17:46.21S 177:22.97E
We have been here in Port Denerau in Fiji for a few
days for some maintenance work, so Andrea and I took the opportunity to go white
water rafting on the Upper Navua river. The Upper Navua river area is
Fiji's first conservation area, established to protect the rainforest from
logging.
You get to the rafts after a three hour bus journey
(two hours on road and one hour on a logging track) and then twenty minutes
of hiking through the forest. There you board the inflatable rafts, four
to a raft. We were paired up with an Australian couple, Peter and
Evette, from Melbourne. Evette is half Fijian and was bringing Peter
to visit Fiji for the first time. Evette's mother taught her some
Fijian, but she did not understand the word "tuki" that they had us
shouting to the camera. (Our guide described it as hitting something with
a hammer, but eventually admitted is has the same double entendre as the
English word "banging".)
The river runs through a narrow gorge that is
littered with waterfalls. The scenery is spectacular. Our guide,
Ben, gave us some interesting commentary on living in the
forest (which palms to use for building your house, which vines to get
drinking water from, how they trade wild boars with the people on the coast for
dogs to replace the dogs killed when hunting the boars) and Fijian history
(how the Reverend Tom Baker got eaten by the cannibals but they couldn't
tenderize his shoes enough even after days of cooking).