Bula from Fiji!

Bula is the common greeting around here. It means Hi and Hello. Vinaka means thank you. Bula and Vinaka are Fijian words, but everyone speaks english. It makes it very easy to get by. Greetings from the future! Since we crossed the International Date line, we're now a day ahead. We arrived this morning (Saturday) around 5am with a full moon to light our path. The temperature is 77 and the air is humid. Perfect tropical weather. Our flight on Air Pacific from LA was delicious. 10 hours that went by in a flash. They fed us full meals, kept our wine glass full, and woke us to a hot breakfast. There were enough empty seats that we could be comfortable and even slept a while. Special head rests that could be molded to prevent your head from flopping to either side made a big difference. And every seat had an individual tv screen in the back of the seat in front of you. We had our choice of several current movies. All this was in contrast to the flight from Fort Lauderdale to LA where they didn't even give us peanuts and every seat was taken! Now we are at the TokaToka resort with a 'day room' so we can rest and get refreshed. We will be boarding the dive boat later this afternoon and go for our first dive. We're using a convenient 'Internet Cafe' in the hotel to write this post. They have 3 computers hooked up to the Internet and charge 20 cents/minute. I have taken a few pictures, but haven't gotten them off the camera yet. Since this may be our last chance for 10 days, I wanted to get something posted.

Packing up is hard to do

Our trip to Fiji starts in 2 days. Packing dive gear is no real problem. We know what goes in the dive bags: mask, fins & booties, snorkel, wetsuit & hood, BC vest, regulator. That's it. We don't pack weights or tanks - the boat provides that. Clothes aren't too bad either. We take every bathing suit we own, a few tshirts and shorts and a hat. That's about all you need when you're going to be on a boat in the South Pacific. But, all those miscellaneous things like camera battery charger, dive log book, passport, toothbrush - we're so out of practice with packing. Our normal mode of travel is to turn the key and drive off ... with our whole house (including the kitchen sink) with us. This time, we started packing about 5 days in advance, in hopes of not forgetting anything. We used the driver and passenger seat as our 'staging area' - the one place that wasn't in the way. Odie is going to be staying with Jim's parents. We got him groomed yesterday so he will smell pretty for them. The motorhome will stay put. Paradise Island has a 'storage' rate of $5/day plus $3 electric. I really like the idea of leaving it parked with the electricity on so the air conditioner can run a little while we're gone. We will be taking Jim's laptop computer with us - mainly to be able to get the pictures off the camera. Otherwise, we'd have to buy a dozen cards! We did already buy one more card - a 512k. Along with the original 256k card, that gives us capacity for about 300 photos. We'll probably shoot that in the first couple days! If we have a WiFi connection somewhere along the way, we will post a Blog entry. But I'm not counting on it - especially on the boat. I expect to have quite a backlog of pictures and blog entries to make when we get back. And, there will be lots of underwater video too. I will NOT be taking my good camera underwater - an underwater housing for my Canon Digital Rebel runs over $2,000! But, I did find a film camera for $20 that claims to work down to 100 feet! It was only $20 - so I got it. It may be just because I have Fiji on the brain - but there have been several news items from there lately - have you noticed? Keith Richards, out of his tree, in Fiji. Tori Spelling gets married in Fiji. And - Massive Earthquake in Pacific threatens Fiji with Tsunami. This one had us worried. But, if a Tsunami had been spawned by this earthquake, it would have hit Fiji in a matter of minutes. That didn't happen, and the warnings were lifted. Back to packing!

