eastboundaround: Fiji time

I think there is no place i´ve been in the last years where i took the amount of pictures like i did in Fiji. Almost none. I´ll use more or less all of them in the following text. Later, my couchhost in L.A. said that a good tourist always has his camera with him. It seems like, i have turned into a very bad one. I ask myself if i´m still spoiled of too much travelling? While going through the very small folder of the group of islands i realise that, especially in Fiji, i actually was the perfect tourist.

Once i made my way to the island of Taveuni i was more or less just hanging out in a resort, at the pool or at the tables on the terrace. The exciting stuff for me, and the reason i came to this place, was to do a few dives at the rainbow reef, home of the mighty white wall. I have no underwater camera, but fortunally someone else had one and i got a few shots of them

I didn´t expect too much of Fiji, thought it would be really touristic, but it actually would have been a nice place to travell around. But you need time for it, for me it was just a short stop over. "Fiji time" is not only a phrase. It´s the excuse for being lazy and enjoying life. I love those places. And even with the little excursions i did, i realised how picturesque the place can be.

The whole place reminded me a little bit of India, no wonder as more than a third of the population has there ancestors in the subkontinent. The mixture of the two groups of people is interesting to see, especially in the urban life of the bigger places like Nadi or Suva. If someone can adopt to a different enviroment, than it is the indians. I´m even not sure who invented the "Fiji time". I would not bet against either of them. But that´s just one of the aspects how the colonial rule of the british was setting up the life of today. They also brought western religion. Half of the population is christian, and you can see it.

Sometimes i tought they overdid it a little bit. The best example was the the 180° meridian, The place where you time travell within one step. Today, yestday, today, yesterday. Funny game. The Fijians found a better phrase for it and it was written on a sign at the information center: "Assembly of God". The place where the world got stiched together.