Fiji-January 18

Drinking Juice at the Garden

The Boys in the Gardens

Today is our last day in Fiji and I am now realizing all there is left to do here.  We hope to visit the Garden of the Sleeping Giants today and possibly even stop by a village to see a real bat cave. After our breakfast, we pile into our little car  and head toward Nadi to the Garden of the Sleeping Giant.  The mountain range that cuts through this island has the profile of both a man and a woman lying prone on top of the mountain.  The garden is the living gift from actor Raymond Burr to the islanders and the Garden houses the most extensive collection of orchids within Fiji.  We arrive at the Garden and enter into an enchanted world.  The wooden walkways wind through the most lush tropical world of ferns, flowering plants, orchids and bromeliads all shaded under the canopy of palms and other trees.  There is a lovely fish pond with waterlilies among the walkways. After our garden walk, we return to the reception area to enjoy a refreshing glass of mango/pineapple juice to cool off.  The humidity inside the tropical garden is astounding.  We bump along the road back to Nadi to see if we can find a few souvenirs and once we get parked, we are heralded into a local handicraft shop by some very handy locals!  They would like to "welcome" us to Fiji with an impromptu ceremony involving the drinking of Kava - a powdered root that when mixed with water become a muddy looking drink.  It is the ceremonial drink of the islanders and although non-alcoholic, it seems to make everyone a lot happier the more they drink.  They seat us on some mats on the floor and ask Annie and Me to cover our legs with a cloth....seems that bare male legs are more "welcome" than bare female legs :)  The address us as though we are a tribe and indicate that we must clap three times, say "Bula" before each person

Kava Bowl

drinks the Kava. There is a large wooden bowl in the center of us and one man takes a scoop of the powder, places it in a cloth bag, pours some water into the bowl and dips the bag of powder into it which renders the water a light brown, muddy color.  We all  clap three times

Drinking Kava- yum, yum

and the bowl is passed to each of us clapping, shouting "Bula", clapping some more, nodding, smiling....all the while doing our best to swallow the murky, gritty fluid.  We continue around in much the same manner for another pass of the bowl.  We have now been officially "welcomed" to Fiji.   We have also fallen for the oldest trick in the book!  Now that we are all "happy", the sales pitch is on.  We probably would have made a purchase, but the prices are about four times what the same items cost in the market around the corner.  Now our biggest problem is that we have to find a way to extract ourselves from the store.  The kids feel sorry for the sales guys, but are starting to get the picture that these tactics are a bit tiresome.  Somehow we manage to get out of the store and onto the sidewalk heading away as quickly as possible.  Regrettably, our car is parked directly in front of their shop so we will have to return at some point. We window shop a while and go to the grocery to pick up a couple of things.  A huge thunderstorm ensues and we race through the rain back to our car planning our exit strategy along the way.  As it turns out, there has been a changing of the guard in front of the store so we can safely dodge the handicraft sentries and make a clean getaway.  Back at home, we swim some during the rain and as luck would have it, all the power goes off just in time for our last night - again!  We manage to eat and read, play games and chill out.  Power is restored in time for bed....a good thing because none of us is sure that would could sleep without our fans on.