A third wet day near Nadi Airport, Fiji

Spending more time with D' and P' I can really appreciate their continued support and advice, always looking out for me and doing their best to entertain me even though we are stuck in a rain drenched house unable to have internet, television, telephone landline or radio signals, relying on the few dvd movies that we have and the occasional mobile cellphone text or call from the outside world.

News reached us that Nadi is still half under water and the water level is still rising as the rains continue to fall almost constantly under monsoon type conditions. A brief excursion to get buy some more matresses is all that D' will suffer going out in the bad weather as she has heard that the young couple and the Spaniard who were here the other day are due to return back here, as their trip to the islands ended up being a washout, just as we predicted.

I am still having to take at least two cold showers a day, just to cool off, and D' still says that a third is best though I just can't be doing with being that wet that many times during the day, especially as a shower should mean a change of clothing and I just dont have 15 changes of clothes to swap into.

Unlike its neighbouring island of Hawaii, which had the help of the American money and industry, Fiji is still very much behind the times, with it everything being done to Fiji time which is another way of saying its gets done when it gets done and there is no way to rush things. Most Fijian houses do not have such luxuries as beds, sofa's or washing machines, favouring instead to wash them by hand and hand them out to dry.

Being european D' is very used to getting things done in either hours or at the most days, but so far she and her husband have been waiting months for an internet or telephone cable to be installed so that they can have a proper link to the outside world that does not rely on crackly radio messages on a cellphone every few hours.

Each time I go into my room I can smell the mustiness and the mildew growing all around and yet with the constant driving rain if I open the windows it will just let in more rain and moisture and without the heat there is nothing to dry out the room, my clothes or the bedding. I am still very glad that I have a roof over my head and know that in the airport there are still many stranded passengers desperate who would be happy to trade places with me, so I am not ungrateful, but still I am allowed at least to think and dream of better conditions.

Midway through the day a happy go lucky australian guy G' comes along and with him comes fresh news of the weather, the conditions at the airport and someone new to talk to. It is not that we have run out of things to say, but a fresh perspective on things and a different face is always a welcome. He has some good stories of his time in Fiji, his first ever time he has travelled outside of Australia despite being at least ten years older than I am, but still he has tried the local food, local drink and been chased away from the fishing spots by locals once which was enough for him to think twice about being there a second time.

One of P's cousins or uncles turned up with yet more dvd's and so we spend the best part of the day watching Clint Eastwood movies, which meant lots of guns, blood and lead bullets flying all over the place.

Around 5pm I had my second shower of the day, and wondered decided to write up a few more lines for entries in my blog, even though there is little to say in terms of travelling, but Aussie G' has enough news, jokes and stories to keep us all amused for a few more hours yet.

As we talk P's cousins and other extended family are hereabouts and join in with the stories and news as they can. English here is heavily accented but almost everyone can speak good enough English to get by and all the movies that we have been watching are all English, as is the most of the music that we have been listening to over the past few days. The admit that few fijians actually own or run anything here now, it is all controlled or lorded over by Indians, and one store actually has a bigger sign saying that they are"owned and operated by fijians" than they do displaying the actual name of the shop.

It would appear that Australia is very much becoming a full part of asia, complete with some towns or districts being controlled and mostly populated by Indians, Chinese or Muslims, proof that the expansionism of the white man acros the world is now in reverse with every part of the once powerful british empire now suffering so much imigration from other countries that despite English being the worlds first language ( officially recognised or not ! ) very soon there will be no country left that is governed and populated by its own native people.

I do not often make sweeping religious or political statements, but I am not sure that all this mixed influences is such a good thing, as culture, heritage, traditions are all going out the window.

Everywhere I go and everything I see shows it more and more than although the technology, the geography and the weather might be different in each country they are all heading the same way, and in a couple of hundred years those three differences will indeed be the only things that seperate one country from the any other.

D' managed to speak to L' at the airport and the news was that rivers all over Fiji were bursting their banks and with continuing rains it looks set to only get worse.

Aussie G' has already spend three days trying to get back home near Sydney as his wife had to go to hospital while he was here but with the storms and the flooding it is next to impossible to get an earlier flight than what you have booked. He managed to speak to his wife and the news over in Australia is that the rain storms have hit the east coast there too, ending the long drought with more rainfall in one night than they have had in eight years, nice for them but for me just another place to get rained on.

