it was pretty much dead. No interesting restaurants or places to chill out. About 20 mins into our walk we headed back to the bus terminal and grabbed the next one out.