Saturday, January 25, 2003

 
Friday Vik and Wayne came over during their lunch break, just to say hello, after that I went back with them to the office and I brought the indian food leftovers and we all ate together.

A bit later I had a scary situation: The people who monitor our house alarm system called and said that one of the sensors in the house was triggered, which usually means someone is walking around ... I asked them to send someone by. But Vikash quickly drove me and we could not see anyone / anything that could have cause the alarm to go off ... weird .. maybe just a defective sensor.

Anyways, we started then later with some beers and ended up at Traps bar, where, funnily enough, I ran into Wade (who was at our dinner just 2 days ago). I was quite tired around 10:30 and went home. Then I tried the phone connection to the Solomon Islands, and it worked quite well, only that every minute or so an annoying dialing sound occurred. But Ritsu seems to be well and she keeps writing her own Travel Journal.

#posted by Peter 10:44 AM

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Friday, January 24, 2003

 
For over a year Ritsu and I have spent every single day and night together ... but we knew that this was going to be interrupted with her upcoming business trip to the Solomon Islands, so i brought her to Nausori Airport in the afternoon and after check in we waited and waited. Then she boarded her plane to Nadi.





She called me later and we found out that she reached Nadi by plane faster then I went back to Suva by car! (Suva - Nadi by car is 4 hours, Nausori - Suva is about 45 mins)

Oh, here is an interesting paragraph about the Solomons, taken from the above CIA link:

The bulk of the population depends on agriculture, fishing, and forestry for at least part of their livelihood. Most manufactured goods and petroleum products must be imported. The islands are rich in undeveloped mineral resources such as lead, zinc, nickel, and gold. However, severe ethnic violence, the closing of key business enterprises, and an empty government treasury have led to serious economic disarray, indeed near collapse. Tanker deliveries of crucial fuel supplies (including those for electrical generation) have become sporadic due to the government's inability to pay and attacks against ships. Telecommunications are threatened by the nonpayment of bills and by the lack of technical and maintenance staff many of whom have left the country.

Sounds like a perfect vacation spot.

Dinner was just steak with some blue cheese sauce ... I used to be so good at steak, but either it is the meat i get here or my talent is fading, the steak came out very chewy ...

So I spent my first night alone in over a year ... especially in a house as big as this one it feels weird ... to extra scare me, I heard some noise from within a house ... after investigation I found a pretty big frog hopping around the living room. Well, got him gently out of here, no froggy food in here anyway.



#posted by Peter 12:08 PM

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Thursday, January 23, 2003

 
The last 2 days I spent pretty much in the kitchen to prepare for our first "dinner party" which we had last night (Wednesday). I extended my indian cuisine horizon and made Lamb Madras Curry and Chicken Korma. A potato/culiflower and a english cabbage curry. Ocra, Rice and 5 condiments: Tomato, Tamarind, Mango and Pineapple Chutneys and Raita (yoghurt sauce). All very yummy, I got most of the recipe ideas from the same south pacific cookbook, but I went very creative with all of them of course. I later got a great link to a website full of indian recipes and I will surely try more of that soon. I have so much chutney now anyway.

Anyways, around 7 our guests came, Edo and Marly, and Wade, who we met for the first time. We had met his wife at a BBQ many months ago. It was a very pleasent evening and we had a lot of fun and talk and food and drink. Now I still have leftovers for the next week :)


#posted by Peter 12:30 PM

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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

 
Monday was a typical rainy Suva summer day. I was still somewhat grounded without car, so I spent most of the day cooking for a dinner we are planning for Wednesday. I am experimenting with indian cuisine these days and created a nice hot pineapple chutney and for dinner I made us lamb korma (lamb chops which have been marinated in yoghurt, ginger and garlic), turned out very nicely.

As promised here some more pics of the trip to Toberua:




#posted by Peter 1:14 PM

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Sunday, January 19, 2003

 
Surprise, Surprise or Weekend Trip to Toberua Island
more pictures will be added shortly

For some time now Ritsu had told me that I should keep this weekend open since she planned on "kidnapping" me. All she told me was that I should pack my dive gear.

Friday: I woke up early to have enough time to make breakfast and bring the car to Asco Motors. When I returned there was still enough time for packing. At 9:45 our cab arrived and Ritsu told the cab driver to not tell me where we are going. For a second the cab driver must have thought that she alone was going somewhere and her husband should not know, too funny. After 15 minutes I realized we are driving towards Nausori, the airport, and I was wondering if our dive gear was packed well enough for flying, but a bit later, we passed the airport and again I had no clue where we were heading to. We left the main road and followed a dirt road for some time till we came to a river and a sign "Nakelo Landing" and we saw a small boat. Ah, boat trip! But where to? Also, that was not our boat as it turned out. We waited a bit and I checked out that one little "supermarket" and then our boat came. Small and it seems we were the only 2 passengers. I noticed the name "Toberua" on the boat and the t-shirts, but still had no idea what that was. We headed down the river, lined by beautiful mangroves and from time to time some little huts and swimming children. At one point we stopped to pick up a letter and a bunch of those kids were all over the boat. After 30 minutes the river widened and I spotted a tiny island and the skipper motioned that this is where we are going.

