The Accidental Medical Tourist

Somehow, John and I managed to do virtually all of our pre-children travel without ever having to take an aspirin or buy a tube of antibiotic cream. However, since the arrival of our delightful children, now aged 19 and 16, we’ve made unexpected visits to hospitals and medical clinics in France, Italy, the Caribbean, the US and now, Fiji.

Our first encounter with a foreign medical service was in the South of France when one of the children, probably due to bad parenting, was allowed to toddle very quickly on an uneven cobbled surface in a walled medieval town resulting in a head gash that spurted blood in such a spectacular fashion that people actually said “Mon Dieu!” when we ran past them back to the car. Of course by the time we saw the slightly impatient doctor, who I just know was inwardly tutting about over-protective American mothers, Alex’s wound didn’t look so gory and only required a couple of butterfly bandages. We had to pay approximately £35 for his care, but by some miracle of bureaucratic magic and our trusty E111 card, we received a refund cheque from the French Government a few months later.

The only other thing I remember about that day was that I accidently threw the rental car keys into large rubbish skip with a couple of really juicy peach stones and actually had to climb inside to retrieve them. Of course John thought that this was hilarious. I did not.

The next foreign medical encounter of note was in St Croix in 1999. We all had some horrible lurgy over the Christmas holidays – a combination of fever, coughing and vomiting. We arrived at the airport for our departure looking like a family of zombies. The flight to Miami from London was memorable only because when one of the children was presented with their end of flight breakfast, an episode of projective vomiting ensued. Not surprisingly, no one in the remaining ten or so rows took up the offer of breakfast.

Unfortunately, Anna did not get better. In a pattern that was to repeat itself, Alex complained about being sick more, so while Anna was slowly going off in the corner, we expended our parental energy on Alex. By the time we noticed Anna was really sick, she was really, really sick and ended up in having to be admitted to the hospital. John and I had previously avoided going to the hospital when we lived in St Croix in the late 80s and early 90s, except once when John was bitten by a dog and was told by the receptionist to go home and put a bandage on his bloodied finger.

I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to be sitting in the reception of accident and emergency filling in insurance forms while Anna hung limply in John’s arms. However, in the West Indies, polite protocol is of upmost importance - just ask the tourist who arrived the same time as us with his foot wrapped in a bloody towel demanding to be seen by a doctor immediately. According to John, he was still sitting in the waiting room about ten hours later. Anyway, once you got past the horribly dirty A&E reception, a fairly modern hospital with competent doctors awaited you.

This was the first and last time that we accompanied John a work trip as we also infected John’s work colleagues, preventing them from diving for a good part of the trip. Having said that, the experience bonded the relationship between them and by the end of the trip they were engaged to be married. Amazingly, they were not put off having children and now have three of their own.

In 2001, we took the children to Italy to see some mid-winter sunlight which was sorely lacking in the north of England. Unfortunately, they both had colds and Alex basically could not eat without severe ear pain. This was horribly ironic, because one of the main reasons to travel to Italy is to eat. We had a lovely sunny day out at Pompeii when Anna started to fade in an alarming way.  By 3am she was in such a state that I was wandering the streets of Naples looking for a taxi as our bizarre hostel had no night clerk. Eventually I found some guys guarding market stalls, who kindly interrupted their game of throwing rocks at pigeons to find me a taxi and give me a blanket to wrap Anna up in.

When we finally found a hospital with an A&E department, we were sat in a triage room with Anna sitting on the examination table. The doctor, obviously an eminent one by the looks of his young (mostly good-looking female) entourage, arrived looking like he just woke up and smelling like he’d been asleep in an ashtray. He pulled up a chair in front of Anna, folded his hands together, as if in prayer and rested his head on his hands. Everyone sat expectantly. There was a slight discomfort in the room when we realised that he’d actually fallen asleep. Then completely unexpectedly, he looked up at Anna, all wild-eyed and shouted in English, “What’s wrong with you?!” I don’t know who was more terrified – me or her.

We high-tailed it out of there pretty quickly and in my non-existent Italian explained to the waiting taxi to take us to another hospital - any other hospital. In the end, we were looked after by a very good doctor who, after a chest x-ray and a thorough examination, prescribed a mountain of medicine (which was the only thing that we had to pay for). When we got back to the UK, we went straight to the GP, who confiscated most of the medicine and told us that he was sending the thick black drops that I’d been squirting up Anna’s nose for the previous week to the pharmacist for “safe disposal”.

