Yo! (I'm running out of ways to greet you XD)
Today has been an interesting day.
When I woke up, Cassy and Lucie mentioned they're going to go on a trek to some waterfalls. I wasn't going to join them at first, as my budget is really tight, but in the end I figured since I'm only here for a couple more days, I might as well eat grass and see some more things.
After breakfast we went down to the main road, where we waited for a bus to come. There is another new person that joined us; Sven from the Netherlands. To my surprise, the bus actually came 10 minutes early today. As we were boarding I wanted to pay for the ride with my card, but I had insufficient balance. I thought I'll have to stay at home, but the driver was nice enough to look away and let me ride anyway.
After about an hour of the bumpiest ride of my life - I should also mention that the bus has no windows, so it gets quite windy and the dust flies into your eyes - we arrived at Bouma national heritage park. We paid our fees ($36 FJD per person; about 10 euros), the receptionist explained us a bit about the path we were about to take, and we took off.
We came to the first waterfall after just about 10 minutes of walking on a flat terrain. I took two pictures, the whole thing:
And a detail:
As we started to walk onwards, the path got steeper and we broke sweat in about a minute. I cursed every cigarette I ever smoked while trying to catch my breath. I stopped half way up to take a snap of remnants of the old coconut plantations I mentioned in previous part:
After we ascended to the top of the steepest part of the track, we were rewarded by awesome view of the island:
The coconut plantations are even better visible in those last two photos.
The track took us on for about one hour, through dense and uninteresting jungle. We were all sweating like crazy by now, the humidity here is really severe. All of our efforts were repaid once we reached the last waterfall:
After resting for a while we turned back. As I climbed on top of the first incline, I noticed the group stayed behind, so I decided to go for a jog. I ran pretty much all the way back down and lost about a pint of fluid in the process. I waited for them at the entrance to the park, from which we had to walk for about 10 minutes to get to the bus station.
Just as we topped up the bus card and had about 500 m left to the station, some local guy drove by in his pickup truck and asked us where we're headed. We told him and he said that the bus already left, and that he can take us back to the resort for $50 FJD. I tried my hand at haggling, as I'm just only getting used to it, and I succeeded at lowering the price to $40 FJD. We sat in the car, and as he drove around the corner, we saw that the bus was still waiting at the station. I guess he made it up, since tourists are a bottomless pit of money for the locals. We thanked the guy nicely and jumped on the bus.
On our way back we got off the bus at the supermarket, where we bought some food and walked back to the resort. I was starving, I didn't eat a thing since breakfast, which consisted of a papaya and a couple of bananas, so - needless to say - I ate too much for lunch. Luckily I had a bunch of photos to sort out, so I had an excuse to go lie down for a bit.
Because I missed the amazing sunset yesterday, I went down to the beach in the evening and it goes without saying that the sunset tonight was pretty average. I'll never forgive myself for yesterday. However, the colours in the sky were delightful, and I made a couple of pictures:
This sums up my Friday. We already arranged our activities for tomorrow, we're going on a trek along the beach, where there's supposed to be nice scenery, I hope for the best.
Until next time!