Day 40 (or so) of our Pacific Journey - The Quest for Fiji Water
November 26, 2007

Okay, we’ve skipped quite a few days, and it’s possible my day count is a bit off too - this whole thing with being on the other side of the International Date Line is really messing us up. If there is a mistake we’ll correct that if necessary during some sort of back fill process (which there needs to be since we have so many great photos from the last month of travel).

As promised in the previous post, we did sally forth yesterday (here it’s already the Tuesday the 27th of November, in the evening) in search of the place where they bottle Fiji Water, as well as to explore other parts of Fiji’s big island of Vitu Levu. I should explain that many companies claim some sort of affiliation with a particular geographic region, but when you dig deeper you find that is merely a marketing play. For example, we found in Hawaii that the Maui Fresh brand apparently had nothing to do with Maui - it was all a mainland thing.

So, we wanted to see for ourselves whether Fiji Water was really from Fiji. The signs were encouraging - we had seen a big advertisement near the Nadi airport when we first arrived over a week ago promoting Fiji Water and proclaiming “Visit the Source”. And that’s what we intended to do.

When we checked in at our hotel on Saturday, we explored the area and found a small restaurant and taxi business on the property next door to the Outrigger resort we’re presently staying at, and while there, had mentioned our quest for Fiji Water. After clarifying that we didn’t want to buy any Fiji Water (it was in the cooler at the mini-mart located also located there), one of the people there suggested he knew where Fiji Water was bottled and suggested that instead of renting a car (yet another service these entrepreneurial folks offered), we could instead hire a car with a driver, and get a tour as well. Considering our destination was over three hours away by car (this is not a tiny island we’re on), and the price suggested, 220 Fijian Dollars (about US$143), was not unreasonable, we ultimately decided to take them up on the offer. So on Sunday we put down a deposit and yesterday, on Monday, our driver Babu picked us up at 7:30am and off we went.

Much as we’ve found on most other Pacific islands, there’s one main road that encircles the island, with the interior being quite mountainous and impenetrable. Vitu Levu was no different in that respect. Only sheer size differed, in that a full circumnavigation would take around 12 hours (because a long stretch of road is dirt, not paved - if it were paved, it would be around 8 hours around the island). And, of course, all traffic on the island appears to be on the road when it’s least convenient. Glad someone else was driving. However, the cars per capita number seems to be much lower here than on the Hawaiian islands, with most people relying on a network of buses to get around.

I’d like to add at this point that any statistics about Fiji I cite in this blog entry are based almost entirely on discussions with various Fijian citizens, and mostly there on speaking at great length with Babu, our driver. However, I’ve not seen or heard anything that would cast doubt on the things he told me either.

Fiji & Vitu Levu - An Overview

The population of Vitu Levu, which contains Suva, the capitol of Fiji, as well as the large towns or areas of Ba, Sigatoka (which is near our hotel), Lautoka, Tavua, and Nadi (where the international airport is located), is around 500,000 people. What is interesting is that according to the most recent census, the Indian (as in Asian Indian, Hindustani) population is at around 35%, while the native Fijian population is around 60%. That a marked decrease in the Indian population in the last decade or so, as there has been an exodus of those of Indian descent to places like New Zealand and Australia for a variety of reasons, including an inability to own land.

You may wonder, as did we, how there came to be such a large Indian population in the first place. Well, the answer is sweet - sugar sweet. The British Empire, in the 1800s, brought in what was effectively Indian slave labor to help harvest sugar cane in Fiji, because they were apparently unable to get native Fijians to do the job in the fashion they wished. Over the ensuing decades, the Indians continued to maintain their communities, and to a remarkable extent, their culture. You see women wearing saris everywhere, and the cuisine has Asian Indian influences, with curries and roti being widely eaten. Babu is a fifth generation Indian Fijian, incidentally.

It should be noted that Fiji split from Britain in 1976 to become a Republic, but is still part of the British Commonwealth (and the fact that Queen Elizabeth’s face adorns all the paper currency is a testament to that).

Our personal observations show that the Indian and Fijian communities here on Vitu Levu are rather distinct and separate for the most part, and inter-racial relationships, which in fact were shunned by both Indians and native Fijians not long ago, are only now starting to appear as a public thing among the younger generations (although still not generally accepted by older generations, as best we can tell).