I skip other stories to come right up to date, where the main protagonist in the story is John. Or rather, John’s gallbladder. A very acute attack of cholecystitis resulted in us having to go the public hospital in Suva as the private hospital currently does not have a night time emergency care. It’s all kind of a blur, but the short version is that John received excellent clinical care in a hospital that, like public hospitals all over the world, is over-stretched and under-resourced. Fortunately, we were in the privileged position to be able to move to the private hospital after a few hours and John is now waiting patiently for his gallbladder to calm down so that the professionals can remove the wretched thing.

I must come clean and confess that, as an American that worked and/or partook in the UK National Health System for over twenty years, I write this blog as a true believer in socialised medicine, or in less controversial terms, universal access to healthcare. In the post-Millennium Development Goal world, there will have to be an emphasis on increasing social justice to tackle entrenched inequities in both rich and poor countries alike. My medical travels around the world have only strengthened my resolve that this not only must happen in relation to healthcare, it can happen. Call me deluded if you like. I prefer the term optimistic.

Accident of Birth

Anna’s school (the International School, Suva) had a blood drive recently. I was a regular blood donor in the US and a not-so regular blood donor in the UK. One thing that put me off was the fifteen-odd page questionnaire that you had to answer that almost inevitably disqualified you from giving blood because of some obscure (or not so obscure) reason. No such problems here. The form was a one-sided piece of paper and the haemoglobin check consisted of me pulling down my bottom eyelids to reveal my healthy red eye sockets. As for the minimum weight requirement, the chap asked me to get on the scale, but when I stood up to walk over to it, he told me not to bother.

Besides the obvious altruistic benefits of giving blood there are other benefits. It’s the one time you actually have to eat cookies and take it easy for the rest of the day. I also get a delighted reaction when I tell them that my blood type is O negative. Though it is a complete accident of birth, it makes me feel bizarrely special to have the universal blood type. One thing that you must never do immediately after giving blood is have a few drinks at a dinner party. This can lead to dehydration and a severe hangover or vomiting in the neighbour’s hedge, or both. Don’t ask.

John said recently that if he died suddenly not to feel sorry for him as he’s had an amazing life so far. Of course I want him to live for a very long time, but barring a couple of blips (tearaway at age 15 and the “is this everything phase?” aged 36) my life has been awesome too. A good proportion of that awesomeness can be put down to the opportunities afforded me because of those very same accidents of birth that led to my blood type. Being here in Fiji I am constantly reminded of the privileges that come with being born into a relatively well off and educated family.

Two of the main reasons my life is so awesome.

One of the very frustrating things about being a trailing spouse in Fiji is that not only is it very difficult to get a job, but the law also makes it very hard to volunteer more than an hour a week. There is a lot of talent that could benefit local organisations going to waste as well as many families high-tailing it out of Fiji as soon as the working spouse’s contract is up because of these rules. However, there is a lot of energy spent in the expat community to try to make a difference in other ways.

The Corona group raises funds for local causes while providing a forum for expats (mostly trailing wives) and other interested people to get to know each other and learn about Fiji. I've previously blogged about their meeting in October that was held at the Fiji Museum. This latest meeting included a very sobering talk by some of the staff at Pacific Medical Services that provide reproductive and sexual health services throughout Fiji. Ladies of the developed world – cherish your access to birth control!

Last Friday, a couple of hours after dropping some cakes off at a home for disabled children (an idea that was suggested at the Corona meeting), I was on the boat with Anna and John on our way to Leleuvia Island Resort. It’s that accident of birth thing again – the yawning chasm between the haves and the have nots that is easy to ignore until you happen to catch sight of someone over on the other side. Even then it’s tempting to look away because it’s hard to know what to do and easier to get distracted than continue to contemplate deep injustice (“Am I being patronising?” “Am I doing enough?” “Oooh, that cafe does a nice iced coffee.”)

Anna had a rotten weekend as she woke up with a stinking cold on Saturday morning, but did manage to rally for a snorkel and a round of beach volleyball in the afternoon. John took me for a dive off the beach to see if I could remember how. It was just like riding a bicycle, even after twenty years. The only problem was that in the intervening years the tanks got a lot heavier and the weights a lot lighter. If anyone saw us, they’d have thought that we were being romantic, swimming along while hold hands. Actually, I wasn't wearing enough weight to ballast my body fat, so John was preventing me from bobbing up to the surface like a cork. We followed that up with a spectacular dive at a site called the Fish Market off of Motoriki where we saw sharks, barracuda and other big fish. I can’t wait to get into the water again.

