:: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ::

Belize

Caye Caulker

We punished ourselves with yet another overnight journey from Palenque (this time with loud music all night). Our destination was Chetumal on the Mexico/Belize border. At the bus station, we met Fiona from Ireland, who accompanied us on a converted US school bus over the border down into Belize City. From there we caught a speedboat over to the island of Caye Caulker. Our first Carribean stopover was tiny, beautiful and laid back, but again there was no beach to laze around on. The real fun was out on the barrier reef (second only in size to the Great Barrier Reef). We took a snorkelling day trip on a sailing boat, and we went right to the middle of the protected marine park and snorkelled around not only the usual array of coral and sea life, but also sharks and manta rays which swam around under the boat in exchange for a large supply of fish parts thrown over the side. The braver among us even got to stroke them! We ate fish parts too, but thankfully they´d been converted into burger form beforehand. Overall, Caye Caulker was a great place, and being among English/Creole-speaking rasta men seemed a tad anomalous in the middle of Central America. However, such was the reach of the British Empire that even some of the coastal parts of Nicaragua have English-speaking populations... More of that another time, if we get the chance to go there.

Belize City and San Ignacio

We headed back through Belize City (one of the world´s scarier places), stopping only for a brief stroll through the colonial district. Then we got on a sweaty bus to San Ignacio in the west of the country. On the bus was another of Belize´s unusual sights - three generations of Mennonite dudes sitting together at the front. These are remnants of the Dutch agricultural/religious group who settled in various parts of Central America after persecution in Europe. They are similar to Amish both in their dress and lifestyle, but other than staring at their straw hats and colour-coded cotton shirts, we didn´t pry any further. At some point we hope to check out one of their villages.


We made only stop on the way - at Belize Zoo. This was set up by a somewhat eccentric lady who came to Belize to film a wildlife documentary, then ended up staying to look after the animals used in the filming. The place then metamorphosed into an animal sanctuary, and later a zoo, and the nutty founder still runs it. There's a great selection of animals, all of which we were assured would be in dire straits if left in the wild (which eases the conscience a tad). But the star of the show, and a possible candidate for best animal in the world, was the hippo/elephant crossover the Tapir. I cannot enthuse enough about how wicked these animals are. Suffice to say they eat a lot of leaves and wallow in mud. Magic. If you want to see just how cool a tapir is, see our photos or check out this link to Belize Zoo. Hello? Have I lost you?...


We ended up in San Ignacio, near the Guatemalan border, where we stayed in the wonderfully-named "New Belmoral Hotel". Belmoral (or even Balmoral) it ain´t, but anyway it was cheap by local standards, so it did us. We assured the owner we wouldn´t use the air-con (which would have nearly doubled the price), but then the temperature soared to 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 Celsius in the new money) and so on went the air-con. Needless to say we were reprimanded the next day, and had to cough up the dough. The following night we brought in some extra fans (of the ventilatory variety) and sweltered in peace. During the day, we hired a canoe, got a lift upriver, and paddled the 10 miles or so back to town through lush rainforest. We swam with the locals (none of whom announced they were "indigenous people" as the Cambodian kids had!) and listened to the exotic birds and howler monkeys, and pulled in just as the sun was setting - beautiful!


The following day we headed to the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich - right on the border with Guatemala. These included an impressive 40m pyramid, at the top of which the heat was even more intense (up to 110 Fahrenheit). Every step we took, 3-5 drops of sweat were falling off our faces - by a long way the most intense and uncomfortable heat either of us have ever experienced. We were drinking bottle after bottle of water, but it wasn´t even touching the sides. So what did we do? Rest? Never! We picked up our 25kg rucksacks, crossed the border on foot, then crammed into a minivan (with our bags on top and 12 seats inside) along with 18 other passengers, and sweltered our way to the town of Flores (a little island on a lake) where we are now. Local slash-and-burn farmining techniques mean that not only is it hotter here than in Belize, but also hazy and smoggy. The sweating is now out of control...


