And the winner is.....

(drumroll please)


CLARE!! Congratulations! Clare doesn't need to email me so that I can send her the Gift Certificate. I already know where to find her. =)

Fiji.....part tolu*

*that's "three" in Fijian

I mentioned on my last post that we had many adventures while in Fiji. On one particular day we hired a taxi and did several things all in one day. Our driver's name was Chetty. This is Chetty and our taxi:



He was super nice and talked about Fijian history and culture for most of our trip. He pulled off the road when we so desired for fruits and vegetables (or pictures of goats...but that's another post)I warned him ahead of time that we would be taking A LOT of pictures of things that he may find inconsequential. Or stupid. He just smiled so we figured he would be cool to hang with for a day. And when he just smiled after we took this picture we knew we were in good hands.



Please notice how tan we all are. We worked hard to get that way.

Our first stop of the day was the Momi Guns. Months before we even left for Fiji my husband started researching interesting places to go and this topped his personal list of "must do" thiings while on our vacation. Troy is a bit of a WWII history freak. Think me and Wizard of Oz. Except his freakish obsession actually has substance. (Did I just say that???) So Chetty drove us down the highway, through many farm lands, across some valley and up some hills. It took approximately 1 hour to get there. And when we finally did arrive there was nobody there to greet us. Not one single soul to take our money so we could go in and have a look around.

I felt like the Griswolds and we had just arrived at Wally World. Troy was extremely disappointed, but we did at least get a few pictures before we continued on our way.

Our next stop was the Kula Eco Park. It was something that we had picked up a brochure for at the resort. It looked interesting and fun so why not? We are all about interesting and fun. When you first enter the park, the guides give a little history about the park and let you hold the snakes and iguanas. Why not? We are all about holding the snakes and iguanas.

the park itself was absolutely beautiful. It was just a wonderful little tropical rain forest with many birds, flowers and Fiji history all rolled in to one lovely little place. The birds were exquisite:

The tropical rainforest provided for some BEAUTIFUL flowers as well:

It really was just a beautiful place. And we are all about beautiful places...and taking pictures of us in beautiful places!



After we left the Eco park we were all in agreement that we needed food. We stopped and had some wonderful Curry dishes, treated Chetty to lunch, and used this restroom before we loaded back in the taxi:



I hovered. And that's all I have to say about THAT.

Our next stop on this trip was the Coral Coast. It was a quick stop where we played in the ocean and just took in the scenery. Of course we were accosted by a local wanting to know if we would like to take a horse ride on the beach. We politely declined. But remember how we are all about taking pictures of us in beautiful places?



Our last stop on this journey was a roadside fruit and vegetable stand where for some reason I could not pick green beans out of the pile of green vegetables piled all over the table. As my husband hollered at me over and over again "GREEN BEANS!" I just couldn't get it. Green beans look different in Fiji. Yeah. That's it. Just look at this look of "Wha....??" as my husband hollers at me. I was clueless. It is not the first time in my life this has happened.



The rest of the ride back to the resort was uneventful. It was a lovely day and we all agreed the Eco Park was the big hit. Well, Momi Guns would have been for Troy but we've already discussed that disappointment. As it turns out it was a VERY good thing we went on our little excursion when we did. We had tossed around the idea of doing it later in the week.

But a storm came.

(to be continued...)

Ummm...about that "contest"

It's no longer a contest when YOUR DAUGHTER is the only one to answer all the questions correctly. Even though I commend Patti for lurking through my blog for over an hour, she did not get my favorite toy right. And there weren't really enough entries for me to feel right about giving it to Lindsay. I think it was a slow week because of the holiday. Yeah. That's it.

My daughter cannot win. It's just not right in the world of blog contests.

So anybody who responds to this post with ANYTHING...even just a "hello"....will be entered to win the $25 Amazon.com gift certificate at the end of the week. The real winner will draw a name from all the comments on Sunday and the winner will be announced on Monday.

But don't forget to sign your comment with a name. Otherwise I will have no way of knowing who "annonymous" is or how to contact them to redeem their prize. And my daughter will have no way of stalking you to let you know how sad she is that her mother is being mean and will not let her have the prize.

I'm kidding about that last part.

Sort of.

GOOD LUCK!!

Fiji....Part Deux

We had many adventures while in Fiji, but my husband wins the award for providing us the most...ummm...."what-in-the-heck-are-we-doing" adventure.

