Alfaj0r.com

Our honeymoon in Fiji was everything that a dream honeymoon includes: warm weather, sunshine, the beach, warm water, friendly people and lots of fruity drinks.

The main lasting impression about Fiji in itself that I can share is that the people there are wonderful. From the moment we stepped in the Nadi airport, we were greeted by genuine smiles (saying Bula!).
We were at the very end of the customs line, so we were one of the last people from our flight to get out to the transportation area, where a van was supposed to pick us up to take us to our hotel for the night. But since we were holding up the van with a few people, the van left us behind… and one of the manager from Rosie Holidays took us, and was totally cool about it.

But anyway, more to the what-when-where of the trip report, as it should be!

The first night we landed into Nadi after dark, so we couldn’t go to our resort because it was on another island, and they don’t navigate to small islands at night. So we were taken to a hotel in the mainland, Sofitel. We didn’t really get to enjoy it much, because we were so tired from traveling that we pretty much ate, went to sleep, woke up, ate, and left.

After an hour-long boat ride in the Captain’s lounge, we arrived at our destination: Tokoriki Island Resort. Our boat was too big to come near shore, so the resort from the island sent a small boat to pick us up. About 12 people fit in the boat, with our luggage and all. Getting out of the boat, my feet landed on the beach, where I got my feet both in the soft sand and the warm water at once. I probably smiled from ear to ear.

The next thing that happened was the welcoming. While our paperwork was checked, a fresh fruit beverage was handed to us, and the manager Ramsey gave us a welcome speech. The end of the speech consisted of him and most of the staff within earshot singing to us. Check out this video, which even though is not us, shows you just how happy everyone that is greeted in such a way looks. We sure were!

From there, we were shown to our room. Ramsey himself (who I found very appropriately named akin to Ramses, because he is huge and imposing) showed us in, and told us “Welcome home”.

The decorations in our cabin bure had fresh flowers as decorations everywhere, but what they did to our bed took the cake. Kelly was speechless, and we were both feeling indeed very welcome, and at home as well. The magic had started.

Our daily activities consisted of sleeping in, enjoying our delicious meals from the very tasty resort kitchen (which is a VERY good thing if you’re going to an island that doesn’t have anything but a hotel on it!), sunbathing by the pool or on the beach, taking pictures and enjoying each other.

One of the most unique things we did was visiting Yanuya village, where most of the resort staff live and commute to and from by boat every day. We took a small boat with a few other people and a couple of “guides”, who were actually young men who live there and do work at the resort.
We were shown around the village, had a Kava ceremony with the Chief, checked out the women’s art market and visited the school.
Most people would say that Fiji is the 3rd world. This island only has electricity from 6 to 9pm, most houses consist of  metal sheets nailed together to form a one-box room, there barely is phone service and you can’t even think of using the internet. But they seem so happy.
We saw three toddlers playing together, with a plastic yellow toy bucket full of sand and dirt. It was so simple and just plain awesome. That kind of thing really makes you think and wonder about some of the things that we see everyday in the “first” world and we accept to be the norm.

This all ties in with how nice Fijians are. They’re well aware of how much they depend on tourism, but I don’t think that’s all there’s to it. Take for example tipping, which is not expected nor demanded; people are nice to you not because they’re trying to get some extra coin out of you. Also, even when we saw them talking in Fijian amongst each other, there was always laughter, smiles and a jovial tone. I might have a skewed point of view, but I’m comfortable in saying that Fijians are easily some of the nicest people on this planet. Whatever they’re doing as a culture, seems to put a lot of value on respect and friendliness, and many other cultures could stand to learn from this one.

On a more personal level, my favorite thing about our entire honeymoon was spending it with my wife. It seems obvious, but it’s also important. The moments leading up to our wedding were busy, and we didn’t get to enjoy each other as much. Having two weeks to ourselves, where we spent every minute next to each other, was the perfect way to start our marriage. We shared many memories, and we’ll always be able to look back on when we got married and remember the dreamy honeymoon before any of the busyness of the actual wedding.

We took lots of pictures, but there are some particular special ones there. We took pictures at sunset, every night. I’d set the camera on a tripod, place Kelly somewhere on the frame, get all photo-nerdy with aperture and exposure settings, set a 10 second timer and run to get in the picture. We would do this at least a handful of times, to make sure we got at least one good picture for every night we spent in our little paradise island.

Looking at those pictures makes me happy. I’m a lucky person, and the pictures remind me of it. I’m very lucky and very grateful of being able to experience a place like Fiji, with its wonderful people, incredible landscapes and warm weather. But above all, I realize that I’m the luckiest (and most grateful) when I think that I’m sharing all this with a wife that surpasses any dream I could have.

———–

Oh, one last thing which is just a funny anecdote: When we were leaving Fiji, on the boat ride to the airport, something strange happened. A song that we heard at a most random time in our trip to Argentina came on the radio: Gangster’s Paradise, by Coolio. We looked at each other in disbelief, and agreed that from now on, we’re bound to hear this obscure hit from our youth when we’re abroad, traveling together. Which we hope is often, and plentiful.

On our first morning in Sydney, we took a ferry to the Taronga Zoo. There, among many things, we saw this Koala eating some eucalyptus, and just as I was taking a picture, a little Australian girl very excitedly said: “Look, mum, it’s having its brekkie!”. It was quite endearing, and what started our collection of overheard Aussie expressions that we’d tirelessly repeat for the next two weeks.