From here we will visit the major Mayan ruins of Tikal, before heading down south. Our bus leaves at 5am tomorrow morning. Marvellous!

:: Barney 1:18 AM [+] ::
...

Mexico

Mexico City

Being interviewed by a schoolchild - Aaah, how sweet! A shy mummy approaches you, expains that her child needs to conduct a dictaphone / video interview with a foreigner for a school project. You oblige, answer a few simple questions, and they leave, both parties enriched and satisfied by the experience. Well, once maybe. But after the seventh "interview" of the day (each) it starts to jar a little. There are only so many times you can reveal your favourite colour to a child who doesn´t even understand the question they´re asking, never mind the response before the novelty wears off. Chatting up their mum turned out to be a far more rewarding enterprise. OK, OK, so this wasn´t ALL we did in Mexico City, but it felt like it at times.


We did attempt to lever some "culture" into the proceedings: We hooked up with Kiwi couple Dean and Lee and took a trip to the impressive Museum of Anthropology. This gargantuan museum (we only managed to get round it in a day because some of the halls were closed) was fascinating, if overwhelming. Each hall attempts to reveal one of the many ancient Mexican cultures at a time, with historical artifacts on the ground floor and contemporary lifestyle and culture exhibits on the first floor. In theory we should now know our Toltecs from our Mixtecs, and our Aztecs from our Teotihuacans, but in practice we took it all with a "poncho" salt and decided to check it out for ourselves as we went along. As to modern-day culture, we stayed an extra day, headed off on the metro with a group from our hostel to Mexico City´s bullring - the biggest outside of Spain, only to find that the bullfighting season had ended the week before. Nice! We made up for this a couple of weeks later - more details below.

Prior to leaving the polluted hell-hole that is Mexico City, we headed off for a day trip to Teotihuacan. This is a pre-Aztec city, with two enormous pyramids (thought to be dedicated to the Sun and Moon) and various other ceremonial and burial structures to explore. The whole town was reconstructed in the early 20th Century according to drawings made by Spanish conquistadores from the 15th Century, but is still an impressive sight, and the first of many for us. It was also the site of numerous interviews with schoolchildren desperate to know our favourite colour as well as vendors of "traditional" volcanic rock carvings (hmmm) and almond-flavoured tequila (yum!).

Taxco

From Mexico City we took a bus two hours to the South to the old mining town of Taxco (not to be confused with Tesco or Texaco, which are a chain of supermarkets and a chain of petrol stations, respectively). This is Mexico´s silver capital - more than 300 silver shops line its cobbled streets - although we were there more for the picturesque snapshots than the bargain-bucket ingots. The town is almost Mediterranean, with delicatelty-painted houses, cobbled streets and signs painted only in black. Even the omnipresent Coca Cola have to paint their logo in black in Taxco! We stayed in the hotel San Javier, an island of luxury in our sea of low-budgetdom. It was made affordable as we shared with our Kiwi chums, and meant we could lounge in and around the pool, and stare wistfully from the balcony at will. The wrought iron fixtures and lovely gardens made us think we´d arrived in the "real" Mexico at last. Then we went to Acapulco...

Acapulco

For three days, we were forced to resist the temptation to "go loco down in Acapulco" and I´m happy to report that we managed it. The place is, however, a dive. It´s never really recovered since its main rival - Cancun - was thrown together in the 70s, and it really feels like a town on its way out, despite the decent number of tourists that still flock there. It´s dirty, crumbly and generally down-beat, although where we stayed was about as far from the iconic 50-storey Marbella-style beachfront hotels as it could have been. Nevertheless, there were three highlights. The first were the "clavadistas" or cliff-divers, who acrobatically leap into a - frankly scary - ravine from heights of up to 35m for the pleasure of the audience (mostly flatlining American crillsifters, oh, and us). Apparently, Elvis performed this feat in one of his films. So there! The second was a visit to the ancient San Francisco fort - where we learnt, then promptly forgot, the difference between a pirate, buccaneer and suchlike. This was located at the port, where all the boats coming to and from the Philippens used to dock, and where the convergence of the two cultures is still apparent (hence the spicy nature of Mexican food, and the Chinese appearance of some of their furniture, apparently.) The third highlight was the following conversation (again, with an American, fresh off a cruise boat which had docked the day before):

American flatliner: Pardon me, are you familiar with the local currency?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Is this a one peso coin?
(n.b. The coin had the number "1" emblazoned across 2/3 of its surface)
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: So, if the waitress asks me for four pesos, I just give her four of these, right?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Hey, are you guys from England?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Your boys are out there with us, doing our thing, huh?

