Darin and I had our 17th wedding anniversary on August 16th. We used 20,000 United Airlines frequent flyer miles each to fly to Nadi, Fiji on partner Air New Zealand. Fiji is to NZ what Hawaii is to the US- a tropical island vacation destination, only 3 hours flight from Auckland. Our destination was Beqa Island, south of Nadi on the main island of Viti Levu. The ride from Nadi to Pacific Harbor, where we meet the resort’s boat, is about 2 hours. The boat ride over to Beqa is about an hour. When we arrived at Beqa Lagoon Resort, a transfer boat took us to the shore, where we then waded into the shore to be greeted by the singing staff with a handmade lei. We had been to this resort before, in 2004, with our friends Jan and Jerry Hemme. The resort has had some upgrades since then, mainly to the beachfront bures and the swimming pool. We stayed in a garden bure, surrounded by a pond full of water lilies. There are no telephones or televisions in the rooms. Meals are prepared by a very talented local chef, and served in the main bure that also houses the bar, the office, and a lounge area with games and books. The resort is on a small island with only footpaths between villages- no cars. During our 8 day visit, we did 6 days of 2-tank boat dives, one shore dive, had a picnic and snorkelled on a small, remote island, kayaked, visited the local villages, had a massage, napped, read books, learned to weave coconut palm into a basket, and met some really nice people. In one of those “hey, it’s a small world” moments, we met an American family moving to Auckland. The mom and daughter finished their scuba certification there. I was really impressed to see them doing so well, considering the wind was blowing up some big waves.Of course, this vacation was reality and not a dream, so it was not perfect. The downsides of this trip included numerous itchy mosquito bites, cockroaches in our room, occasional rain- with likely sewage runoff from the villages- preventing us from shore diving at night, and the stinky smoke from trash and sugar cane field-burning on Viti Levu.
My sister Barb turned 41, I mean, 28, on August 26th. She had no idea I was planning a surprise party for her that day. She thought she was coming over for a BBQ lunch, but instead I had 19 people (and 2 kids) at my house that day, our first party in NZ! My friends are awesome and cool and helped with food, set-up, and clean up. The food was delicious; especially the pound cake I made with the flower-shape pan Roberta gave me for my birthday. I made a strawberry sauce and whipped cream to top it. The orchids on the cake Holly had made were found growing below the steps to the backyard. Darin’s lips and hands turned purple from the balloons he blew up (made in China, yikes!). His homebrewed beer was popular, and the weather was sunny and comfortable. We had guests fill out a True/False questionnaire titled, “You don’t know Barb”, with a prize for first and second place. Some of the true statements about her were funny or embarrassing stories, and Barb got to comment on each one as we went over the results. There was lots of laughing, so the party was a success.
Last night was the lunar eclipse, or luna rosa. We had a thunderstorm blow up about 6 pm, so I had no expectation that we would get to see it. By 9 pm, the wind was blowing clouds across the bright moon, and they were moving past swiftly. We could see a dark dent on the bottom of the moon. By 10 pm the moon was indeed red, and the light from the moon was gone. What a beautiful sight! You can see a photo of it on this website http://www.stardome.org.nz/ or this one http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0708/S00371.htm
