 across two whole continents. Touch greedy, what?
It was even more rude when they manipulated half of them for, ooh, shall we say fresh fruit profits or guaranteed cocaine production to fuel various lucrative `countermeasures` or for good old fashioned power, greed, or a paranoid sense of national pride, but let us not get bogged down in petty name-calling
Yes we Brits did it too, but the keys things here are i) we did it better than anyone else, so nyerr nyerr nyerr, ii) we started off genuinely disadvantaged from a tiny island rather than based upon the most resource-rich country on Earth, and iii) we gave it all back.
And the next Irish guy who tells me I invaded his country is gonna get a potato somewhere personal.
For the lazy type who'd rather not live the high-powered life in the crazy world of work in America, this seems to me a damn good reason to spend more time in picturesque, unhomicidal Canada rather than in a country obsessed with work to the point of insanity, insanity to the point of rationalising therapy, and meals so formidable as to be capable of inflicting paralysis or death at a single sitting.
Not that I wont love the United States of Lovely Lovely Dollars Please Now, but I think the people will get on my tits rather more quickly than the denizens of Canada.
So back in the real world of today, well, this week at least, I found rafting on the Navua river from more or less the centre of the main island, Viti Levu, down to somewhere nearer the South Coast via the most incredible canyons and narrow, vastly high gorges cut through moss-trewn limestone one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. The water was clear and, where required, fast and bubbling or flowing and falling, taking our little inflatable over rocks and rapids and even the occasional small waterfall (very small, but it did tip someone out of every boat but ours. Yeah, we were that good), all the while showing us the real interior of the island and a kind of jungle and bamboo forest I had never seen before. There was something in the richness of the greenery and the stateliness of the bamboo thickets as it shot out over the river that seemed more full of life than anything in India or Borneo.
And if I do it again (read: when I do it again with bigger, stronger rapids) I will have to get an underwater camera sorted, as I will be doing anyway for further diving, which I am growing rather fond of I must say, even if the more recent outings have been a touch frustrating. Still, it has to happen now and then and I'm very much looking forward to going just with a buddy rather than a whole boat-full of people, and not least because they are all bewilderingly more qualified and experienced than I am
After a couple of hours paddling only on the command of our skipper, Joe 2 (and yes, there was a Joe 1 as well, on another boat) and listening to his stories about the scenery, history and culture, most of them probably even true
we fetched up at the mouth of an adjoining tributary and five boats-worth of us unloaded ourselves onto the shore, largely fell over a bit on the ludicrously slippery stones and, as our head tour guide Moses stepped across the water, watched him instantly disappear before our eyes.
Quite a trick, he walked onto a patch of water in the stream - which was, let me be clear, merely a stream over some small rapids, not more than 8" deep anywhere it seemed - and dropped completely from sight, plummeting vertically into a sinkhole to reappear seceonds later in an adjacent pool, having gone through an underwater hole connecting the two. Of course we all had a go, even me with my fear of water and drowning and seeing anything on the surface let alone beneath the icy liquid, and after just a few seonds of mortal panic I managed to step off, sink with the best of 'em and grapple my way through the hole which was strangely lower down than I had thought. I can't imagine why I thought it would be a bit shallower as that would have meant it was less threatening, guess I must have some unbridled optimism left in my soul.
One of our boat, Stef (or Steph) the daughter of John and Robyn; and I bloody hope I both remembered the names and spelled them correctly by the way; who between them made up the other three quarters of our crew's tourist quota, threw herself into the pool maybe half a dozen times, or at least quite a few, and rightly seemed pretty impressed. Fair play to her; I was playing the odds and allowing myself some freewheeling cowardice myself, reasoning that the more times I went in the lower the chances of my not smacking my head into gaudily coloured shards on some rocks was going to be. I know my limits. I am exactly the kind of guy who does something once just fine and then breaks something important doing the exact same thing again.
After that, and lunch, and more paddling and rapids which Joe, bless him, managed to mostly throw us through at least sideways and more often than not spinning rapidly so as to maximise the splash, we arrived at what they called Free Massage Falls, where one could indeed get a free massage of sorts by laofing about in the waterfall, assuming you didn;t mind not seeing anything for the duration. I have photos to prove I was there and everything, and in about a thousand years you might get to see them too
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I had been wasting time, money and small parts of my liver for 5 days at the resort I was at already, so I had decided to make good use of my time and get out of there and do stuff. Stuff isn;t cheap, explaining in part my reluctance to get out of the groove for the best part of a week, but stuff also doens't happen everywhere and I'm unlikely to be nack in Fiji for a good few years, possibly (but hopefully not) ever, so if nothing else I had to do some more diving. This meant I had to be able to see, a rudimentary question many of you may not appreciate, although many of you will.
Wearing glasses can be such a pain, if you don't have 'em you might not appreciate or if you have been able to wear contact lenses you might not appreciate so much either. I cannot wear contact lenses, or rather I can but it takes three people to put them in, and no I'm not joking at all, in the slightest, whatsoever. I have, bizarrely, and somewhat uselessly, extremely good reflexes and can avoid hidden obstacles and catch falling objects and otherwise twich my porky body in unlikely displays of dexterity should the need arise.
This is wonderful if someone accidentally drags a Discman off a table and I can grab it before it is yanked all the way to a splintery end, or when walking in darkness and finding myself facing imminent facial trauma at the convenience of a low bridge or tree branch - I manage to twist myself either out of or into the right position to deal with such things perfectly, and I deeply wish I could do this sort of thing in a social context.
This is disastrous when trying to insert contact lenses as the blink reflex overpowers all, and the fact I have a very low threshold for irritation and a barely suppressed kind of animalistic rage is waiting for me whenever I try anything so futile as an hour attempting to wear one contact lens, it really isn't the thing for me, not unless you dope me with valium and give me a litre of rum. Tranquilised and thoroughly sloshed, I suspect a good diver I would not make.
So the trials began, two hours on a local bus to Suva, the capital of Fiji, where I saw a real indicator of the level of poverty but also the ingenuity of the people: a bus here is really like a coach, although with 6 seats squeezed into each row normally occupied by 4 and most of the windows don't open, and has arrayed along its length below the cabin a series of luggage compartments a la the standard coach model, and these are accessed from outside and at all times left unlocked.
When a bus pulls into the mess of stalls and angled pull-ins that function as lanes at Suva's man bus terminal, and especially when, I suspect, white passengers can be seen at the windows, the last few hundred metres of its journey are accompanied by a small army of young men with wheelbarrows, running alongside the vehicle and fighting each other - all but coming to blows - with their wheelbarrows trying to edge in and be closest when the bus halts and they can cease treadling the potholed road to throw open the baggage lockers, and load up anyone's belongings left inside.
This was pretty disconcerting as hardly needs explaining, even though I had nothing in there myself it was certainly something to note for future adventures in public transport and it soon became slightly impressive in my mind, even if it did come from a desperation for money and lack of other prospects. At least these guys are out there, trying, although quite frankly if you are both unable to carry your own gear and are willing to let a strange man with a wheelbarrow take it for you; almost certainly guiding you by his own route to his own friend's hostelry; then you are probably not suited to travel.
Finding an optician and paying an inflated premium for just 10 pairs of lenses later, and after a cursory saunter into the only McDonalds for