(We made a face which obviously showed that our pro-war fervour wasn´t perhaps as strong as his)

American flatliner: Well, I guess maybe war ain´t the best thing, but at least you´re out there with us.

At this point, the risk of "going loco" at unprecedentedly high levels, we thought it best to change the subject, asking Sherlock Holmes instead where the cruise was due to stop next. But alas, this shining beacon of intelligence and international travel acumen didn´t actually know where they were going. So we thought we´d leave him to it and be on our way.

Zipolite on the Oaxaca coast

An overnight bus journey eastwards along the coast took us to Zipolite in the state of Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-HAH-Cah, not Wacaccino, as Dean would have us believe). Despite the three-hour detour resulting from the fact that we slept through our stop (after failing to sleep through most of the night), we eventually took off our bags and settled back into the beach-hut life that we´d so missed since leaving Thailand. The only difference here was that the rip tides made it unsafe to swim more than a few metres from the shore (the lifeguards saved three people on one day we were there - all Mexicans who clearly hadn´t been reading their Lonely Planet guides!) But the beach was great, the food was good and the lifestyle slow. Exactly what we needed to catch up on sleep and reading. It was also a popular nudist spot (rare in otherwise conservative Mexico). Whilst the European and American nudists kept themselves to themselves, the Mexicans let it all hang out, and then wiggled it around just in case you hadn´t noticed. We even spotted a guy with see-through Speedos (just at the back mind, nothing saucy). The only building on the beach with more than one storey was a hotel, on the top floor of which were two old men, who spent all day on their balcony passing a pair of binoculars from one to the other. Despite the abundant birdlife (Pelicans were migrating over the beach all day every day) we think their interest lay elsewhere...

Oaxaca City

Our next journey was another 12-hour bonanza (mostlye during the daytime) and left us in Oaxaca city three hours later than anticipated at 2am. Thankfully we´d booked ahead, and our "accommodating" hostel let us in without any fuss. Mercifully, we had a dorm to ourselves on the first night. By the second night we were joined by a pair of Americans (of the intelligent variety) and a young Mexican couple. In an effort to increase cross-cultural relations (and learn some Mexican swear words) we spent the evening drinking from a two-gallon bottle of Tequila which the couple had brought with them from her family Agave farm in Tequila itself. The next day we headed off to a nearby town called El Tule, whose central square boasts the world´s "largest biomass" - a tree - of ludicrous proportions (a 17m diameter for Chrissakes, between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.) Oaxaca is the indigenous artesany capital of Mexico, so after marvelling at the tree, we dutifully headed back into town for some souvenir shopping, but before long it was time to say goodbye to Oliver and Perla the Mexican slang-mongers, and head off again.

San Cristobal de las Casas

This town is the capital of Chiapas state - Mexico´s poorest and one of the most dangerous as the Zapatista movement is based here. A few years ago the town was seized by Zapatistas but the government soon squished them. Nowadays the new govt prefers to actually talk to them rather than shooting them, so things have calmed down. We were in town for the Semana Santa (Easter) festivities. On Easter Sunday, you couldn´t move for Monsters Inc-sponsored floats blocking the streets. The night before, we were treated to a ´show extremo´ in the town square, where numerous local wannabes came on stage to mime along to backing tapes of the likes of Enrique Iglesias and Christina Aguilera. These were preceded by a "genuine" Mariachi band, and a contender for world´s most shrieky and perhaps most ugly karaoke singing lady. All good fun, and thoroughly enjoyed by our little group (the Kiwis, plus Giuseppe the permanently appalled but hilariously funny Italian who threw his hands in the air and shouted "minchia" at every opportunity).


