Daily Travel Photo - Waya Lailai, Fiji

Daily Travel Photo - Tavewa Island, Fiji

This photo requires some explanation. It looks just like a normal sunset, and it is. However, if you look at the middle of the photo where the sea and the sky meet, you will notice a small dot of green. That is called the green flash. At the moment the tip of the sun goes below the horizon, you can see a brief burst of green as light is bent into the green part of the spectrum. It only lasts a second and you usually need binoculars to see it clearly. If you watch it live, it looks like a green line shrinking into a point. I had to click like mad as the top of the sun was setting below the horizon to capture the green flash. I’ve linked to a very large version of the photo so you can see it better.

Daily Travel Photo - Waya Lailai Island, Fiji

This is a panoramic photo of the Waya Lailai Resort in the Yasawa Islands in Fiji. You probably will want to click on the image to get a better view. Ultra wide photos like these don’t show well at only 500 pixels wide. Somewhere out in the distance is the island where the movie Castaway was shot. In the right side of the photo you can see the leg of my guide up the mountain, Barry. The stitching on the photo isn’t perfect, but I think you can get the gist of it.

McFiji

I finally got the chance to visit a McDonald’s in Fiji. I had to look closely, but what I noticed was definitely a reflection of what makes up modern Fiji.

The first thing to notice was that there were six different value meals available. Big Mac, double cheeseburger, chicken sandwich, fish sandwich, chicken nuggets, and regular old pieces of chicken. Why is this worth mentioning? Because 2/3 of the menu wasn’t beef and 1/2 of the menu was chicken.

If you looked at the full menu, every item that had beef in it had a small (beef) label next to the item. Why the issue with beef? If you spend any time in Fiji you’d see it right away.

About half of the population in Fiji are Indian, and hence, you got a lot of Hindus.

The population distribution in Fiji isn’t just reflected in the menu at McDonald’s. It has in one way or another, been responsible for much of the political turmoil which Fiji has experienced in the last fifteen years, how its political and economic structure is based, and of course its history.

For starters look at a map of the pacific. Most of the island countries would be impossible to find if their names were printed on the map. Fiji, however, is easy to see. It is by far the largest country in the region, which means it has the potential for the greatest amount of agriculture.

Fiji is also unique in that it was asked to be colonized by the British. (That isn’t an imperial fable to make the British look good either. They asked because they saw it as a way to end conflict on the islands and they knew they’d be colonized by someone, so they picked British.) The British used Fiji to grow sugar cane. They also needed workers for the sugar cane fields.

The largest British colony at that time was India, so India became the source of most of the laborers for the sugar cane fields in India. (The same thing happened in Guyana in South America. Guyana remains the only county in the Western Hemisphere where the largest religion is Hindu.) Indian workers came to Fiji to earn money never left.

Fast forward to independence in the 1960s. Most of the important events which have occured since independence have had something to do with the Indian population in some way or another.

Land ownership in Fiji is heavily tilted to favor native Fijians. There are also set aside positions in the parliament for ethnic groups. Because of the landownership rules, Indians end up owning many of the stores and businesses in Fiji, similar to how Jews and Chinese often wound up business owners in places where they lived.

In 1988, there was a coup in Fiji which was due largely to increasing role of Indians in Fiji in the government. Since then there have been several other coups, the most recent being in December 2006.

The end result of all the instability is that enough Indians have left Fiji to give native Fijians a majority again.

So….there is a heck of a lot behind having chicken on the menu.

Suva Monday

My visa application at the Kiribati embassy went smoothly. I got it done in under one hour. Believe it not, it was the first visa I’ve applied for. (I decided to not apply to China in Samoa. I’m going to apply when I’m closer to China and know my itinerary better.)

I visited the University of the South Pacific where, according to my guidebook, is the best bookstore in the South Pacific. Sadly, that isn’t saying much. I got a book on cargo cults and the James Mitchner Novel “Tales of the South Pacific”.

I’m going to upload a few more photos while I have the bandwidth, then its a three hour drive back to Nadi tonight. Tomorrow morning I’m off to New Caledonia and Francophone land.

Back to Fiji II

I’m writing in Suva, Fiji. I got in at 6:30am and a day added with my 5th crossing of the dateline on my trip. I spent the morning driving to Suva and am writing at what is, by far, the nicest internet cafe I’ve encountered on my trip.

Tomorrow moring I’ll get to the Kiribati embassy first thing to get my visa processed. I’ll also try and hit up the bookstore at the University of the South Pacific before driving back to Nadi.

The next morning (Tuesday) I have an early flight to New Caledonia. I’m really excited to get to Vanuatu. I think Tanna Island will be one of the highlights of my trip so far.

I should note that I haven’t seen a single soldier since arriving in Suva. I can see no obvious external evidence of the coup….yet.

Green Flash Part II

i finally have been able to upload some of the Fiji photos.

Here is the photo of the green flash that I wrote about earlier. The green flash is pretty unimpressive as a photo. Its just s small hunk of green. Its much more impressive to watch live with a zoom lens.

I’d recommend looking at the largest size image and then zoom in on the center of the photo to see the green.

And the winner is…..Impetigo!

So, after much review, I think what I have is called Impetigo. Here is how it’s described by the Mayo Clinic website:

Impetigo starts as a red sore that quickly ruptures, oozes for a few days and then forms a yellowish-brown crust that looks like honey or brown sugar. The disease is highly contagious, and scratching or touching the sores is likely to spread the infection to other parts of the body as well as to other people.

Impetigo is seldom serious, and minor infections may clear on their own in two to three weeks.

It’s mostly found in children. I think the open sores on my body and all the diving and the lack of descent shower facilities and the sores not letting me be able to shower properly probably were all factors in me getting a bad case.

I’ve begun uploading some Fiji photos. Here is one of me underwater. Note how extreme my haircut was. The barber pretty much made me bald. I have enough stubble on my head now that you can at least tell I have hair.

I also accidentally took some video while diving in Fiji. I thought the camera was in photo mode, but it was in video mode, so some of it is pretty jerky because I didn’t know I was filming.