Fiji Claims Revenge

Fiji is absolutely gorgeous, rain or shine.  Now you might be thinking, “Well duh, it’s Fiji.”  But let me just tell you, Fiji can also be mean… or the ocean can anyways.  For Christmas last year, I bought (via my mom) a video camera that had the capability to go underwater.  On our third day in Fiji, we decided to go snorkeling after a walk to the village.  I guess I should tell you about that first… hang on to that first topic for a minute; we’ll come back to it...

On the morning of February 7, 2011, a large group of us gathered after breakfast and trekked up into the forest to visit the local village.  The way it was described to me was that the village was on the other side of the island, and you just had to follow the path up and over the mountain to reach it.  What was left out was the couple mile walk along the beach on the other side of the island.  Not that that walk wasn’t gorgeous, but it was just a little longer than expected.  Happily, I found another slow walker, Carissa Crittenden, and we trailed behind the main group, along with our... I really don’t know what to call him… along with our Ryan Friesan.  Once we reached the village, the ladies had to cover their shoulders and their legs down to their knees, for which I used a t-shirt and a sari type piece of cloth I bought at the resort.  As a group we meandered through the village.  We visited the school…

We visited the church…

And we stopped at the little market that the village women set up for us.

After that we split off and made our way back to the resort on our own.  On the return trek we found this really cool rock, so of course we had to take a picture…

And of course the actual return trip occurred when the temperature was a good 20 degrees hotter than it had been.  Let’s just say it took a little longer. 

Now, back to where I started…

Once we made it back to the resort and ate a little lunch we decided to go snorkeling.  And can I just say, Oh.  My.  Holy moly it was stunning.  The view under the water was completely different than above it.  Completely.  From above, it was obvious that there was coral and such down there.  However, once under the water it was another world entirely.  I was so excited after just two minutes of looking around that I basically ran back to my room to grab my camera. 

I made it all the way back out to the water, along the path to the very end and literally snorkeled, recording with my camera, for around 30 seconds when I swallowed a mouthful of water and more or less panicked.  What can I say?  I don’t do stuff like that often.  Anyways, I more or less flew out of the water, camera leading the way.  After calming myself down I checked out my poor camera.  It was drowned.  I’m not sure how it happened, but water was in all the hatches.  I attempted to air dry the thing but it just didn’t work.  So I am sad to announce this to you, but you don’t get to see any underwater pictures from me.




Oh, and here's a video from the village...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDEflEfm9ek