On our final day in Saint Christopher of the Houses (my translation) we headed to the bullring. Making amends for our earlier Mexico City mishap, we checked out a six-bull extravaganza. By the end we had sweated buckets, bitten our nails down, nearly puked at the sight of blood pumping by the litre from the bulls´ necks, and taken around 100 photos. The whole spectacle is truly amazing, and let´s not forget a) that it is a centuries-old and well-developed tradition; b) that the alternative would be for the bulls to die in a hideous abattoir, and c) that there is always a chance that the bull will win the fight. In fact, it´s probably the latter which draws the crowds. In our case, things had progressed relatively well (barring a few botched and lengthy killings) until round four, at the point of inserting the metre-long sword between the bull´s shoulder blades. If done correctly, this can kill the bull instantly, but in this case, the matador hesitated a moment too long, giving the bull time to flick its head up, catching the matador and hoying him 6 feet into the air. When he fell, the bull charged again, flipping him up and over, but (to the crowd´s minor disappointment) not actually tearing him to pieces. Eventually, the winded matador was able to stand up and stagger round the ring to much applause. He was even granted a couple of ears for his efforts. During another fight, one of the mounted neck-stabbers (who drive a sharpened point into the bull´s neck to get it really angry) got a bit too keen, exhausting the bull and annoying the crowd, who then proceeded to hurl cans and bottles (empty and full) at him until he left the ring. They reward and punish in equal measures these crazy Hispanic types, let me tell you.

Palenque

Prior to leaving, we took a day trip to the beautiful Mayan ruins at Palenque. The site is bang in the middle of the jungle, which lends an air of mystery to the area, and the sounds of exotic birds and wildlife only increases it. The buildings contain many hieroglyophs and frescoes depicting important Mayan coronations and so on, as well as offering overgrown children like us the chance to clamber up steps and explore tunnels. It was straight out of a Tintin book! On the way to the ruins, we stopped at two waterfalls - the beautiful cascades of Agua Azul (Blue Water) and the semicircular falls at Misol Ha, where tree roots extended 50m down the edge of the rock, and more adventurous of us swam right to the base of the falls. The area around both falls is controlled by local villagers, who have set up numerous road blocks to cajole hapless tourists out of as much cash as possible in the name of "conservation".
:: Barney 1:16 AM [+] ::
...

Mexico

Mexico City

LA is not a cheap place to be, and with our funds rapidly dwindling, we decided it was time to get outta there. We headed down to a nearby branch of STA travel and bought tickets to Mexico City. "At least we´ll save ourselves the cost of a couple of mealsby flying all day", we optimistically told ourselves. How wrong we were. The shoddy Mexican operation that is "AeroCalifornia" not only put us on a plane with no TVs, magazines or other diversions for 6 hours, but also NO FOOD! Needless to say, when we arrived at our hostel in the heart of old Mexico City, the cafe was already closed, so we couldn´t eat then either. Then we were stuffed into a dorm with two noisy Brits who shuffled the beds all night, and an Ozzie guy who had to get up at 5.30am to catch a flight to Havana. After a totally sleepless night, we finally drifted off, only to wake up at 10.10am and remember that breakfast finished at 10. By the time we moved rooms, got ready and found the courage to venture into the streets, it was 2pm, and we wolfed down a three course meal in seconds. After another enormous feed yesterday evening and a better night´s sleep (we even made it to breakfast at 9.50) we spent today doing the tourist thing. We visited the Spanish cathedral in the central square or Zocalo (just metres from our hostel), and the recently excavated "Templo Mayor", the centrepiece of ancient Tenochtitlan (which I remember from my Spanish history was the Aztec capital, surrounded by a lake and run by that great feather headdress-wearing bloke Moctezuma, who Cortes held captive then murdered). The Spanish had built houses and a bookshop over the site, so it remained underground until 1978 when a bunch of plumbers unearthed a huge monolith depicting a dismembered Aztec goddess. At that point, archaeologists tore down the surrounding buildings and excavated the whole site. They also added a superb museum.