Fort Lauderdale: McDonald's Air and Sea Show

The Air and Sea Show is an annual event in Fort Lauderdale and we've attended many times over the years. They block off a section of the beach road (A1A) for a mile or so, and hundreds of thousands of people flock to the beach. We did that one year. We've also watched it from a friend's condo on the beach, and from a boat. Our favorite is from a boat - so we were just thrilled when we got an invitation to join Ronnie and Nils on their boat along with my mom and some other friends. Here we are loading up at their dock: Jim says, "Thank you Ronnie!" And, we head out the cut from the Intracoastal to the ocean at Hillsboro Inlet. We get into place with thousands of other boats off Fort Lauderdale beach, in time to see the flyover by American Airlines. The big jet is a 767 and the little one is a DC3 - pointing out the growth of the airlines! The great majority of the show is military. Here's a demonstration of refueling 2 helicopters in flight. The main reason for the show is a display of air power. The 'Sea' in Air and Sea is supposed to mean the hovercraft and the demonstrations of sea rescues by helicopter and a few 'go-fast' boats. But, the 'Sea' show that we got was watching thousands of boats trying to anchor in such close proximity to one another. And, many of the boat captains simply did not have the required skills! This poor boat was the victim of 2 incidents. The first one was when another boat was getting very close to us, then, when they hit the throttle to move away from us, they flew forward and spun around, slamming their back end into the blue boat. The second is when another boat came so close that their propeller got tangled in the blue boat's anchor line. They didn't even realize it and the hapless blue boat was getting an unwanted tow! I said, 'maybe we should call the Coast Guard and ask them to assist'. Oh, but wait, the Coast Guard is already pretty busy with this boat over here that's sinking! Entangled anchor lines seemed to be the most common problem of the day. At one point a boat was actually 'trawling for anchors' ... he left his anchor down as he decided to move to a more desirable spot. Well, you can imagine in this crowd he ended up hooking on to several other boats' anchor lines in the process. We seemed to be one of the few in our area that avoided the anchor-dragger. As it turned out, he just cleared our area for us! Let's go for a swim! Back to the airshow. These are the Canadian Snowbirds. And, one of my favorites, the stealth bomber. It's stealth because it's so thin that, when it's coming straight at you, you can't even see it. It's also very quiet. The fighter jets, on the other hand, are so loud they hurt your ears when they go right overhead. And, they did! You might need to look closely at this next one .. they just passed each other going in opposite directions. At 550mph each (maybe more) - that was a pretty heart-stopping maneuver. And these did the same thing, only upside down. The grand finale was the Blue Angels. Then it was back thru the inlet .. with everyone else ... to go home.

Underwater Video

My Mom, Marilyn, is an underwater videographer. She's been diving, unofficially since the 50's. Officially, she was certified in the early 80s. Since then, she's taken LOTS of dive trips. Mostly liveaboard on dive boats, but some at land-based resorts. All of them at exotic locations such as the Vanuatu, the Red Sea, Thailand, Borneo, Bali, Papua New Guinea, Galapagos, and Fiji. Here's a picture of her from one of her early dive trips with her first camera and housing. This has now been handed down to Jim and he'll be using it in Fiji. She has a new digital one. She has hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours of underwater video - and very few people have seen any of it because it needs to be edited. She has the computer system and software (Premiere Elements) to do the editing, but it can be a very daunting task. Sometimes you need someone to sit beside you to say 'Let's Do It'! It won't be perfect, but we want people to see some of it. So - I spent the morning at her computer this morning and we put together a 1.5 minute clip from her last trip to Indonesia. This clip is of Sea Snakes. Yes, that's right, Sea Snakes. These are deadly poisonous creatures that are, apparently, totally harmless. 

Check it out on her weblog. If you keep scrolling down, you'll see a couple more clips that we did when I was here last year. And ... just wait! There will be LOTS more to come. Ain't that right Mom?

Fairchild Gardens and Chihuly Glass

Yesterday was a busy day. Jim volunteered with Kayuba to monitor the 'Plywood Regatta'. This is a fun event where teams of high school kids build boats out of 2 sheets of plywood, then they race. The Kayuba volunteers paddle around in their kayaks to assist those in need of help once they're on the water. Meanwhile, I joined Mom and Emily at their Society of Women Geographers meeting. I've been to another meeting a few years ago and knew I would be in for a treat. It's a fascinating group of women. One spoke of the medical training facility she established in Samoa - they use the Internet and Distance Learning techniques. Another spoke of visiting businesses in India. She gave me a whole new perspective on outsourcing, making me think that moving to India might be the best way to get a good tech job! And then there was Mom, Emily, and Gypsy who spoke of their recent trip to view the total solar eclipse in the Mediterranean. The real highlight though was that the meeting was held at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami. It's been on my list to visit there since the early 80s but I've never made it. It is lush and gorgeous, and there is a special exhibit there right now of Dale Chihuly glass artwork. I'll be you never thought you could see icebergs in Miami?! Or, how about these glass teardrops floating in a lake? Doesn't it look like some planet where Star Trek personnel are given shore leave? Or, how about this boat full of glass-art? More floating balls. The glass art certainly adds a sparkle to the landscape, but the trees and other garden vegetation are works of art themselves. It's the integration of the glass and the vegetation that is so striking. When we were finished at Fairchild, we drove thru Miami to get home. What a skyline! Ya gotta love the colors. And, I don't know *how* they make this vision happen. I've never seen so many cranes downtown. Then we got back to Fort Lauderdale. Mom thinks this lot with all the broken trees from hurricane Wilma is being left untouched as a reminder of the power of that hurricane. I think the crews are still too busy with roofs and traffic lights that still haven't been repaired. Whatever the reason, it certainly is a powerful image of the force of wind. Then, to top off the day, Jim and I met friends at a nice little pub where we got to sing karaoke! What fun. I could get hooked on that.