Down days, mad bees and tropical nookie
March 28, 2005Pacific Harbour, Fiji
10:12 am.
It was tough to top the river adventure so yesterday was a more familiar, need groceries, have lunch kind of day. We dropped by the resort to pay our cocktail bill from the previous night. I love the trust. Can you come back tomorrow? They said, we have no change tonight. Of course I can come back tomorrow. And I did.
We also signed up for next week’s adventures, which are a day trip to Suva, the capital of Fuji on Tuesday and a day trip to Yanuca Island for snorkeling and lunch on Wednesday.
Suva should be fun. It is with Anil, an Indo-Fijian with a bad moustache and even worse repertoire of jokes. He sees himself as the resort comedian and I think he is a bit of a letch. Every time I returned from the bar or the bathroom he was kind of hovering on Steph, laughing at his own inane banter, nudging her milky shoulder. He is harmless though, and will serve as a good host for the trip into Suva. I am sure he will be miked and armed with a cornucopia of jokes about the heat and the intermittent power outages and the gassy chicken curry.
So we paid our drink tab, said hi to the local roosters, pet the three legged cat and made our almost daily journey to the Cultural Centre where grocery shopping and lunch await.
I checked the e-mail and the blog as I am a sucker for comments, and need to ask one favour, can someone contact Andy and ask him how Alice is doing? I can’t really give the number out here, but if anyone has it, please ask him or Tara to e-mail me or comment on the blog. Every time a piece of food falls to the floor I think of Alice, with her Sylvester Stallone eyes, rushing to snarf it up. Oh Alice. What a pretty bunny. I hope Ike has not eaten her.
So we had lunch (yep, chicken curry, yep three Fiji Bitters) and Hud ran into his two friends from the resort, Justin and Jacob, 11 and 7 respectively. Hey guys he says, want to play with me? They are American and have been living in Fiji for the past six years, with I think, just their mother. Steph and I have of course created a fictional tale about her being a woman on the lam, escaping the abusive husband, disobeying the court order for joint custody and fleeing to the south pacific. Total goofballs we are.
Steph looked so pretty yesterday, wearing a pink and peach flowered, no sleeve top, her hair a little lighter, her skin a little darker, both from the sun. She wears no make up and her skin was glowing like a full moon.
Grocery shopping was a breeze. The store is adequate, but not abundant. The produce was better this time but I forgot to buy yogurt, popcorn and chocolate, standard necessities.
Another small but great part of this country is there are cabs everywhere. With no minimums. We had a heavy load of groceries so we decided to take a cab back to our villa. $2. For basically the distance between University Ave and Spadina. Which is about C$1.60.
At the villa, groceries unpacked, drinking Schweppes mineral water with Orange and Mango, we all decide to go for a dip in the pool. Hud of course now jumps in regularly and yesterday, we put him in an inflatable ring. With a few back and forths he realized that he could both control the speed and direction of this ring all by himself. So within 10 minutes, he has now mastered laps in the pool and doing a full 360. I tell you, surfing by Australia.
At five o’clock we stupidly started watching a kid’s movie, and because of all his laps in the pool, and the day of a lifetime the previous day, Hud fell asleep. We knew it was wrong, we knew it would be difficult to wake him for dinner, but whatever, sometimes the structure can be altered, so we put Hud to bed.
This left some alone time for my wife and I. I have one word for you. Prrrorrwwrrr.
After three hours of torrid lovemaking, or twenty minutes, I can’t recall, we slipped into our pool naked as newborns and kissed like teenagers. Total lovely.
We tried Mitch, we tried to wake him at 6. But he wanted none of it. So we left him in his bed, with the plan that we would both get up when he did, as it was a mutual decision to let him sleep.
He did not wake up. Well he did come to our bed in the middle of the night, but he slept until 7. He must have been zonked, and after battling the Navua River and climbing a waterfall, wouldn’t you be? He woke this morning with a giggle and chuckle.
Today it is rainy for the first time. I know I know, poor baby. Chris, our landlord came over to try to kill a torrent of bees that has nested on the north side of our villa. Seems to me they just got angrier. Steph hates bees. I am indifferent.
I think I will take Hud swimming now. He is being a bit of a brat and I think he is just bored. Later on it’s the beach where we will try to avoid having lunch at the posh restaurant as we have $0.08 left in our restaurant budget.
Damn you chicken curry. Damn you.
Love to all,
J.
March 29, 2005
Pacific Harbour, Fiji
6:25 am
Dawn. It rained all night. Torrential. Which is good for droughty Fiji, but bad for us, as it does not look like it is going to let up.
I am sitting at the dining room table typing into my brand new G4 Powerbook listening to Clocks by Coldplay using my Ipod with ITravel on the stereo in my rented 2000 square foot villa listening to the globby raindrops fall into our lap pool out back. Like Swiss Family Robinson we are.
Yesterday we hung out at the villa until lunch where Hud continued to accelerate his swimming by now jumping into the pool without us, with the inflatable ring around his waist. You should see his little brave face when he leaps off the edge, so small and determined. And when he hits the water the shock and surprise and almost panic until he realizes he is going to be ok. The only drawback to this new confidence is our fear that he will just casually, like Johnny Weismiller, stroll up to the edge and dive in, sans ring. We are never more than a step away, but we do not want him to scare himself back to the edge. We shall see.
After lunch of macaroni for Hud and toasted ham and cheese sandwiches for Steph and I, we went to the beach to get some much needed exercise. It was still overcast and very windy, but we walked a mile up the beach anyway. The waves were bigger and more fun for Hud, although he needs to hold one of our hands if we get anywhere near the water. Half scared and half protecting us from the crashing waves.
Steph and my dreams of surfing will have to wait until Australia it seems. It is all reef surfing here, only for the more experienced surfer, including the world famous Frigate Passage.
It started to rain so we made our way to The Pearl, the posh resort with the really nice furniture to dry off. Dry off yeah right. Steph had the chicken curry (a theme here me thinks), I had a burger with onion rings and garlic aoli, Hud had chicken fingers and Caesar salad. Five beers later we have now fully blown our restaurant budget and could not care less about it. We trudged home in the rain.
Fatter. Poorer. Happy.
The bees were still hanging at our pad, reconvening in a different corner, plotting their revenge against us. A number of them did not survive the blasting with the can of chemicals and are scattered, burnt like toast, around and in the pool. I finally got stung yesterday by trying to get one out of the pool. Bees can swim. Remember that.
And last night, after I narrowly beat Steph at Trivial Pursuit (if she would have won, I would have come home, went back to work at Sentry, to further my life of complete and utter shame) we were getting ready to watch a movie until Steph ran into a little friend in the bathroom.
Oh yeah baby a cockroach. A cockroach with its own area code sat on the mat staring at us, its feelers waving back and forth like a rock concert crowd. It was big and creepy. Like me sometimes.
Lucky for us, unlucky for it, Chris had left us an extra can of bug killer. I had to spray this can for about 15 seconds, right into this thing’s mouth until it finally back flipped, screamed an obscenity, and died clutching its cold black bug heart. Together, Steph and I picked up three legs each, and flushed it down the toilet, almost clogging it.
Another bug adventure, and I did not even tell you about the spider.
Lying in bed this morning I had dreams of writings of poignant thoughts and feelings about how my life had changed and how it will continue when (if?) I return.
But forget it. I will leave it like this. All boring and shit.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 4:15 PM
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