Ethnic Fijians still have a somewhat tribal structure - we noticed this in the out-islands where we were all last week - with a village chieftain, whose word is law, and who controls the village’s or tribe’s land. A large percentage of Fijian land (we heard it might be as high as 90%) is still in control of Fijian villages, with the rest either free hold land (the title is owned free and clear by some other party) or crown leased land (belongs to the government and is leased for a 99+ year period to some party). Native Fijian village land can be leased, but typically the lease is only for 50 years, and at the end of the lease reverts back to the village unless some other arrangement is made, and that creates a disincentive for anyone to invest heavily in constructing nice homes or office buildings on village land (unless it’s the chief him or herself - there is in fact one woman chief on Vitu Levu, but apparently only one). This land disparity is what has been suggested as the cause for the exodus of Indian Fijians, as they have no villages and no chiefs, and therefore no ancestral lands to call their own in Fiji.

But, as usual, I digress. I will close this section with a bit more cultural information.

There are three languages in use in Fiji - native Fijian (spoken mostly by native Fijians), Hindi (spoken predominantly by Fijians of Indian descent), and English (taught in the all schools as the primary language of Fiji, but in our experience a fair number of people here have great difficulty communicating in English). According to Babu, the relatively new military-based government (there was a coup just under a year ago) has decreed that starting with the next school year (school ends this week, and summer vacation starts next week) in February, all three languages will be taught in school, including the reading and writing of these languages, but with English still the primary language of instruction.

The major religion on the island is Christian Methodist (a result of early missionary work in the 1800s) among ethnic Fijians, with Islam (Sunni) and Hindu strong in the Fijian Indian communities. Other Christian variants as well as other Asian religions (e.g. Sikh), are also represented.

Sugar and tourism are the biggest industries in Fiji at present, but the tourism industry took a nose dive after the coup last December 5th, and the sugar industry is threatened by the withdrawal in 2008 of European Union sugar subsidies.

Which is why a company like Fiji Water is potentially so important to Fiji’s future (nice segue back to the topic at hand, eh?).

Finding Fiji Water

As we were about 2 hours into our drive, and my non-stop discussions with Babu (the rest of the Richters were in the back seat, so intent on our conversation they apparently had to close their eyes to concentrate enough to absorb it all), he gets a phone call telling him that we may or may not actually get into the Fiji Water plant, since they typically don’t accept visitors on Mondays. Wednesday and Thursday are visitor days, and then only with an appointment. Babu did however get a name of a woman at Fiji Water that we could try and use to beg for a tour. We were not wild about this development, but considering we were more than half-way there, we slogged on.

Another thing that we found odd was that while we saw the large bill board telling us to “Visit the Source”, there were in fact no signs or any other stationary indications that we were heading the right way. Babu told us that one of his past associates had brought a group up to the plant a couple of years ago, though, and had been told roughly where to find the plant (i.e. “If you get to the village of Drauniivi, you’ve gone too far - it’s in Yaqara”). One encouraging sign after we passed the port city of Lautoka was that we started intermittently seeing and passing container trucks with Fiji Water placards.

We did actually end up in Drauniivi, and after asking directions, turned back and found an unmarked road going inland, post with a no trespassing sign. We went ahead anyway, and found a huge white satellite dish (major bucks to buy and operate), and shortly thereafter an industrial building in the middle of nowhere, with stacks and stacks of 20 foot shipping containers in the yard. It appeared we had finally found the home of Fiji Water. As we drove up to find the right security gate, I joked to Babu that at the nearby residential section we saw they probably washed their cars with Fiji Water. Turned out I was right on that point, much to both our amusement.

I got out at the security gate, gave my name and mentioned the name of the contact we had been given and gushed on about how we Americans had traveled all the way to Fiji to see the home of the wonderful Fiji Water (and it is pretty good stuff). It was a bit tense, and I was told to get back into the car and wait for further directions.