On our first trip in to the town of Nadi (pronounced "Nan-dee") we were approached by some dude on a street corner. Okay, it wasn't the FIRST person to approach us. We were accosted by nearly every store front on the main drag. The Fijians like to push their goods on the tourists. Before we left on vacation, a co-worker actually warned me of this behavior in the bigger towns....and to NEVER mention your name because they will create some handicraft personalized and you are obligated to buy it at that point.

I said, "Go ahead and make them TRY to spell my name correctly." because, well, nobody ever gets it right the first time.

So we had been warned. I relayed this information to my husband. But Troy is a likes-to-talk-to-strangers kind of dude. He is overly friendly to the kind of people that I would pass and tightly hold my purse/personal belongings VERY close. Yeah. He's all kinds of interesting to travel with.Never a dull moment.

Stranger Danger is just not in his vocabulary.

And the strang(er) man dude approached Troy first. Because Troy is approachable....plus I'm sure Troy just started chatting it up with him FIRST. He convinced my husband that HE had the BEST handmade handicrafts EV.ER. And so Troy bit. He bit hard. And he waved for us to follow him and the strang(er) man dude.

So we did. With trepidation. Down THIS alley:



That's Tiffiny with the "Where-the-heck-is-he-taking-us" look. How was I supposed to know? I was in the back of the pack. Scared. Wanting to kill my husband who was far ahead of all of us, excited and anxious to get to wherever the strang(er) man dude was taking us.

Down the alley, up a flight of stairs on the back side of the building and in to this tiny gallery. That's where we landed. As I started looking around I didn't notice anything bigger or more special about this stuff than the 15 other places we had passed on the main drag. Except that it was small. And I felt like maybe we would not return to life as we had once known it.

I think they sensed this apprehension from all of us....so they came in for the kill.

"Have you been to a Kava Ceremony yet?"

Nope. Suddenly 3 other men appeared. And so it began. The final manipulation of my husband. He was deemed "chief" for the purposes of the ceremony and I knew right then we were all in trouble. His head was larger than life. So it went on....and we had our first official Kava ceremony (not our last) in a dirty back alley handicraft gallery.

Sweet.

See that dude carving that beautiful Kava bowl? Yeah. I caved. I bought that exact bowl that was carved in front of us during our Kava Ceremony.

I suppose Troy isn't the only sucker.

(to be continued.....)

Fiji....part Uno

So many wonderful things to say about our trip. So many that it's just going to have to be broken in to a few posts. Otherwise I fear I might lose some of you rambling on and on and on. Not like that would be THAT different that my normal posts. But it could get picture heavy. And nobody likes a heavy blog.

So I'll start from the beginning. We were excited. So excited. I counted down this trip from about 180-something days out. That's a lot of days, people! And we were THAT excited!!! Look at us, happy and completely unaware of just how long 10-1/2 hours can actually be when you are on an airplane. Well, Linda wasn't unaware since she has flown internationally many times before. But Troy, Tiffiny and I were blissfully unaware.



That grueling, 10-1/2 hour flight was NOT something we were looking forward to. And typical of our vacationing luck our flight was delayed 2 hours at LAX. You know, because being there 4 hours ahead of time to begin with wasn't quite long enough.



It is very difficult for Troy to get comfortable in a good situation (i.e. in our CA King pillow-top mattress) so sitting around at LAX proved challenging. His back did not provide top-quality cooperation so he was nervous and fidgety. But he was up for it. Anything for vacation. This is him chillin'....before he took a sleeping pill to make the trip easier. It was anything BUT easier (for me) but we won't go in to that.



4 spilt cups of coffee, 3,237 instances of unzipping the backpack, 234 times turning on/off the reading light, 4 movies and 0 hours of sleep.....we landed 10-1/2 hours later. 7:00ish a.m. Fiji time. How gigantic is this plane???



Another 30 minutes going through the customs line, about an hour waiting for our luggage, a 20 minute taxi ride and we finally arrived here:





Room I-202. Our home for the next 16 days. It welcomed us from the humidity and sun, gave us a comfortable place to lay our heads at night, a clean place to shower, endless hours of the Three Stooges (they like their Stooges, people)....and shelter from a Category 2 Cyclone.
Yes, the Pryor vacation curse brought with it a Cyclone to the Fijan Islands.

To be continued.....