Cute, right? Don’t eat your heart out yet, and save room for dessert! Just a few steps from the Koala, we saw a kangaroo that seemed to be a little bit on the fat side. Just kidding, we have no idea what magazine-cover kangaroos look like! But this one sure did have a pouch, and a whole lot in it: A joey!

One of my favorite pictures I took at the Zoo involves animals that don’t actually live in Australia, but I still quite like it, so here it is:

I like the contrast of city vs “nature” (because it is, after all, a zoo), and how the giraffes are like nature’s skyscrapers. For a better idea of what the giraffes are looking at, check this one out:

Now, I also mentioned that we did other things in Sydney. Of course, the most outstanding one (and a must-do if you ever visit!) was to see the Opera House from as many angles as possible. We visited and took pictures at morning, at midday and at night. We also went inside it, on a fabulous tour. It was definitely interesting, and I’m going to probably read up more about all that went on with the construction of such a landmark.
– –

We also enjoyed some of the other sights of Sydney. One day, we went on an adventure to find Cuban cigars, since they don’t have an embargo against a totally chill country. The trip was all on foot, and we just walked around like tourists with a tiny map and BIG eyes. Kelly and I like being in big cities, there’s so much to look at!
We tried to go shopping one day, and at the end of the day we were empty handed. Things were either too expensive or not of our taste, but the window shopping in itself was top-notch. We walked into the biggest department store cosmetics department that Kelly had ever seen, and walked out of it smelling like all sorts of samplers and testers. Good times!

Since we stayed at the Marriot at Circular Quay (pronounced just like “key”…), the district of The Rocks was really close to us. It was yet another place to discover by walking, getting lost, and checking things out. We walked so much that Kelly had a pain on her knees!

In Port Douglas, things considerably slowed down. Our lodging wasn’t a fancy hotel, no. Instead, it was a fancy “boutique apartment” with the soothing name of Shantara. This worked quite well for us, because we got to go to the Aussie supermarket for things to eat, and to the “bottle shop” for things to drink.
Port Douglas is a cute little town that has an incredible 4-mile long beach, locally owned shops (not a single chain restaurant, even!) and is much warmer being  just 1500 miles north of Sydney (Australia is pretty damn huge, just in case you didn’t know). Just what we needed to slip away from the see-it-all tourist mode and into the chill-out vacation mode.

Taking advantage of my still slightly whacked out internal clock, I was able to wake up very early to take some pictures at sunrise. It was a great time, seeing the sun come up! The pictures I took don’t make it much justice, but they’re still something to look at, so here:

–

One of the selling points of Port Douglas is its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef. We had a day planned to go check it out, so in the morning we got aboard a nice sailboat and headed out to the Low Isles.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great and it was pretty much overcast most of the day. It even rained a little bit on us. Boooo!

That didn’t stop us, we went in anyway. Kelly lasted a good couple of minutes, and the sheer size of the Pacific Ocean stopped her from going any further. Cute.
I snorkeled my ass off, and probably spent a couple of hours coming and going, literally soaking in all the sights. I’d never snorkeled before, let alone in one of Earth’s snorkeling paradises.

We had a little bag so we could take Kelly’s small camera underwater, and I took hundreds of pictures, hoping that at least a few would turn out. Not a lot of them were keepers, but this one definitely was one:

Nemo!

Something else we both got to do once back on the mainland was eat something new. I ate kangaroo twice, and Kelly tried it for one dinner opportunity. The meat wasn’t bad, but nothing to write home about – specially for a spoiled meat eater from Argentina as myself. But hey, we get to say we’ve eaten it, so that in itself is pretty cool.

All in all, Australia is a country that I would love to go back to. There are so many things to see, and just not enough time! Kelly and I talked about going back in 5~10 years, renting “hiring” a car and driving cross-country… but then we realized that we’d have to drive on the other side of the road, and we quickly turned our attention to the beers in front of us.

The first part of our honeymoon is coming to an end. It feels like it’s been a long week; our arrival to Australia seeming so long ago yet only less than a week ago. I like that, it tells me that a lot of memories happened in a short ammount of time. We first spent 3 days in Sydney, the cultural capital of Australia (because the actual political capital is Cranberra, just in case you didn’t know). Sydney is a beautiful metropolis, with countless things to see and do. Among the things we were able to do in our short time there, one of my favorites was going to the Zoo and seeing some of the autoctonous fauna. A Koala having “brekkie” (Aussie slang for breakfast) and a Joey, also known as a baby Kangaroo were the definte highlights. I also enjoyed checking out the world famous Opera house, being able to check it out both out and inside. Of course I took pictures, but it’s going to take me a while to go through the hundreds of shots I’ve taken so far. After Sydney, we traveled up north to Port Douglas, where I write from at the moment. It’s a little tourist-centered town, quaint and very friendly. The main reason why we came up here is because this is a launching area for tours to go check out the Great Barrier Reef… and that we did. I got to snorkel around with fishes and coral, enjoying every second of it. I even saw a few clown fish, what Nemo is! They are very tiny, a couple of inches at the most, but super cute. Tomorrow, we leave Port Douglas -and Australia- to head to our next destination, Fiji. Even though Australia has been wonderful, and it’s now marked in my mind as a must visit again, I’m ready to not have a schedule anymore and enjoy a week with my wife on a true tropical paradise. The forecast tells us that it’s going to be nice and warm, and that’s just wicked awesome, mate!