About 15 minutes later, during which time I made sure to visibly drink from a bottle of Fiji Water, a guard came out to guide us into the facility. There we went inside the main building and were greeted by the contact. After explaining we had come a great distance to see Fiji Water’s origin for ourselves, and would love a tour, she left and in her place returned an American woman, Molly Powers, the Culture and Community Affairs Coordinator of Fiji Water.

Molly was a former Peace Corps volunteer who had been in Fiji for a couple of years and only recently come on board with Fiji Water to use her experience to work with local communities with outreach efforts. We were lucky to have caught her in, and when we discovered she grew up only a couple towns over from where I went to high school, we ended up finding quite a bit to talk about.

Molly was nice enough to give us a bit of background of the Fiji Water company, and then give us a tour of the bottling area. The company was started in 1996 by Canadian billionaire David Gilmour and is now owned by a California company. In the 11 years it has been in business, it has one of the best brands that I have seen, to the extent that many of the fine hotels and restaurants I frequent feature Fiji water as their preferred still water, even offering special silver decanters designed to fit the more square shape of Fiji Water’s bottles. In a world of roundish water bottles, it’s good to be squarish. Fiji water sales have quadrupled in the last year, and they are apparently now selling 15 million bottles a year (this year, presumably).

Fiji Water’s artesian water comes from aquifers located under the biggest mountain range in Fiji, and is naturally replenished from rainfall and runoff. The large amounts of volcanic soil and rock above the aquifer act as filters to remove impurities from the water, while at the same time giving it a high silica level, which is attributed for giving Fiji Water a “softer feel” than other mineral waters.

The water from the aquifer is further filtered for biological materials, and then fills Fiji Water’s distinct plastic bottles. Those bottles (and caps) are actually manufactured on-site at the plant, as we saw. Every 15 minutes a filled bottle is randomly sampled and tested to ensure the quality of the product.

We saw this process from a hallway with big windows overlooking two huge rooms. The first room was the bottling room, where the bottles were made from raw plastic, which was then molded into test tubes, and those test tubes then heated and extruded into a mold to product the right sized Fiji Water bottle (Linda and Bas saw how this is done on the Discovery Channel and shared that nugget of knowledge with us). Once made, the bottles would then be filled with the water from the aquifer.

There were three production lines available for use, to each make, at any given time, one of four different sizes of Fiji Water bottle - 1.5 liter, 1 liter, 500 ml, and the new 330 ml bottle. Once the bottles were filled and capped in this clean-room sanitary environment, they moved over to the next room which I call the packaging room. Here labels were applied to the bottles (different labels for different distributors and countries), bottles were shrink wrapped into bundles, and bundles were boxed. Most of this was fully automated, with humans assisting and verifying the process (and correcting things when machines didn’t quite get things right).

All in all, a fascinating process.

On the eco side of things, Molly explained that Fiji Water workers have a higher income than just about any other class of worker in Fiji, and that worker benefits also include a case of water each week. As part of the outreach efforts, the company also donates water to local sporting groups (soccer and rugby are huge), local schools, and also disaster relief efforts. There is also a lot of interaction with the half dozen or so surrounding villages, from which the company draws many of its 150 or so local employees. The company also brings in local school children to show them that modern industrial operation with a Fiji-derived product is possible and viable and give them some hope and inspiration for the future.

And Molly is right about that, we think. The Fiji Water plant is a technological wonder in the middle of nowhere, and in a country which is still rather agrarian and somewhat primitive in many ways. One would never expect something like this plant to be where it is, and accomplish what it does so well. Additionally, with the excellent branding that has been done for Fiji Water, it also improves the name recognition and value of the Republic of Fiji itself - kind of an interesting turn, in that usually it’s the name of the country which establishes the base for a brand (e.g. American Airlines, American Express, Deutsche Bank, Swiss Army Knife, etc.)

And Fiji Water is working to further improve their branding by working towards achieving a net zero carbon footprint by next year, as well as starting to actually offer public tours similar to the kind that Molly had so nicely agreed to give us.

After having (and with great gratitude) taken up over a half hour of Molly’s time, we were each given our own bottles of Fiji Water for the ride back, and she even graciously agreed to pose with us for a photo.

Our search for Fiji Water did not end up in vain after all.

