Day 104 - Shenanigans

Fiji Time: Basically the Fijians’ complete lack of a sense of time; If they say they’ll be somewhere at 09:00 this can mean anywhere from 09:00 to 11:00 in reality. This was explained to us by a very embarrassed Fijian citizen on our first day.

Well last night was eventful. At about 01:00 we both stirred from our slumbers and Danny got up to investigate the noise. Outside our rooms there was lots of shouting and banging on doors so Danny moved closer to our door to try and figure out what was being said. He’d put it down to drunks just trying to annoy everyone, though as he was about to open the door to shout at them he heard someone say something about a fire. There was a loud knock at the door and Danny was greeted with a Fijian holding a torch who, quite calmly, said: “I’m very sorry to disturb you but the hostel next door is on fire so could you please make your way outside the building.” The man then moved on to the next room. Danny then relayed this to a very disgruntled looking Corrie and, mainly due to the very relaxed manner in which it was said: casually got dressed, threw the important stuff into our daypacks, and then made our way down to the small car park at the front of the hostel.

We joined lots of other confused tourists as nothing appeared to be wrong at first glance. After walking just to the corner of our hostel and looking down the alley to next doors’ block it was immediately clear how serious the situation was; almost the whole top floor of next door was ablaze.

We stood around for about 20 minutes or so and watched as a few people, backpackers and staff, made vein attempts to douse the flames. Eventually the fire service arrived; it would seem that even they adhere to “Fiji Time” law! They backed into the drive and look especially displeased that they could see no sign of a fire from where they stood and were very close to driving off again when most of the crowd urged them to the alleyway to look.

Another minute passed and you could almost see the slow realization creep onto their sleepy faces. We wouldn’t say that they sprang into action but they did start to move; it would seem that fires are quite rare here as what followed was a comedic shambles of organized fire fighting. Many shouts of “ON ON ON!” then “OFF OFF OFF!” were passed between firemen and firewomen in a peculiar method of controlling the single hose’s water flow. They would quench the flames then promptly shut off the water and leave that room in belief that all was now well before running back to it with shouts of “ON ON ON!” in shock that the blaze had taken hold yet again. Due to there being just the one fire engine, more time was dwindled by them having to drive to the other side of the hostel to fight the fire from that side and then return back to repeat the process on our side.

Amongst this bizarre show we started chatting to a couple of lasses who, it turned out, had managed to escape the fire early as they were in one of the rooms next door to the one where the fire originated from. Their tale involved them being quite lucky to escape early on, as had all the other guests at that hostel. They did tell us of the other couple next door to the start of the fire and they’d said that a person walked into their room, then left and went into the empty room next to theirs just before the fire started… creepy.

After a couple of hours the fire seemed to be as good as out, though we’re sure that almost every other fire fighting team in the world would continue to douse the ashes long after the flames had gone – not here though, and off they went. Off we went back to bed too.

We were up early enough for breakfast and then sat on the beachfront cafe with our bags waiting for the 09:00 water taxi.

We were departing the shallow waters with a few others in the small speedboat at about 10:30 and just in time to see the huge thick clouds of smoke rising as the fire took hold once more!

We finally hopped off the boat and into the shallow waters of Mana Island where we were led to our budget accommodation. Once inside the Mana Lagoon backpackers we were sat down and all the staff gathered to sing us a welcome song. This was very nice and what followed was an introduction to the “family” and the hostel. It’s a strange kind of living they have and it was very hard for us to get this thinking into our heads at first; which is why we were both feeling equally unsure of what we were doing here. It almost left us feeling uncomfortable, though this was nothing when we finally got to check out our “private room”.

Before us was a bed in a den-like room, bodged together with: large gaps in the door frames, see through curtains, and no locks on the door. Round the corner of the bed was a sink, then after that a shower (well a tap that let cold water flow from a pipe jutting out of the wall,) and then a toilet at the end. “Oh well” we thought, let’s just make the most of it and embrace this way of living as it’s only for 2 nights.

We then had lunch, set to be at 13:00, at 14:30 and were able to chill out for the rest of the day, in the sun, before having our evening meal (an hour later than planned) and then getting an early night due to last night’s shenanigans.

Not very Fijian weather