As you know, Mexico City is the biggest city (or, as Lonely Planet puts it ´megalopolis´) in the world, so in a couple of days we have not even scratched the surface. However the horrendous pollution (which blocks out the sunlight, thus saving on expensive sunblock) has left us both feeling tired, groggy and short of breath. Tomorrow, we´re off to the nearby pyramidic ruins of Teotihuacan, then we'll move east into Oaxaca and down towards Gutemala - and hopefully cleaner air. But we´ll be back in June ready to fly back to LA, then up to San Francisco and then... home. Yikes!


:: Barney 5:32 AM [+] ::
...

USA (first time round)

Los Angeles - Where interaction is futile (TM)

Here´s what I used to think of LA: Drive-bys, Niggaz in da 'Hood (note careful inclusion of apostrophe), Wannabe film-luvvies and endless, featureless blocks of skyscrapers. Oh, and the Hollywood sign. The reality is that there are in fact very few skyscrapers - the skyline being on the whole only two or three storeys high - but everything else holds true. As far as the wannabe actors go ,everyone you meet is either in ´the business´or desperately trying to make themselves as unique and/or conspicuous as possible in order to get there, with the weighting heavily on the latter. There is a joke that when someone tells you they´re an actor, you reply ´So, which restaurant do you work in then?´. The trouble with all these competing egos in one place though, is that nobody is remotely interested in anyone else. The closest you get to interaction with the ´locals´ (most of whom were Mexican or Finnish it seemed) was when they were giving you "attitood". Example: As Claire got off a bus, she politely informed a fellow standing passenger that seats were now available at the back of the bus, should she wish to rest her weary legs (ok I´m exaggerating a bit...). The woman turned to her and shouted in the most vitriolic tones that "I got out of your way lady. What´s your problem?" Another time we were hungry after walking two or three miles uphill towards the Hollywood sign (and into the wealthy, walled area known as ´Hollywoodland´). We stopped and bought some food and drink in a supermarket. After paying, the checkout guy moved to put our stuff into plastic bags, and I told him "No thanks, we don´t need them because we´re going to eat it now." He looked aghast at my refusal of his ´service´and turned away muttering "Be that way then, asshole!" When our mate Neil (who we hooked up with Rarotonga) also refused a bag on the incontrovertible grounds of helping to save the environment, veins visibly startin popping on his neck. Needless to say, the other customers were all emerging with paper bags inside plastic bags, inside more bags, to say nothing of the fact that they made the supermarket staff carry their bags the 10 metres to the car park while they chatted on their mobiles and pampered their poodles. Assholes! Another more amusing incident, this time at a busstop, involved a toothless be-ponytailed guy asking us where we were from. We were with a couple of Spanish girls, and we each divulged our nationality. He then iformed us that "My Daddy went around the world when I was young. He went to your country and your country (pointing in turn at us). He brought back a mirror with all French words round the edge. Do you think that was from your country?" he asked none of us in particular, evidently hedging his bets. When I said no, he asked where the mirror could possibly be from then, and when I replied in my least judgmental, most happy-go-lucky voice that it was probably France he looked absolutely baffled and turned away.


Having said all this, we quite enjoyed bits of our LA stopover. On the first night Claire, Neil and I made an impromptu stop at the Laemmle Cinema (He´s the founder of Universal Studios). We saw Michael Moore´s "Bowling for Columbine" which was the best critique of American gun culture I´ve seen, also providing plentiful evidence of the Media/Church/Politically-led culture of fear and paranoia which fuels it. It is truly incredible how stupid some middle-Americans are, even when given the opportunity to exonerate themselves on film (to wit, the various policemen, politicians, Oklahoma-bombing suspects, schoolboy drug and gun dealers that he interviews. To say nothing of NRA chairman Charlton Heston, who organised the pro+gun rallies in Columbine and other towns in the days after they experienced schoolchild-on-schoolchild gun massacres). Anyway, suffice to say the documentary left a powerful impression on us, and certainly did nothing to convince us that America, it´s politicians or people have a clue what they´re talking about.