The numbers on the gauges got smaller since the last time I dived in 1991.

A hair shirt here is out of the question as there are so many amazing things to enjoy, and besides it would be too sweaty. However, a purposeful mindfulness of the fact that many things that I consider a right would be judged by a large proportion of the world’s population as a privilege and the rest as an impossibility is something that I will endeavour to achieve.

Peering out from beneath the parasol

I have taken to roaming the streets of Suva armed with a large USP multi-coloured golf umbrella. This isn’t because of the rain (though it does come in handy for that) but rather to keep my brain from being braised inside of my skull. While you’ve been digging snow from your driveways, I've been cooked into a state of tropical torpor which I can occasionally rouse myself from with liberal doses of air conditioning, gin & tonics and the odd trip to the beach.

One wonders how I could possibly have so many places to go and so many things to do without being in paid employment (that is coming, but on island time). As we have no car, I travel by taxi or bus. I know that I’ve blogged about the taxi drivers here before, but I had three last week that are worth mentioning. One drove at speeds faster on the roads of Suva than I’d ever been on the island before. His driving technique was to drive at great speed, anticipating that other drivers would either drive sensibly or just get out of his way. I suspect that he may not live much longer. The next one drove very slowly but entirely erratically. I imagine that his vision was somewhat impaired. Finally, there was the personable chap whose driving was completely normal, but had Fiji Water bottle half full of what I suspect was urine sloshing around next to the gear shift.

Last Wednesday, Anna and I (having survived the taxi trip into town) were having a skiving afternoon watching Django at the cinema when the lights came on and the usher appeared. She announced that there was a tsunami warning and we could either stay to finish the movie or get a voucher to return to the cinema another day. The cinema is right on the harbourside and while we were really enjoying the movie, seeking higher ground seemed like the sensible option. Ironically, we’d just seen the trailer for The Impossible with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor which is about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and decided that we wouldn't want to see it because we live on a tsunami-prone tropical island. When we emerged from the theatre, blinking against the sunlight, traffic was at a standstill and the pavements were full of people.

Previously I've experienced two types of natural disasters: earthquakes, which you can do bugger-all about when they strike except dive for cover, and hurricanes, which you have days to prepare for. I was at a bit of a loss with what to do next. Run to the top of the nearest tall building? Walk the 4ish miles home which is outside of the tsunami danger area? I literally had no idea if we had two minutes or two hours in which to act so I asked a couple who were studying a smart phone. According to them we had 2 hours to get to higher ground. Jumping into a taxi was out of the question as they were all full and weren't going anywhere anyway.

Traffic and people leaving town towards higher ground

So we started to walk uphill out of town. I was really impressed by the calm, orderly and friendly atmosphere. The only upset person we saw was a hysterical ten-ish year old. We overheard her expat mother say “don’t worry, it won’t be like the movie” when we walked by. I will refrain from commenting on parenting skills, though I suspect taking a child that age to see The Impossible was perhaps a mistake and may have created neuroses that will last a lifetime.

The sun was searing, but we walked most of the way home before Anna’s friend stopped to give us a lift the rest of the way. My shirt was literally soaked in sweat (I didn't have had my brolly with me), but before I showered we had to prepare for the impending disaster. This included filling up water bottles and posting updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Fortunately, just as an email from the US Embassy popped into my inbox telling me to prepare for the tsunami, a friend rang to say that the warning had been called off.

You all may be wondering where John was during all of this. Earlier that day, he had rung me from a waterside hotel where he was attending a conference just out of town to tell me that his phone battery was nearly dead. Despite me saying regularly that we should have a family plan in case of an emergency (like a tsunami) we hadn't made one. Well, at least we know what the first rule of the emergency plan will be. Keep your bloody phone charged.

Guilty pleasures

I enjoy many guilty pleasures. Hot dogs, for instance. I love them – sliced and heated with baked beans, rolled in a flour tortilla with mild cheddar and microwaved until the cheese oozes out of the ends or stuffed into a wonder-bread bun and slathered with bright yellow American mustard. I love a glass of cool white wine when I cook dinner, even if I’m on my own. I love getting my eyebrows waxed in a beautifying, though slightly sado-masochistic sort of way.

