Mango Bay and Nukulau

After a great Friday night, I woke up a bit discombobulated kind of early on Saturday morning to find Kirsten packing stuff up to go to spend the day and night at Mango Bay, a backpacking resort on the Coral Coast. I impulsively decided to pack my stuff up in 5 minutes, hop in the shower, and go. Kirsten, Nichole, Arti and I grabbed a bus and had a long day on the beach, tanning and sleeping and napping and all other wonderful things. Nichole and I tried putting fresh oranges in our hair to see if they would lighten it (since they don't have lemons here) but it just made our hair sticky and attractive to ants. Unsuccessful.

Me in our dorm bure, waiting to go out to the beach with the girls. It was a gorgeous day.

As the afternoon wore on I realized the amount of things I had to get done this weekend, and decided to grab a bus back to Suva that night rather than stay until Sunday. I spent a nice night at home having a few drinks with friends - we didn't try going out though, since Suva was crazy, and it was impossible to get a cab to go downtown.

I woke up early Sunday morning and had a productive few hours of sorting out emails, getting some work done, and attempting to plan out the next few weeks here. Eli came over and was restless and in need of going somewhere to explore, so in the afternoon we rounded up a big group and got a local guy to take us out on his boat to Nukulau, a small island off of Suva Point.

A lone mangrove on the mudflats at low tide. Nukulau was thought to be cursed by natives, so they sold the island to an Englishman for some insanely cheap trade. When there was a coup a few years ago, the previous president (prime minister? whatever), George Speight, was thrown on the island as a prisoner. They're trying to make it into a resort, but when we got there it was pretty much empty except for a few sad palm thatch bures.

It wasn't a beautiful day outside, but we still had fun running around exploring the island and eating coconuts. The wind picked up as a bunch of rain clouds obscured the mainland, at which point we figured we would head back. We stopped at a sandbar on the way back and found a giant bloated dead fish on the sand, which Eli promptly picked up with his sandals while I poked it furiously with a stick. Overall it was a good day.