The Trip Home - Sleeping Giants and The Temple of Sri Siva Subramaniya

We left around 12:30pm, and found ourselves lunch in the town of Ba, in the small second story Chands Restaurant. Probably the best meal at the best price (less than US$25) we have had in Fiji, although the average American might have been scared off by the look of the place.

After lunch we stopped at the Gardens of the Sleeping Giant. This was an area that had been built by actor Raymond Burr back in 1977 to help him cultivate orchids for his own use. The “Sleeping Giant” is reportedly an image seen in the mountains towering above the gardens, but try as we might, we could not see that imagery. However, the orchids - both in terms of variety and beauty - were amazing. We took a long walk (just under an hour) through the gardens, and into the thick of the jungle. Simply beautiful.

As we made our way back through Nadi, I had Babu stop at the Sri Siva Subramaniya Hindu temple so I could take pictures of this magnificent set of shrines. The Hindu priest I spoke with inside told me his temple was the largest Hindu temple in all of the South Pacific, and I could believe it. You could also just feel the love and dedication that went into its making, with its detailed paintings and sculpture adorning most every surface.

After a while there, having made a small monetary contribution to the Temple in admiration of the work that went into its making, we finally headed back to our hotel for dinner and rest.

I close by saying that Babu was great. If you need a private tour guide and driver, I cannot recommend anyone better here on Vitu Levu. He works for Johnny’s Taxi & Tours - phone (+679) 652-0684, right next to the Outrigger On The Lagoon Fiji, in Sigatoka.

Thus ends Day 40 (or so) of our Grand Pacific Voyage.

Photos from this day can be found here.

Bula! (that means “Hello”, among other things, here on Fiji)

Well, after traveling thousands of miles, and getting to Fiji just over a week ago, we would like to report that we are in fact live and well, and finally at a resort with decent Internet access.

Not that that necessarily means that we’ll be posting all of our last 30+ days of adventures all at once, but at least there’s a greater likelihood of more frequent posts.

However, we wanted to share with you that our adventure tomorrow (Fiji time) is to find the source of the world-famous, premium bottled water known as “Fiji Water“. For years, many of the nicer hotels and restaurants we have frequented in the U.S. and elsewhere have offered Fiji Water as the premium bottled water, and we figured while we are actually on the big island - Vitu Levu - of Fiji, we might as well go and see where Fiji Water actually comes from.

We’ve hired a driver (his name is Babu) and his car, for the three hour drive north along the western coast of Vitu Levu, with frequent stops for photo opportunities along the way, including a place known as the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, rumored to have been discovered/started by Raymond Burr (of TV’s Ironside fame).

We hope to report on our success in the coming few days.

In the meantime we leave you with the fact that Fiji is hot, humid, and quite friendly. We had a nice relaxed time last week on Castaway Island, and got some nice diving in too. All the pictures from last week are sorted and cleaned up, but still need to be tagged.

Oh, and we all got henna tattoos yesterday. Although the Yin-Yang I got looks more like a deformed eyeball. More on that later…

Day 4 of our Pacific Journey

With trips of any length, one of the general planning rules The Traveling Richters follow is to assume that misconnections and other travel delays may occur, and thus build in extra time (usually a day or two) into our travel schedules to give us ample leeway to make corrections. However, when flights and other things go as planned, this tends to give us some time for further exploration and activities.

In Los Angeles we therefore had a chance to see the Dali exhibit by happenstance, and now in Tahiti, we had a full day to explore the island. Granted, one day might not be enough to see the entire island, but we were willing to give it a try.

Tahiti

It should be noted that Tahiti actually has two parts to it: Tahiti Nui (”Nui”, pronounced “New-ee”, means “great”), upon which Papeete is located on the northwestern corner, and Tahiti Iti (”Iti” is pronounced “eat-ee”, and means small). The two are joined by a few kilometer long land area, with Tahiti Iti at the lower east end of Tahiti. Tahiti Iti is less developed than Tahiti Nui, to the extent that there’s no paved road around the circumference of Tahiti Iti. The circumference of Tahiti Nui itself is approximately 120 kilometers, and that was the part we were going to try and explore.

