Tue 21-Sep-10 (Fiji - first full day)

It’s just after 6:00pm and they have just had the daily pre-sunset firelighting ceremony. There is a cool breeze in the evenings, which is pleasant after what was a hot day. It’s not only the transition from the Canberra Winter/commencement of Spring but also the sun just feels hotter. The resort is full of mostly Aussies. When people are chatting around you, you could easily be somewhere back home.

I brought the laptop, not to keep up with the world, but rather to type a contemporaneous record of our trip to post when we return. I have disconnected the email/internet access to my phone (because of the download cost). To get wireless access for my laptop from the room is FJD 20.00 (AUD 15.00) for 24 hours, so I may do it once during our eight-day stay to catch up (more for the sport over the weekend), but am not desperate to do so.

To summarise the day, we’ll start with our sleep. We all seemed to have reasonably good sleeps. Gabi didn’t kick me much, so it wasn’t a bad night in the scheme of things. We woke before 8:30am (6:30am back home) and had breakfast before spending a lot of the day by the pool, in the pool and on the slide. Generally it was okay, except Gabi had a lot of demands that I had to discuss sternly or negotiate with her.

Before lunch the kids went back to the room to draw and I chose to do a slow 2km run to get back into some type of fitness. We’ll see if I can continue it throughout the trip.

The sun feels quite hot and although we were applying sunscreen at reasonable intervals, our faces were a little burnt. As I sit here typing and watching the sunset over the ocean, I think my back is also a little burnt. This happened later in the afternoon when I laid down after some time in the pool and fell asleep while listening to music. The next thing I knew someone was rubbing cream on my back. I jumped up startled to find Gabi helping me as she noticed my back was “getting red”.

In the afternoon before dinner we played pool (as in snooker) and played card and board games in the room. What a blessing not to have a TV in our room. The kids watched a movie, while I sat looking over the ocean typing and relaxing.

After the movie we went around asking at Reception and the Shop about hair braiding for Gabi. It was more expensive to have it done in the Boutique. One staffer mentioned a “friend” in Sigatoka who could do it for less than half the price, but with a $50 return taxi fare that didn’t seem like it would work either. I then found a “key contact” who mentioned someone I had seen before and suggested I chat with him. We went to his usual spot but someone else was there and directed us to his new location. He was actually performing so we had to wait until that had finished. The funny thing was that without knowing, he got Gabi up for a dance.

Afterwards we chatted and agreed to a clandestine meeting in the morning. We played some more pool and got to our room quite late. Ben is committed to Kids Club in the morning. I was really annoyed with myself to find the first piece of 1st Aid I pulled out (First Aid Cream) hadn’t been packed. I’m not sure how it happened. The shop had some Aloe Vera gel, so I’m hoping this will sooth our respective burns.