However, one of the things that I get the greatest pleasure from is.....cemeteries. Weird, I know. This is not something new. Ever since I was old enough to be able to drive a car, I have been swerving into gravelly lay-bys to inspect old cemeteries. Of course, in California, this meant any grave pre-1920. When I moved to the east coast of the US, I discovered really old graves. When I moved to rural Northumberland in northern England, I was in churchyard heaven. My children were forever getting irritated with me for stopping suddenly on country roads, knowing without even looking up from their Game Boys that they could either join me for a drizzly game of spot the memento mori or be left in the car. Anna made the mistake of once refusing to come with me and Alex and it was only around twenty minutes later we heard her, hysterical with fear, alone on the other side of the church looking for us.

I am not alone in this obsession. Just ask my www.findagrave.com cyber-companions. This is where it all gets a little strange (or rather, stranger). If you’re a keen family historian and you know where your ancestor is buried, you can go to this site and ask for a volunteer to go hunt for their headstone, photograph it and post the photo. Having fulfilled several of these photo requests at the cemetery that abuts my late sister’s house in Holyoke, Massachusetts, I was delighted to see that there was a pending photo request at Suva Cemetery that I could spend my free time hunting for.

Suva cemetery sprawls over a hillside as you approach the city from the west. Ironically, there is a government-sponsored billboard on the roadside opposite the cemetery that proclaims something like “Welcome to Suva – Fiji’s healthy city!” After walking Anna to the bus stop on her first day of school (at 7am) I caught a taxi to the cemetery. Armed with a large umbrella to keep out of the sun, a bottle of water and a camera, I intrepidly dodged commuter traffic across Suva’s main road to the unimpressive gates. Almost immediately it was apparent that not only were my flip flops completely inappropriate (despite being order from an orthopaedically correct old lady catalogue), but that I should have also brought a emergency beacon in case I fell into one of the large holes that pock-marked the grounds.

There are a lot of young sailors buried here.

The other thing that was obvious was that there was absolutely no way that I was going to locate poor Mr Mantell’s grave that morning. The cemetery was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, with irregular boundaries and meandering lines of headstones that were impossible to follow in a systematic fashion. And being an easily distracted sort, I kept forgetting about the holes.

Some estimates state that up to 14% of the Fijian population died in the 1918/19 influenza pandemic

I never feel scared in cemeteries, but I do feel that the air is thick with stories, even if I am making most of them up myself from the scant information on the headstones. In the older parts of the cemetery I felt deeply moved as I read some of the inscriptions. Young seaman, missionaries, small children, many buried singly, not in family plots which resonated the displacement chord that is forever humming in my heart here in Fiji.

By 8:50am Mr Mantell was still eluding me and I was starting to think that I might collapse from heat stroke, so I sat in one of the open shaded bures, looked out at the harbour and let the breeze cool me down contemplating a rather long verse on a grave on one of the last graves I’d walked past:

Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands;

Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.

Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west,

And the long, long shift is over... Master, I've earned it.....Rest.

This was on a grave of a 24 year old who died in 1921 (Late Lieut. Royal Field Artillery). One can only imagine the toil that he’d endured to have his parents feel like his shift was over so early.*

How privileged I am to be the grand old age of 48 and still be fit and greedy for everything that I love and find interesting! Even if those things include processed meat products, depilation and hanging out with dead people. And blogging, let’s not forget blogging.

*An interesting post-script to this blog is that the verse is from a poem by Robert Service called The Song of the Wage-Slave. Also, the young man is Alan Ross Wilkins, an Australian, whose war diary was published for private circulation in 1922. Well, I know what I’ll be doing on my next trip to Australia – going to the National Library to have a look at it. That’s probably not normal, I know. But afterwards I’ll go to the pub and have a hot dog and a large glass of chardonnay.

Always look on the bright side of life*

Anna came back from the UK. It was always going to be a bit of a gamble letting her go back to visit so soon after we arrived as there was a district possibility that she’d seek asylum with a willing aunt, her brother or an ex-neighbour. But after five weeks of indulging in a proper English Christmas (including three proper Christmas dinners) she was ready to come “home” to Fiji. She starts her international baccalaureate next week, which will be the first proper work that she’s done since June 2012 when she finished her GCSEs before we moved. I expect her brain will hurt for the first couple of weeks.

My job hunt is progressing nicely. I have been fortunate to get a position at the Ministry of Health working on maternal and child health information systems. From the responses that I get from fellow expats (shock, surprise, hearty congratulations) I assume that it’s fairly unusual for the trailing spouse to sort out employment in such a short time here. Luckily, my skills fit in nicely with the work around some of the health-related Millennium Development Goals. Though I have enjoyed my time off, I am relieved and excited about starting work. Believe me, I know that this is a privileged situation to be in.

