More Ovalutau

August 4, 2007 Lovolini, Ovalutau

This morning I explored Levuka for about an hour, and was pretty bored after that. Takes literally about 15 to walk through the town. Looks right out of an old western film, the main strip lined with square buildings of different colors. I did manage to use the internet at the one place in town with 2 computers. Still wasn’t too expensive, I was quick though.

After walking thru town, Michel, Agate, Matt, Zac, James, and I met up at the Royal Hotel in town to meet our tour truck to go up to Lovolini. There were 4 others on the tour, 2 from England, and 2 from Germany also on a boat anchored of Levuka. All 10 of us, and our tour guide, Joanna from England, and took a carrier truck (where you sit in the bed on benches and have a tarp overhead) around the island. Quite a rough ride on the benches, as the roads aren’t maintained very well. (not as bad as Limon in Costa though!) Still fun to drive through all the villages around the coast, see the airport, and it was nice just be out, off the boat and be exploring the island. When we finally reached Lovolini, we parked at this house right on the edge of a small cliff, overlooking a river and the small village. The village is such a picturesque setting, sitting peacefully right in the middle of a long extinct (like 4,000 yrs) volcano crater. I thought it was going to be a desolate area with just a village sprouting up, like a mirage, but it wasn’t like that at all. Extremely lush mountains rising up on all sides with a river running through it. So back to our tour…we arrived at Joanna’s house and met her husband Epi (the real Fijian tour guide) and their 4 young kids. Michel brought kava which kind of disrupted their schedule of events, but it was so nice to drink kava at Epi’s house. We sat around for about 2 hours and he told us a really interesting story about the origin of the people of Fiji, Ovalutau, and Lolovini. Pretty fascinating, and a really long story, so I won’t try to explain. Some highlights were the people of Lovolini were considered the undefeatable warriors of Fiji, but the village people just had the advantage being up so high, they would just roll big boulders down the mountainside and squash the enemy in their tracks. Also when the people were finally overthrown by a mean trick, 20 people escaped back up to the hills while picking wild yams, and the rest of village people were sold as slaves all over Fiji, and a group of 3 were sold to the Barum and Bailey circus as “the Fiji warriors.” Currently the village of Lolovini is composed from the descendents of those 20 original villagers that escaped. The others sold in Fiji now live in the outlying villages around the coast, and the circus performers cannot be tracked down. Those are just some brief highlights, but it was really interesting. Epi didn’t mention it, but in their bathroom their was a whole newspaper article on Joanna giving a really successful (like 54 K) life in England to live in a hut in Ovalutau with her husband, the chief’s son…Epi. Pretty crazy that Joanna gave up everything to start a family and live in such a rustic setting.

We ate lunch during our break from the story. Typical Fijian food, like I had before in Gau and got so sick. I played it safe and didn’t try everything that was out for lunch. I just had some taro, fried eggplant topped with canned tuna and coconut milk, and lemon tea. There were other steamed greens from taro and other local plants, but I opted to stay clear of those. Wasn’t too bad of a lunch though. After lunch, we finished listening to the story for another 2 hours…so it was a 4 hour story! Aren’t you glad I just gave you the highlights?! The story is told orally every year on their independence day, so Epi has heard the story for 35 or 40 yrs now. Once the story was over we hiked up to this high point on a cliff overlooking the village, then back down along the river, and through the village. With Epi stopping and giving descriptions of medicinal plants along the way. All along the river the rocky path was lined with bamboo and wild vibrant ginger growing everywhere. There were all kinds of beautiful wild plants and flowers on the hike. I saw every flower in that tropical bouquet that Zac got for me right before I left. Rachel had given me pencils, colored pencils, and candy to give out to kids in the village, and soon they loved us. The word got around quick and pretty soon there were kids waiting outside their houses for us to come by. The tour was from 11 to 7, and worth every penny of the day. Thought it was going to be a bit cheesy at first, but turned out to really be a lot of fun to be out and about.

When we got back to Levuka, we got some pizzas to go and brought them back to the boat. Some people went out for a few beers and dancing, but I opted to get some sleep and slept for about 12 hours!

August 5, 2007 Levuka, Ovalatau

We had acting class this morning on a Sunday instead of a Saturday. Rachel def thought we were all crazy. Then we had the usual Saturday morning cleanup after acting class. Agate, Kitty, Rachel, and I then took a short snorkel of some pretty dilapidated reef. It looks really pretty, turquoise blue, and enticing from a distance, but underwater it just wasn’t too exciting. There were lots of good inverts for me to ID though, and look up when I get back to the boat. Had a semi-relaxing afternoon, until James and I had to cook Sunday night dinner. Dinner is kind of a big deal on Sundays. We survived though. We made chewy steak fajitas with rice, chili rellenos, and bananas in coconut milk for dessert. James made the dinner way to spicy for pretty much everyone, but it was ok, dessert really cooled it off. Our Sunday night skit was also Mexican, about a Mexican guy crossing the border for work, that gets hurt on the job and sent back home across the border….pretty corny, but oh well!