Thursday 19th February 2004, Day 159/366 - Mana, Fiji Islands to Beachcomber Island, Fiji Island.
Today Roger and I are transferring to Beachcomber Island for 2 nights. In the words of Eastwood "if you want to get laid go to Beachcomber". On Mana there are 3 big boats a day that transfer you to the other islands. You can also catch little ones, but I'd like to keep my stuff dry if possible. The big boat transfer costs F$41.
I'm not totally sad to be leaving Mana. I'm glad I came and I think I got an insight into how Fijians live, but I've had my fill and I need a shower. I'm even considering changing my flight again to leave Fiji early. I think the saying goes 'good times, not long times'.
Everything is hit and miss with booking things in Fiji. You are never sure if you have got through to the person that you are talking to, but somehow you always get where you want to be. It can be intensely frustrating.
On the boat the captain announces "Who's going to beachcomber?" it was like him saying "Who wants to get laid?". Only me and Roger then. I would just like to point out that that is not why i'm coming here, it's supposed to be quite nice, just a bit of a party place.
We'd spent 3 hours on the boat island hopping with dodgy rum hangovers.
On arrival at Beachcomber we met up with 2 of Rogers aussie mates and immediately started drinking at 2 PM. Beachcomber is a backpacker resort as opposed to a hostel. It has an 100 bed dorm and costs F$77 a night including food. The food is much better, but this doesn't have the feel of travelling. You also don't need money on the island as you can charge everything to you room/bed! That's a very dangerous situation.
We started on Fiji bitter, progressed to drambuie, then cocktails, margaritas before ending on FB again. It's expensive here, but there's not much else to do. We even threw a couple of cava's in on the way.
Cava is supposed to be a ceremonial drink which basically looks like dirty water and taste the same. It's a root that is left in a muddy puddle and you drink the residue. It has a similar effect to narcotics and after a while makes your lips and tongue go numb and you sleep like a baby.
For a party place it was a bit lame. It wasn't so much 18-30 it was more 16-18. Plenty of wankers here. This isn't visiting Fiji and seeing how Fijians live. It was fun, but I'm glad I went to Mana first.
The four of us were all displaying our red sox (sun burnt feet), but one thing bothered me about Roger and that was he carried about a PINK bottle of after sun with him. He's from Cumbria, but lives in NYC and after 5 years there he frazzled in no time at all, even through the clouds. The pink stuff helped him. The other concern was when he returned from one of his trips to the bar he says. 'You see those water jugs up there, well I've seen people put lemon in them before, but never cucumber.' Um are you sure it's not lime maybe. This guy works in a bar as well.