We arrived then around noon at Toberua Island Resort and were welcomed by at least 10 staff members (no singing though, that was probably cancelled due to rain) and after a welcome drink (kava) we had our grand tour of the resort. The island is only 4 acres at high tide (around 20 acres at low tide) and all resort. At the end of the island are crew quarters and the rest is 14 bures and then a bar, kitchen/restaurant bures, office/shop bure and a saltwater swimming pool. Very nice and cozy. After we signed in, we were led to our bure and we were amazed about how beautiful it was. One large room with king size bed (and 2 small beds), a minibar hidden in the closet, the bathroom adjacent (so it is not under the same roof) and a balcony facing the water, with a swing and a hammock between the palm trees. The roof was very nicely decorated from the inside. I inspected the bure for further amenities and discovered that there are no mosquito coils ... and even worse, the windows have no mosquito screens !!! I saw ourselves being eaten alive, but then Ritsu found in the welcome brochure that one of the unique features of this island is that they have no mosquitos. Wow, great!

Very shortly someone came with the lunch menu and asked us to make our selection. I opted for a seafood/bacon pizza and Ritsu had Chicken Risotto. Both very yummy. We had a quick nap end met at 2:30 at the dive store to go diving. Dive guide Rachel was a very nice and cheerful person and her brother Tim, though on holiday here, was very helpful with the dive gear and everything and so we had a great dive at a site called "the canyon". Back at the resort we showered and explored the place a bit more, I spent some time walking around taking pictures while Ritsu did some more napping. Later I talked to many of the staff members and kept reading, waiting for dinner time. Before dinner everybody met at the bar to chat. Besides Tim and his GF Amy there was a couple with a little baby girl. Another couple I saw leaving earlier that day, so, thanks to low season, it was nice and quiet.

At 8 the drums rolled and let us know that dinner was ready. Ritsu had the soup and then roast of lamb while I had a pork samosa and then prawns. All very tasty. The desert was a paw paw mousse which has seen way too much cream in its life, so I could not finish it. While I thought about enjoying a cigar after dinner, it seemed that everybody, including the music guys and the bar tender were off to bed, so we just did some reading in our bure and then had a wonderful night's sleep, listening to the waves and breeze.

Saturday: We woke up at 7:30 and got ready for Breakfast at 8. And at 9:30 we met at the diveboat again. Today we were one diver more, since Amy just got certified the day before and joined us. The dive sites were "Bird's Island Reef" and "The Playground" and the weather in between got very nice (I sure got a nice sunburn again).

The dives were nice, while visibility was various, we saw some really nice stuff. A school of eagle rays on the first dive and 2 circling white tip reef sharks on the second. We got back in time for lunch (indian omelette, thai steak and some fish, all good, some coconut/caramel custard for desert, no coconut flavor, but a miraculous resurrection of the paw paw mousse from last night) and then some serious napping.

In the late afternoon we walked around the Island, took nice pictures, marveled at the banded sea snakes they have around here (they are totally harmless and very beautiful to look at) and did some more reading. Around 7 we went to the bar / library and I had a nice Gin & Tonic and lit a cigar. Ritsu had first a beer and then a "Tomberua Prince", a rum based cocktail with fruit juices and a dash of Gallioano. A bit later Tim, Amy and Rachel came, Tim showing his pictures of the day on his Toshiba Laptop. And 10 minutes later the manager couple joined us and we were one nice sitting group, and when at 8 the drum rolled for dinner, nobody really wanted to get up. Eventually we moved over to the restaurant and thanks to the sunny weather all day we could sit outside, under the stars and palm trees, 6 ft away from the water and had a fantastic dinner. Ritsu had a potato/bacon/ginger soup followed by stuffed chicken while I had the crabmeat filled dalo starter and then fresh fish on mashed potatoes topped with a mango/papaya salsa. Well filled we pretty much went to bed right away.

Sunday: My sunburn interrupted my sleep a bit and we woke up around 7 and went to breakfast at 8. The weather was again gorgeous. The manager couple tempted us again saying "who said you need to leave at 10? you can leave whenever you want, most Suva people do not leave until 4 PM. Wow, how nice, if we had known, we could have maybe added 2 more dives, but we were ready to pack and just strolled some more around the island, laid lazy in the hammock and kept reading.

Just before 11 we left our bure, our stuff was already on the way to the boat, and even though it was sunday, big time day for rest and church for the fijians, all of the staff that was working showed up to say goodbye ...

So we boarded our little boat again and including some minor mechanical mishap, we just needed 90 minutes from the island to our house in Suva.

That was out of all our resort trips here so far the best ... the Jean Michel Costeau resort was only better in the food category ... we loved the very private / familiar setting ... our bure was beautiful (it seems we got a super upgrade, we noticed later that only few bures have been renovated recently, ours was the biggest of the new ones) people were very friendly but not intrusive, and the place is just beautiful. The diving was pretty cool, though viz was down thanks to the hurricane, the diveboat was comfy and very well equiped (latest nav and gps) and Rachel was a great dive guide. We will surely return soon.

#posted by Peter 4:47 PM

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