I am so glad that I stopped off in Mexico and got a few good days of sun as without that I think I would be just trying to get a flight home and forgetting the rest of the trip, having given up on hope.

G' told us stories about a few young children in Australia who did not believe in rain, thinking that it was similar to Santa Clause, just a thing that adults tell children to tease or amuse their kids.

After dark I wanted to thank D' and P' for them putting me up for a few nights so I asked if we could order a pizza, but D' said that that would cost a fortune so instead we took a drive out to the pizza place to pick one up. As we didnt have the telephone number we could not order in advance and once there we had a wait of almost an hour before it arrived and on the way back we passed a pothole in the road that was so huge it was bigger than the car and would not have looked out of place on the moons surface.

We also passed a few of the big hotels in the area, all were full, and P's cousin is a chef working in the Sheraton and he told us that this morning he had to prepare breakfasts for over 2000 people, now thats a lot of stranded people as normally when people come to Fiji they dont hang around Nadi but stay for a night and then move on over to the islands where it is more rural and cultural, plus has better countryside and areas for camping out under the stars or fishing.

Another wet and windy day near Nadi airport, Fiji

This morning we all woke up a little worse for wear as the effects of the local drink, grog ( or cava ) was a bit like having a hangover but when you add it to the very real humidity and the few shots of run and coke that everyone had as well it all equals a very quiet and peaceful morning where no one really wants to get up and do anything, not even the locals.

As I had sent myself to sleep around midnight I was up and ready for the day at 7am, whereas the late arrival Aussie had stayed up all night drinking to prove his manhood with the local boys, thus none of them got to sleep before about 7am and in the morning when I was walking around I could see the carnage of the night before and snoring bodies were slumped wherever they had been before sleep overtook them.

It was nice to see a bit of a respite from the rain when I woke up, and it even started to feel a little bit warm in the morning so the other travellers all took this opportunity to make fot the airport and see if they could get themselves out to the islands or down to Suva where they could start their holiday proper.

Myself, I knew that Nadi town centre was still underwater, the local radio station communication box had been flown to Suva to escape the rising tides and stories of people standing on tables or hiding in roof rafters abound, so I have firmly decided to cut my losses and remain with my new friends here near the airport and just lie low.

In the early afternoon the rains returned and radio announcements say that another low depression will be here within the next couple of days and so I hope that the couple who left to go to the islands this morning manage to make it back in time for their flight out again fine and safe.

I spoke to my sister on the phone, to let her know that I was all safe and sound and the financial news from back home is freightening, the bank of England base rate has dropped to 1.5% which is good for people with variable mortgages but it means that noone with savings is getting a good rate and chances are the credit cards are going to stop lending as they just will not be able to make a good return on their credit.

Redundancies are also rife and so I have decided to stay out and continue travelling until my original return date even if it puts me in greater debt, as not only is this a once in a lifetime opportunity but by the sounds of it there is little chance of returning to the UK and finding a good paying job anyway so why bother, instead I will do my best to live as fun and happy a life as possible, aware that upon my return it might take a good fews years before things for me are fully back to normal and out of debt.

By the early evening the rains had returned and although it wasnt as pounding hard as it has been, the fact that it is continuous for many hours is not a good sign for things to come, especially as the rainy season is due to continue until early April.

On my travels, people have asked me if I am religious and my answer is that although I do not follow the rules of any one recognised religion I have experienced and been witness to to many things to put them all down to coincidences and so I just try to live the best, cleanest life I can, respect and honor those who deserve it and have as much fun as I can and if that makes me a good person or a heathen / infidel then so be it, but I have made my choice and I am sticking to it.

Totally flooded out of Nadi, Fiji

I am gutted.

I have just arrived in Fiji, the promised land, the halfway point in
my travel, where lister was going to travel with Cat and where Jim
Carey's character Truman Burbank was desperate to reach to find his
lost love and when I arrive ... it is totally flooded.

It is the worst rain in living memory, and although I have made to the
airport all the main roads out to the big cities are totally blocked
and all because of this all the hotels are fully booked, but
thankfully a nice woman who works in the airport has found me a place
to stay where her brother lives about ten minutes drive from the
airport.

The insurance people are useless, as are the airline telephone staff
and if it were not for me talking to the people around me I would be
forced to stay in the airport for almost an entire week, as the rains
are due to get worse not better.

Arrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh