Circumnavigating Viti Levu, Part 2

Our journey around Fiji's main island continued on a drizzly weekday afternoon. Because of the weather, there are fewer photos here so you'll just have to use your imagination!

THE EASTSIDE: RakiRaki to Suva (Tuesday afternoon)

Pictured above:

1. Dirt roads to the fancy resort where we went scuba diving in the Bligh Waters
2. Clothes lines draped from end to end with colorful children's shirts and sarongs swaying in the misty rain
3. Entry sign to one of many villages along the King's Highway in the inland northeast, maximum speed of 50 kilometers per hour
4. Kids and adults returning home from school, work on the local bus
   
5. Lush green hillsides covered with tall stragly trees and the invasive African Tulip Tree with its flame-red tulip-shaped bouquets of flowers topping the pinnacle of each green leafy branch

Additional observations:

• Young boys playing rugby in one corner of the Communtiy field while the older boys/twenty-something men play in a another
• A string of dairy cows on their slow plod across the highway and back to the barn for the night
• Two young goats attempting to get out of the rain by hiding under their mum's belly
• Boys with sticks and bush knifes out for an afternoon stroll
• Middle aged women wrapped in sarongs and wearing long cotton dresses selling homegrown produce by the side of the road
• Cucumbers, tomatoes, durian and papayas stacked up in wooden planks
• Young boys holding out a bunch of bananas in one hand and display a single digit with the other, trying to make a sale along the Kings Road in last hours of daylight
• A serious-faced toddler holding a family-sized rainbow umbrella on a hillside
• Brown lazy rivers meandering through the green grassy fields spotted with palm trees and black and white spotted cows
• Women in long floral-print cotton dresses with their daughters doned in dresses cut and sewn from the same cloth display their wares in a corrugated metal farmstand
• Slow rush-hour traffic and weaving cars as we make our way through Suva as dusk

 

The adventures continue in my next post combining our drives from Suva to Sigatoka and Sigatoka to Nadi.