Our fourth day was spent at Universal Studios, which was the first mainstream studio to bring in paying visitors in the 1920s. There are a variety of theme park-style rides (including the 3D cinema/hydraulic car simulation experience of the "Back to the Future" ride, and the white-water interactive dinosaur experience of "Jurassic Park". But the real highlight in terms of the filmmaking industry was the tour of the stages and sets used in the movies. We saw, among many others, the motel and house-on-the-hill used in "Psycho", as well as Hitchcock´s personal office (currently occupied, according to the sign on the parking space, by Dino De Laurentiis who directed Flash Gordon and Red Dragon). We were also driven past the town which Jaws attacked (naturally Jaws was on hand to jump out of the water at the prescribed moment). One of the stages contained a replica of a New York subway station which shook violently as soon as the studio doors closed on us. Then the ´street´ above collapsed before our eyes, sebnding a full-size lorry careering towards us, and sparking electrical fires and 1/4 million gallons of water hurtling down the escalators towards us. Needless to say, it all ended as quickly as it had begun and the set was back to its starting position before we drove out of the studio. All the while our guide provided "amusing" quips on a TV screen at the front of each of the carriages being towed.


That evening, we headed off to Universal City´s (TM) entertainment area, and after a gargantuan salad in the Hard Rock Cafe (which has John Lennon´s real glasses in a presentation cabinet - yawn) we headed outside and found ourselves by the red carpet outside the Premiere of James Cameron´s new Titanic spin-off "Ghosts from the Abyss". Not only did we see the smarmy multi-squillionaire lech himself, but we were also within spitting distance of such C-list celebs as Ed Furlong (remember the little boy in Terminator 2?), Tom Arnold (fat bloke - used to be married to Rosanne Barr) and Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Mission Impossible, and father of Angelina Jolie). Phew, this is starting to look like the blurb on the back of a rental video. Enough already! I confess it was all much more fun than it should have been, all the more so because we´d blaged the tickets for 1/3 of normal price from a Canadian at our hostel who had four going spare. Normal ticket price is a whopping $57 per head. The other big plus was Silvia and Paula, the two Spanish girls who we went with and who patiently let us practise our Spanish on them. It turned out that I had studied in the same department of the same tiny Spanish university (Vigo) at the same time as Paula, which gave us much to giggle about. However, she fell short of being the sixth random-encounter-with- someone-already-known-to-me as I´d rarely made the 90-minute journey to lectures in Spain, and hence never met her until now!


:: Barney 5:32 AM [+] ::
...

Fiji and Rarotonga (in the Cook Islands)

As we tearfully jetted off to Fiji´s new pastures (or more appropriately, beaches) from NZ, a wave of sadness at the seven fantastic weeks we´d spent in the most beautiful country so far, with the most wicked of company washed over us. We got over it by eating and drinking our way through the entire flight and landed full to bursting point late into the evening on the fair shores of Fiji´s main island ´Viti Levu´. As the darkness fell, a huge storm rolled in and we were told that the cyclones which had been plaguing the South Pacific for the past few weeks were on their way out but not quite gone. With little or no information on where to stay (or in other words, no Lonely Planet), we agreed to a night in a hotel in Nadi (the airport town) since it was late, and decided it would be a better idea to move on the next morning once we´d spoken to some fellow travellers. This proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. Allocated to our room, we entered to find one dim light and a slight musty smell. We chucked our bags on the bed and it was then that I saw the biggest cockroach I´d ever seen scampering up the wall. I hurridly checked around for more and at first glance, there weren´t any. However, on closer inspection (and keeping one eye on the speedy little bugger circumnavigating the room at ceiling level) I found them all. I bravely collected three from the vast amounts of corpses on the floor of our bedroom and bathroom and took them to reception. Obviously they weren´t really interested, but Barney and I were tired and had also been fortunate enough to have been without these filthy pests for the past few months so I was adamant we weren´t sleeping in there with them. The hotel staff couldn´t catch ´papa roach´ at first and then when they did, they beat it to death with a broom on our bedroom floor and reluctantly moved the corpse leaving a trail of ´stuff´behind it. Anyway, this is getting boring and grosse. The conclusion was that we were eventually moved and all was well. La la la.


