Note: I added more pictures and some more text about the Vatulele trip, if you want to check it out.
Don't go on a moped tour in Fiji. Just don't. You're guaranteed to get messed up in one way or another.
We woke up early on Wednesday and headed out to Nadi via minibus. Everyone was excited and pumped for the trip since we've been talking about this for a long time now. We rented the bikes from a place in Nadi, and right away I did something that should have been a bad omen telling us to turn the hell around at that point. We were all lined up, and since only 4 of us brought our licenses (myself included) and we needed 4 bikes, I had to drive a bike around a corner where I could switch with Eli. Instead, since I've never driven a scooter before and all they did before sending me off was point out the brake and the accelerator, I figured I'd start driving and forget one of those two things. I jerked forward and drove 10 feet forward into a row of parked scooters. I had to try really hard not to laugh - nobody was hurt, and I was making jokes about woman drivers, etc. I traded places with Eli (who was riding on the back of my scooter) - after my little incident, the owners didn't seem so strict about driving without a license.
Me, excited to smash one moped into a bunch of parked vehicles.
Our whole group, ready for adventure.
After that, we headed out driving north from Nadi along Queen's road. Our goal was to make it to Volivoli at the northern part of the island. This part of the island is absolutely beautiful. We were passing by lots of mountains, the weather was gorgeous, and we were having a really fun time. We drove up by Ba, and a bunch of small villages.
A picture I took while riding on the back of Eli's bike. Nichole and Will are up ahead.
The sun was getting low when we were about 45 minutes out from Volivoli, and we had just passed a town called Tavua. Eli and I went around a corner, and looked behind us to see that Nicole and Will's bike was on the side of the road in a puff of dust, with both of them jumping around it. We turned around right away to see what happened, and Will's arm was bleeding very badly. Both of them were all hopped up on adrenaline and thinking that they were fine, but they were bleeding a lot. We later found out that since Will's visor didn't have a sunstrip across the top, he was blinded by the sun coming around the corner and didn't see the turn. A few cars stopped by to offer rides to the hospital, so I hopped in one with Nicole and Will while Eli stayed behind waiting for everyone else to come back to come back to the hospital in Tavua.
Alex, Will, and I in the hospital in a wonderful mood. Both of them were bugging out a bit on adrenaline and not wanting to be examined, but eventually they calmed down enough to get cleaned up somewhat. This was a public hospital, and was kind of terrifying. Nothing was sterilized, and they didn't even see them until 15 minutes after we walked in despite the fact that no one else was in the hospital. Cleaning out their road rash consisted of dabbing at everything with saline-soaked cotton swabs, then packing on gauze (not nonstick, so all the wounds healed up over it) and wrapping it on with glorified scotch tape. Nicole just had a lot of scrapes that were painful, but Will had a bunch of scrapes and several deep cuts in his forearm that wouldn't stop bleeding. We were staying in a hotel across the street (it was Alex's 21st birthday, so we tried to have some festivities), and I went with Will several times to the hospital to get his dressings changed. The doctor there refused to give him stitches because she didn't think that he was bleeding anymore, which was probably a good thing since it was still so dirty. I showed up later at night and the nurse on duty pretty much gave me free reign over the supply room, which only had gauze. We still stocked up though, and the next morning Eli and I took a scooter downtown to clean out the local pharmacy of all of their elastic and crepe bandages. We washed and bandaged both of them up, and they took a bus back to Nadi.
Nichole's hand. She had scraped up her whole arm, and a lot of her leg and both knees.
Will and Nichole trying to be in high spirits after getting "treated" at the Tavua hospital. Nichole's happy because her painkillers finally started kicking in.
Will's forearm the morning after. It swelled up real bad. Those cuts are the ones that bled for 3 days after, yet apparently didn't need stitches? Oh, public healthcare in Fiji...
Eli and I took the moped that crashed and drove it back to Nadi, while Joel, Alex, Cliff, and Sam continued on to Volivoli. We grabbed pizza in Nadi, where we met an older American couple who were very sweet and helpful: the wife was an orthopedic surgeon, and suggested that Nichole get her ring cut off before her hand swelled too much. The husband was a physical chemist who gave me his card and told me to get in touch with him about an ACS meeting in Boston, so that was sweet. We got on a minibus, and after a bumpy and painful ride back to Suva, we took them to Suva Private Hospital, where they got things sorted out. The hospital there still isn't great, but it was leaps and bounds better than the one at Tavua. They had to open up all of the wounds again to clean them out properly, and the doctor said that Will's cuts should have been stitched up, but now it was too late since there was dirt in there and it had started healing already. The last few days have been spent with a sort of sick ward in our house, while everybody helps out with food and cleaning and changing dressings. Both of them are healing up well though, and hopefully they'll be up and about in another few days.
We found out on the way back that Cliff crashed his moped into a car, and Joel wiped out around the same corner that Will and Nicole crashed on. We had a security deposit on the bikes to pay for the damages, but I'm mostly just glad that everybody's okay. We've got to study for exams now, so the next few days should be much quieter than this last week.
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