So we did finally make it to Ovalau Island. We arrived after dark and for some reason the few and weak street lights were not working, so we sort of felt our way to the hotel. We were staying at the Royal Hotel, Fiji’s oldest one. We were showed to our room and in the corridors and hallway we could already marvel at the colonial feeling of the place. Actually the whole town of Levuka has kept ist charm. It used to be Fiji’s capital city (before that a whaling town) and not much has changed since then. Walking through the town you feel like time has stood still; there is one main street with small shops and old house facades which have not changed in a century, on the few side streets are more colonial buildings, old schools and monasteries, imposing houses with long verandas in lush gardens. Need I precise: we loved it.

We spent our first day in Levuka walking around, getting acquainted with the town and admiring the views. Marcel also got a haircut at a local salon, and when the barber took an old razor out to nicely cut the hairs at the base of his neck he knew he had to get shaved too. The young indo-fijian took a new blade out and started to shave his beard just like you see in movies: elbow up, tighten the skin with one hand and scrape scrape with the other, then rinse and wipe the blade with a twist of the wrist. A once in a lifetime experience.

The following day I left Marcel to nurse his hurting back in the room while I went out diving with an australian couple and funny instructor Charlie who liked to pick on me as his victim-of-the-day. Sea-sickness was kept under control, dive’s highlights were soft corals, a turtle swimming closeby and a black tip reef shark having a snooze on the bottom. That evening we went to bed early in preparation for the next day’s early start (board the bust at 4h30, AM that is).

We made it back to Nadi where we had to sleep one night before going on the ferry taking us to the Yasawa islands. He this is Fiji, of course we were going to spend a few days at the beach lounging on a sunchair and taking a dip in the turquoise ocean! North west of the main island are a series of small and smaller islands where various resorts are located. The ferry leaves in the morning and makes the milk run up, dropping off and picking up people along the way. We had 4h30 to spend on the boat, which I snoozed away because I had tried to take a Gravol (pill against motion sickness; fazit: do not take when going diving). And then….we made it to a picture perfect small resort on a blue lagoon, and spent the next 5 days in bathing suit and barefoot. La vie est dure….