Arriving

After my 30-hour journey I had to acclimatize. I had tried to sleep as little as possible on the flights, if then only at times at which it is night in Fiji anyway. So far this worked quite well. I could sleep wonderfully at night and during the day I was not too tired.

Hiking

What better way to spend the first day after arrival. Since hiking can hardly wait for me, I thought to climb the mountains near Nadi, the town where René and I stayed for the first nights.

Friendly as the Fijians are, I was helped at every corner where something was stuck. There were no real hiking routes to be found on the internet. After a short bus ride, I was quickly guided in the right direction. Even the barbed wire fence that blocked my way could not stop me. One man even held the wires apart for me. The word private property seems not to be taken so seriously here. As I realize more often later, things are generally not taken too seriously here.

The sun burns away all my energy here in the afternoon. The views were spectacular, but the goal, a rock on top of the mountain, became less and less likely for me. I cross the top of the mountain and empty almost all my water.

After a while, a man on a motorcycle approaches. He interrogates me of my origin and what I would have to do up there. After I had answered apparently everything to his satisfaction he strikes suddenly a friendly tone, explains to me how dangerous other landowners can be here and still points me the way which leads me fastest again to the main street. Fast still means two hours on foot. At the end we still exchange our Instagram.

A few kilometers further I finally come to a small store where I can buy water and a Coke at tourist prices. At the same store I meet a man who walks with me a bit and then promptly invites me into his house to rest. I can’t imagine that something like this would ever happen to me in Germany. Worse, I wasn’t sure if I should accept his invitation. The only thing hovering in the back of my mind was the danger of being robbed. Exactly the opposite happened. I was warmly welcomed by the whole family. The man of the house laughed heartily at the white man who is the first person ever to be so stupid as to walk over the mountain, and that too in this heat.

In the evening I had headaches and dizziness because of the overload and the heat.

I learned from the mistakes of the previous day and rented two scooters with René to explore the coast and the inland a bit. We found a wonderful deserted beach, which we had virtually to ourselves and abused directly for nude bathing. Even on the scooters a refreshing swim was very welcome.

Mantaray Island

Hardly anyone who makes it to Fiji misses going to one of the paradise islands. Here is where the pictures of white beaches are taken and where you can experience the “authentic” Fiji life, in a resort specially prepared for tourists. This is where René and I spent the majority of our trip, unwinding when we weren’t spending massive amounts of time underwater.

Paradise

I am sitting in paradise. Everything is just there. There are the planks on which I sit out, the beach and the crystal clear sea which I overlook. In the distance, an island hovers above the horizon, crying out to me to come visit it. It seems too distant to swim to, too far to be anything more than an unreachable dream that the men with their boat just laugh at. It’s comforting in a way to still have unattainable destinations. Places that are not just within reach. But what is my paradise actually if not only a cloud, extra so prepared for me. People who do not worry about breaking what the morning brings. People who have landed at the other end of the spectrum when distributing. Or people who live in paradise.

Diving

It surprised me to experience how compressed gas reacts when it suddenly has room to expand. In the bottle, when full, it weighs three kilos. Three kilos that help you to glide under water into the depth. Kilos that help you survive at depth. A cocktail of nitrogen and oxygen. Two words that don’t exactly scream life. One is just filler that can make your life miserable, that really sours your cells if not properly divorced from it.

A mixture of gases that when in the bottle makes me sink and when in the lungs or in the jacket make me rise, depending on how deep you are it takes more or less. Because we do not only go into the water with the pressure that we load ourselves, but we are constantly pressed together from the outside, every centimeter a little bit more.

I play with the air in my lungs. I inhale deeply, hold, and exhale deeply. Each breath makes me rise and fall. If I hold it, I keep rising until I reverse direction, then I sink back down into the depths. The art is to keep the equilibrium so as not to fly around. Mastering this is part of the art of diving.

Diving is something that is so new to me for a long time that time seems to pass more slowly. Fiji Time, as they say here. The clocks here do not turn quite as driven as at home. Diving is only a small part of the day, but it engages me so much that the rest doesn’t seem to pass in retrospect. I’m already amazed on the third day at how short we’ve only been here and how long it feels.

It’s a beautiful feeling. A feeling that I can’t remember the last time it hit me.

Fiji Time

Time goes on in Fiji Time, the time that doesn’t seem to pass. Spent with new experiences, on and under the water surface, with and without wetsuit. The days start early in the morning and end just as early in the evening, with tired eyes and a mountain of impressions in the luggage, ready to be processed, in the nights that again and again seem too short to penetrate the workload that, despite the many hours in the soft nest.

The day lingers without much stimulus from outside, no video, no text, just the depths of the water and the breaks in between.

While we stay here for a week that seems like a month, other tourists wash up on our shores like flotsam, and are just as quickly swallowed up by the waves.

One is greeted here with a “Bula!” and the thanks deserves a “Vinaka!”. Here life is lived as it is given to us. Hardly a thought revolves around “what will be” or “what was”. We dwell in the here and now, stuck in Fiji Time.

Goodbye Fiji

Just under two weeks of new experiences have passed at a snail’s pace. We have been on scooters, boats, underwater and on a sailboat. I discovered all kinds of birds and all kinds of underwater animals and met many nice people.

The friendly Fijians have really made it very easy for me to start my new life of travel. I can’t remember the last time I was welcomed with as much warmth and helpfulness as I was here. Now it’s time to say goodbye and head off on my biggest adventure yet. New Zealand awaits me with an incredible 3000 kilometers across both islands, starting from Cape Reinga at the northernmost end of the North Island to Bluff in the south of the South Island. I am excited about the people, surprises and hardships that await me in the next 5 months.