We decided after talking to some girls that evening, to head for the Coral Coast rather than the islands of Fiji (although the islands are reputed to be much more beautiful). The weather on the islands had been really awful and people had been stuck there in constant storms with absolutely nothing to do except eat. As appealing as eating for Fiji sounded, we wanted some fun in the sun so we tried to book into a ´backpacker resort´ recommended to us called simply ´The Beachouse´ which also had a good reputation for meeting new people (something we hadn´t done for a few weeks). They were unfortunately booked out so we ended up nearby in a little (almost deserted) resort called ´Tuba Kula´. The pool was nice enough but you could only swim at high tide on their bit of beach, and there wasn´t really anyone there, so as soon as we could we hailed the local bus to The Beachouse. The local buses in Fiji are much the same as in Asia but with the biggest steering wheels and gear sticks we had ever seen. They pad them out and cover them in a lovely dark red shade of PVC which makes them look like they might morph into a cheap 70´s sofa at any moment. Anyway, I digress... Though slightly more expensive than we would have liked, the Beachouse fit all the criteria we needed for our relaxing beach holiday within a much longer, well... holiday. Sun, sea, great food, clean rooms, nice people and even four gorgeous kittens were the order of the day. And most spectacularly, every afternoon at 4pm on the dot (just as the rain set in), we were served cream teas with real butter and homemade scones and jams. Delicious - and all included in the room rate! Needless to say, this is where we stayed for the duration of our time on Fiji. Mind you, a lot of the time was spent juggling high tides and low tides with sunny spells and instant storms and trying to make the two fit together well enough for lazing on the beach. The rest of the time was spent snorkelling, swimming, watching the glorious sunsets, eating, drinking and generally meeting loads of nice people. One day, feeling a bit energetic, we went with Juta (a local guide) on a two hour trek through the rainforest to a waterfall. I stupidly wore trainers and socks which quickly became sodden with mud from the absolute quagmire we had to walk through to get there, not to mention the crossing of several deep, fast flowing streams. There were only five of us plus the guide and I think I was the only one who didn´t fall over at all. The route was indeed tretcherous and one guy fell, narrowly escaping with his fertility and had to spend several minutes getting over the pain, and one of the other girls fell crossing a stream and some nursing of bleeding wounds had to be done before she could continue. The waterfall was well worth it though. Gorgeous turqouise blue and fast flowing - and how we all needed a power shower fully clothed when we finally arrived there. On the way back, the guide asked me my name again, and then raised his machette. For a split second I slightly panicked until he started to carve the letters one by one into a tree trunk. So, I will be for a good many years to come, etched into Fiji´s history - or something like that.


