Saturday, July 6, 2013

Trip Around the Island–July 7, 2013

We have been working with students who live on the other side of the island and trying to get their paper work completed.  They are required to take the “Planning For Success” workshop and to have a priesthood endorsement form filled out, and then fill out their application online.  President Sepheti, one of the stake presidents goes out monthly and teaches the workshop and takes care of all the other necessary items.

This week-end they were having seminary training in Nadi and he was going to be there for the whole day and it was a great opportunity for us to go out and get these students forms all completed on the computer.  They would otherwise have to go to internet café and other places to get this done.  So if we went we could do everything all in one day.  Good plan!

So we left the office early Friday afternoon and drove up to Nadi.  We had driven up as far as Pacific Harbor, but this time we would go the whole way.  It’s not that far in distance, but the roads are windy and narrow so you don’t get much speed.  It takes a while to get there.

We were staying at two different hotels because they each only had one night open.  Our instructions were “turn right at the round about”.  That was it!  On the way in we passed a Hindu temple that looked like a huge birthday cake.  The paintings on the building were pretty nice. 

And we found the roundabout and after several tries found the hotels.  They were both nice, and one even had “Discovery” channel and it was fun to hear actual American TV again.

We visited a tourist area called Denarau where a lot of trips go out to the other islands.  We soon discovered that it was a great spot and that we will definitely want to stay at the Sheraton Hotel when we have visitors.  Pretty cool place.

We spent about 5 hours and got a lot accomplished.  By 5pm we were finishing up with a girl named Doreen and she said she lived in Ba.  So we volunteered to drive her home, how far could it be?  Well it turned out to be 25 miles out and 25 miles back on those windy, slow roads.  Oh well, the views were nice.

Nadi is where the international flights come in and when we got there it was easy to see why.  It is a big flat valley with mountains ringing it and a good place to bring in planes.  Suva on the other hand is hills that lead up to mountains and not much flat, but it has the good harbor.  So they each have their strengths.

DeWayne got his drivers license last week and as he was studying the signs there was one for a railroad.  We both laughed, there are no railroad in Suva at all.  But we found that Nadi has one!  It is a narrow gauge affair that is used to harvest the sugarcane, which Nadi and the surrounding areas are full of.  And so we had to take back our laughs, there is a railroad!

We got back at dark and had dinner at the hotel.  And Sunday morning we got up early and headed back, not the same way we came, but on around the island.  That side of the island is beautiful, with not much population and reminded us of California.  The Suva side gets all the rain and is very tropical and the other side gets much less rain and is much, much dryer.  Pretty amazing the difference there is on such a small island.

We stopped and bought bananas from some of the side of the road sellers and the kids were so cute.  And we noticed that the roads were actually pretty good, not many pot holes.  There are, however, villages all along the way with traffic humps that slow you down to about 10 miles an hour, so the travel is slow and those bends don’t help either.

When we got around to the outskirts of Suva the roads disintegrated into pot hole city once again.  But we found that they had finished our street.  If you consider it finished, they filled in the trench that they had dug for the sewer line and left every other pot hole just like they found them!  We will NEVER complain about Utah roads again!!!

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