In my progression from not having a furry pet larger than a gerbil in over twenty years to becoming a certified CCL (crazy cat lady), I have travelled a great distance. To Nadi and back, in fact. On the bus on the way back from Nadi after picking Anna up at the airport, I got a phone call from the vet’s office in Suva (currently, the only practicing vet in town) to say that she needed to extend her leave by a week. Poor Reg was barely limping along with his suppurating leg wound. A few phone calls later, and we’d hired a car so that we could drive back to Nadi the next day with Reg to see the vets at Animals Fiji.

Taking a sick cat on a 3 ½ hour drive requires a certain amount of planning. Litter tray? Check. Towels? Check. Goat’s milk? Check. Fresh tuna offcuts from the my favourite place to buy fish, Island Ika in Toorak? Check. Poor Anna sat in the back with the mewling Reg, who was not interested in the sashimi or milk, but was rather intent on escaping from a moving vehicle. Eventually we pulled up at Animals Fiji and my heart sank. A couple of make-shift looking buildings with a lot of animals wandering about did not instil confidence. But never judge a book by its cover! What wonderful staff, obviously working on a shoe-string (BTW - consider them if you're a local looking for a charity to donate to). Thirty minutes later we were parked up at McDonalds enjoying our lunch. Again, Reg turned up his nose at the tuna and discovered a love of fries (after we forced down the new antibiotics).

The trip home was much more pleasant as Reg, who had not shut up for the previous five hours, passed out from exhaustion and stayed curled up in Anna’s lap the entire way home. He’s now almost completely recovered but is irrevocably spoiled.

Reg sleeps to recuperate while Khali just looks gorgeous.

Alex has booked his flights for coming to visit in March during his Easter break. Travelling here is a journey, not just a trip. The investment cash and time are both substantial – it takes around 40 hours each way to Newcastle, which means that you spend four days of your holiday travelling (though I think that it works out that you only actually lose three calendar days which is too taxing for my brain to compute). I’m making plans for the week that his visit and Anna’s school holiday overlap to go and stay in a resort. It’s bizarre but strangely pleasing to think that I’ll have to book time off of work.

*For the full lyrics of Eric Idle's song, click here.

Warning: this post contains spleen venting

First thoughts on what it would be like to move to Fiji? Endless sun, sand and sea? Ha! Let me dispel you of this notion once and for all. True if you move to a resort and work as a divemaster your life will all of those things and more, I’m sure. But for most of us that have jobs that require sitting at a desk, living in Fiji means living and working in Suva, and at the moment, Suva is in my bad books.

Over the last few days, things have happened that have really tested my affection for this hot, sweaty place. First, I misplaced my passport. Now it would be churlish to blame this momentary lapse of being a responsible adult on where we live. However, I had stashed it away somewhere safe for the duration of Cyclone Evan and on going to retrieve it I could not find it. John and I have searched everywhere in the house at least twice and still no luck. It was about to expire anyway, but my main record of travel over the last ten years has disappeared in a post-storm, bereavement-fueled fug.

Of course you need to file a police report to replace a lost passport. Obtaining the police report required three trips by taxi to the police station. To be completely fair to the Fijian police, I never had to wait more than ten minute to be told to come back later and on the third trip, it took less than five minutes for the neatly typed, very boring police report to be placed in my hands.

Also, I have had two attempts to get my American passport photo taken. The place that takes them here specialises in taking the least attractive photos ever. For the next ten years, my glowering stare from beneath my perspiring brow in my passport photo will be a reminder of our time in Fiji. If you plan to move abroad, be sure to have a couple of different photo IDs besides your passport and some decent passport photos. It could save you a lot of bother.

Our beloved little Reg, the cutest, scruffiest kitten this side of the International Date Line, broke his leg on Friday. Over the weekend, he managed to progress it from a greenstick to an infected compound fracture. Problem is that the only vet in Suva left for her week-long holiday on Friday afternoon.  Yes, you heard me right - THE ONLY VET IN SUVA. Even the Society for the Protection of Animals in Suva does not have access to a vet until February. Here, animal life is cheap. If you’re seriously attached to your animals, I would suggest that you keep Fiji as an expat destination off your list and check the availability of veterinary care wherever you’re thinking about going.