Just in case you were wondering (Lyn), I´m writing this part of the diary for once so Barney can get to grips with the political situation in the US in the next instalment, and for another reason too. That reason being because I spent my birthday straddling the international date line and I thought I´d share it with you. I awoke on Fiji to the most glorious sunshine and Barney made me breakfast before we had to catch the minibus to the airport. The journey was sweaty and cramped but it was my birthday so I didn´t care. We got there just in time for check-in and the driver went to get all of the rucksacks out of the back when the boot got stuck. He tried and tried to wiggle it free and then in a flash, left us there and sped off to supposedly ´the Coral Sun offices´ who he said would be able to open it. An hour later, standing outside the terminal building not being able to check in for want of bags and passports and wondering if it was a scam to nick all our stuff, he still wasn´t back. That´s when we met Neil (a top bloke we were to spend the entire Rarotonga ´nightmare´ trip with). Anyway, the driver just got back in time for us to check in and get our flight to Rarotonga, so once again, all was well. We boarded the flight (still on my birthday) and then we were suddenly zapped back in time accross the international date line back to the day before and I was once again a year younger! It was a strange sensation sitting there thinking, now I´m 29... and now I´m 28 again. I suppose that doesn´t happen really. Time goes on regardless of imposed borders. But enforced, back to 21st March we went. We arrived on Rarotonga in a blowing gale and blanket cloud cover and headed for Vara´s place. This was where everyone seemed to be going and despite the wind and now rain, it was basic, but pleasant enough, and on the best beach on the main island ´Muri Beach´. The next day we got up and it was my birthday once again so Barney and I strolled along the beach in the overcast and windy, spitty, rainy conditions and made the best of it. I admit, I did feel a little sorry for myself until I saw some people getting married and had the most crap weather for it. We played a few games of sh*t head (cards) with our new found friend Neil and some others and had a game of frisby and a short sharp shock of a dip in the sea in the rain, and then Barney and I walked out into the evening TORRENTIAL RAIN to a lovely restaurant, where after wringing out my skirt and hair several times, we sat down to a magnificent and expensive (for us) meal. We both got rather trollied and walked back to collect the others for some more drinks at a bar down the road. It was a pretty memorable couple of birthdays! Next day it rained again so we decided a change of accommodation to somewhere with a pool and a TV room would be in order (as the sea was rough in the windy conditions and there was nothing to do). We checked in to a place with an old caravan for an office and some run down old buildings in the middle of nowhere up a dirt track. They´d picked us up for free so we didn´t have much choice other than to stay. Ut-uh! Wrong decision! We´d recruited Neil and Ian and Hannah to come with us there to make crazy parties in the rain too so I felt rather guilty. The beds were like boards, the TV in the TV and games room flickered and belted out a high-pitched buzzing noise. The pool table was ripped and then we noticed it was hopping with fleas. It turned out the beds and entire TV room were infested with them! Neil (being particularly attractive... to the fleas) got bitten half to death as we sat through all 6 episodes of painfully squeaky buzzing Blackadder II, perched on ancient plastic chairs, while I caught and killed several of the new found pests and crunched them satisfyingly between two fingernails. It rained and rained in Rarotonga and after quickly checking our emails in the main town (which contained nothing of any interest - the town that is, not the emails), we were quickly bored again. After a couple of swims in the cloudy pool and three more episodes of Blackadder and an aborted attempt to watch Papillon (failed because the heads appeared at the bottom of the screen and the bodies at the top on this particular video), we decided to change accommodation once again. I can tell this is getting boring now, Claire moaning yet again about her year long holiday, but it was a bit frustrating that everything was going wrong since this was meant to be the most beautiful Pacific Island there is. There were a couple of highlights. We had a nice meal and moved to a decent place to stay which we´d been avoiding as it was directly next to the airport, but hell, in the rain it didn´t really matter. They too had a TV room and nice clean beds and a pool and it was lovely. On our penultimate night (Neil screaming to leave the island as quickly as us), we all had a quick takeaway from the shop down the road and went into town for some drinking and dancing. My hate of fish forced me to be the only one to eat a burger (for stomach lining purposes obviously!) and I wondered why after one beer I started to feel rather queasy, so I didn´t drink any more but managed to have a great night, despite sweating and feeling ill and having to sit down at various intervals. What I didn´t realise then was that my stomach lining (the one I´d lined so well with the burger) was going to make a hasty exit from my poor little tum, no less than seven times during the night, starting the moment we got back from the club. It´s not the night you want to be in an all girls dorm with the bathroom right next door, but miraculously nobody heard me and even Barney was oblivious to my night of suffering until the next morning. I stayed in bed all that day, got up at five, had a farewell swim and we headed to the airport. Neil, who had been almost climbing the walls to get off the island, decided to try to get on our flight on standby to leave for L.A. with us and thankfully it all went according to plan for the first time in over a week. A hearty grin was shown by all on arrival at LAX.
:: Barney 5:25 AM [+] ::
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