Fiji time

I woke up with a big smile across my face. At least I assume that I was smiling, I didn't see my face... Fiji at last!
It had always been my dream to come here even though I never quite knew why and after we had decided to go to South East Asia instead of the south pacific I thought I had to give up that dream. But now we're here...
We got out of bed at about 8:30a.m. because it was hard to stand the heat inside. We went next door, a partner resort, to have breakfast which was included in the price and we found that it wasn't much colder than in our dorm but at least a light wind cooled our skin and brought a change of air. The buffet was quite nice for such a small price and we enjoyed it sitting on a veranda right at the beach. Admittedly, the beach wasn't very nice, a man made stretch of grayish sand and rather dirty water, but the view on to some of the closer islands made up for it.
We wanted to get most of the organizing done on the first day so that we could leave to one of the islands on Monday and wouldn't have anything to worry about. The area we stayed in, where most of Nadi's hostels are located, is a little bit out of town but the buses rarely drove there and so we decided to walk in the direction of town and see how we went. We ended up walking the whole way, which took us a bit more than 30 min. and was quite exhausting in that hot weather.
We had just walked past the first shops into Nadi's city center when a Fijian man stepped out of his cafe and started talking to us with the typical Fijian heartiness (Bula! Bula bula my friend, how are you today etc.). He invited Bekki to a coffee and me to a beer and told us to go to one of the local tourist offices to get a good price. He knew the woman there personally and said we would get a particularly good deal with her... After the drink we followed her to her office where she actually did offer us a quite good deal, compared to what we heard from other travelers. She was very nice as well and gave us a few directions and even though you know that the friendliness is always linked to some kind of deal it is still real and not gone, all of a sudden, when you decline the offer, which was mostly the case in Indonesia.
We went to the big market place to get some food for the next days and found a huge fruit and veggie market. We bought 3 pineapples for 2 FJD (ca. 80 cent) and made some other good deals. Next to the fruit market was the Kava market. Kava is a drink made out of the root of the local pepper plant. The root is processed and the powder mixed into water which takes on the colour of rain puddles on a very dirty street. Read more about it if you like (Kava - Wikipedia) but all I can tell you is that it tastes the way it looks, it makes you feel very tired and sit in your spot for the rest of the night and, even though you don't really like it, you sit down again the next night and have a bowl or two ( I haven't quite figured out if that has to do with addiction or peer pressure).
The first time we tried it was directly after we left the market, in a local handicraft store (souvenir shop) into which we were dragged by another of those friendly people. They wanted to welcome us to Fiji and did that with the traditional Kava ceremony which was free and supposed to make us feel as if we had to buy something in return, which seemed to be the most common trick with the tourists.
We stayed in town til three o'clock and took the public bus back to the hostel. The bus looked like an old school bus, there was no glass in the windows and to signal the driver you just pulled a string above your head that rung a bell in the front but the best part was when we drove strait on to the beach and followed it for a while, about 5 meters from the water.
Later that afternoon, we walked back from the beach after a little read on the beach, I joined the guys from the hostel next door for a volleyball session. We ended up playing for several hours (and that in a country where you sweat when you move your pinky) and more and more of the local people came who were really good. It was an epic session.
Sunday, the next day was like every Sunday should be. Warm, lazy and relaxing. I woke up quite early, had breakfast after a while and packed my bags and went next door into a different hostel. We couldn't extend our stay in the first hostel because they wanted us to pay twice the price we had paid the night before but the hostel we went to was a lot nicer. Run by a very nice staff the atmosphere and the massive mango trees were very convincing. We spent the day at the beach and around the hostel, enjoying the weather and the good vibes. We were, like everything else on Fiji time.
In the evening we joined the Kava round under a little straw shelter and I think I drank a little too much, expecting a dramatic effect that didn't come. The only thing you feel is that your body calms down, everything feels heavier and you are even too fixed to the spot to get up and go to bed. In the morning however I did have something that felt like a hangover but it might just have been from all that stuff that was sitting in my stomach that made me feel sick...