We had a sleepless night nursing him. Thankfully, I’m married to a mad scientist who happened to have a bottle of powered ampicillin in his office left over from an experiment, so a slug of that mixed with goat’s milk in a syringe, cooling with damp towels and the occasional cuddle kept him alive until we got him to the vet’s this morning. He’s only receiving nursing care though, so we’re hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Finally, after dropping Reg off at the vet’s this morning, I fell asleep for an hour and woke to no power. It was only after another hour or so that I realised that we were the only ones in this situation in our neighbourhood. In our house, that’s how you can tell that the electricity bill is overdue - they turn off your power. Of course it does help if you receive the bill. The timing of the bill arrival is completely random. I had suspected that this might happen so last week I tried to put some money towards our account but was told that they needed a copy of the bill or the amount due to pay it. It is like a Kafkaesque nightmare. Another trip into town to pay the bill, a six hour wait and the power is back on.

Maybe I’ll feel a little better now that the ceiling fans are on, I've eaten some delicious half-melted ice cream from the freezer and I've vented in this post.

Off with her head!

Yesterday, the Queen’s head disappeared from Fiji’s banknotes. The government has made a short commercial to be played in cinemas explaining the new banknotes, which John and I saw while waiting for The Hobbit to start yesterday. This move is completely understandable as Fiji was kicked out of the Commonwealth in 2009 after delaying elections after the 2008 coup (elections won’t be held until 2014). However, is feels little disrespectful to see a large insect crawling onto the space where Lizzie’s face peered out from moments earlier, even in the name of celebrating the biodiversity of these wonderful islands.

It wasn't the best picture of the Queen anyway.

It’s been a while since I last posted because I've been busy snorkelling or being in either a languid or a slightly inebriated state during our amazing trip to Vanua Levu over the Christmas holidays. Our power finally came on in the wee hours of the 23^rd, shortly before we took an early morning taxi to airport to await our flight to Savusavu. There were only two small Pacific Air prop planes at the airport that morning and one was not fit to fly, so we had to wait for the other one to fly wherever it was going, then come back (empty) before we could take off. We could see small islands and complex reef systems almost the entire way before making our descent through a small valley, the height of which made it seem like you could reach out and grab coconuts off of the trees.

The men's toilets and the welcoming committee at Savusavu Airport

My first impression of Savusavu itself is that it was just what I thought Fiji would be like before we moved here. Savusavu Bay is unbelievably beautiful and we enjoyed the view from the balcony at our room at the Hot Springs Hotel. The name of the hotel is slightly misleading as they don’t really have hot water at the hotel. They installed a geothermal water heating system which meant that (in our room anyway) when you turned the hot water tap on there was only a 50/50 chance that hot water would come out.

The view over Savusavu Bay from the Hot Springs Hotel

Our ultimate destination, however, was the Pearl Shack on the south shore of the island. The owner picked us up from the hotel on Christmas Eve morning and kindly took us into town to do our grocery shopping. What a nightmare! Savusavu is not a big town (probably around 5000 people), but every single resident was squeezed into the narrow aisles of the supermarket that morning. The market was the same. I battled the feeling of claustrophobia to try to buy what I could off of my list, but in the end I kind of gave up so we ended up with a selection of weird stuff to eat. John had been in charge of going to the liquor store, and with steely determination did an admirable job. Fortunately the previous occupants of “the shack” had left a good supply of condiments or the food might have become rather boring.

I could have written an entire post just about the shack. In fact I did, but it was so tedious in its lyrical waxing that I thought that I’d make everyone hate me if I published it. It was a completely relaxing, healing place. The snorkeling was unbelievable. Parts of the back reef were really interesting with enormous heads of coral and a good diversity of fish, but the fore reef was stunning. A walk across the reef pavement in low tide, followed by a short snorkel in about half a metre of water led to a drop off to around 20-30 meters. The wall was covered in healthy coral. John took loads of video, most of which came out kind of rubbish because his camera started to fog up. The reef went on for a long way, but we didn't need to venture too far to stay amused. Besides, once you got out too far, the drop off was too pelagic to be comfortable without eyes in the back of your head. It’s funny how the Jaws theme tune just pops into your head at the most inopportune times.

Besides snorkeling  we kayaked, cooked (we didn't eat out once we got to the shack), drank and did silly things like attempt a romantic canoodle in the two person hammock after some champagne. This ended badly with both of us stuck with our feet up in the air and our heads pile-driven into the sand. John worked on teaching himself the corals of Fiji and I wasted an embarrassing number of hours reading the Game of Throne series.

We came back to Suva to see in the New Year. Our “celebration” consisted of Thai beef salad and champagne on the patio with the kittens and enough episodes of Rome to see us to midnight. Bliss.