In any event, we visited the tour desk at the hotel after a reasonable but very expensive buffet breakfast (which fortunately was included in our room package as part of the American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts program under which we booked the rooms), and reviewed our options to see more of Tahiti. We didn’t want to do a large group tour on a bus with human tourist bovines, and while a helicopter tour sounded interesting, it would only last about 20 minutes. I could also not get the other Richters to go diving with me. So we opted to rent a car and do our own tour. And I booked a one tank dive the following morning for myself as well.

One of the things we noticed upon getting out of our rooms in the morning, incidentally, was the smell of something burning. As it turns out, because things grow so quickly in Tahiti due to the fertile soil and precipitation, the only way the local population has found to get rid of excess foliage after cutting it down, is to burn it. And as everything is so green (and damp), there’s very little chance of a fire spreading. The result is that there are fires going regularly most everywhere on the island, which in turn produces this burning smell wherever one goes, and in some places, even a smoky haze.

Anyhow, we ended up renting a 5-door Peugeot 107 from a local car rental agency - Tahiti Auto Center (recommended). The proprietor spoke enough English for us to be able to communicate - a good thing because my French is limited to saying hello, good-bye, ordering food, and miming a request for directions to the bathroom.

Another segue here. As one might imagine, French Polynesia, of which Tahiti is the main island, as well as the most populated, is, in fact, French. French in nationality, French in language (although a Polynesian language is prevalent too), French in custom (many people on bicycles with baguettes under their arms or across their handlebars), French in price, and French in policing (the “Gendarmerie”). This is a good thing when you speak French and are familiar with the way the French do things, but a little challenging if you do not. That said, we managed all right in most situations, and in those where communications just did not work out we smiled, said thank you and were on our way.

However, one of the things I felt as a loss at this French-ness of everything in Tahiti was that there was no true sense of the underlying Polynesian culture as it had been before the white man came in and changed it all. And no, I’m not saying that because I feel that Tahitian women should be walking around bare breasted (not that I would mind in some cases), nor because some Polynesian tribes were cannibals (just read that in a Jack London book about the South Seas), but because I think that some of the cultural innocence and freedom that existed pre-”discovery” has forever vanished, to be replaced by traffic, pollution, work schedules, commerce, and alien societal mores.

Okay - back to our story…

After picking up our cute and petite (a French word, incidentally) rental car, we headed back up north past our hotel, exchanged U.S. Dollars for the local currency, the French Polynesian Franc, abbreviated CFP or XPF. For $400 I received about 33,000 XPF in return. After buying some bottled water and snacks nearby, we stopped in at the Musee de Tahiti et des Isles (Museum of Tahiti and the Islands), which documents the history of French Polynesia in terms of cultural and geographical matters.

At the museum, where almost all the placards were written in French, of course (and not any other language - that’s another French thing to do, by the way), we learned how atolls are created by nature, what sort of tools and weapons native Polynesians made and used, how volcanic rock was put to use in tribal environs, how outrigger canoes were made and paddled, as well as what art and religion consisted of in the times prior to European domination. We also saw representations of what early interactions between European explorer/traders and Polynesians was like, but did not get a whole lot of the historical details because of the lack of English placards. And before you start implying that I am an Anglo-centric xenophobe, let me gently point out that in the latest entry we found in the guest book at the museum, a couple from Denmark also made the request for signage in English. I personally would have been content with signage in German or Dutch as well, but those would be even less likely for the French to post than English.

The Tahitian museum also featured a nice botanical display between the several outbuildings comprising the museum.

Starting the Exploration of Tahiti

After the Tahiti and Islands Museum, we finally set forth on our island exploration. The interior of Tahiti is not populated because it is so mountainous. Instead, a majority of the population lives near the main road which circles Tahiti Nui. And to designate the location of business and sites along this road, the Tahitians use a kilometer number as measured from Papeete. So, for example, the Le Meridien Hotel has an address of PK15.3, indicating it is 15.3 kilometers from Papeete, and located between the kilometer markers for 15 and 16km. And you have to know it’s on the south road, instead of the north road (which also has markers for 15 and 16km from Papeete).

Our first stop on the south-bound road was at the Grotte de Maraa (PK28,5), the first of a set of three grottos or caverns in the cliff side, draped by heavy, lush green vegetation and occasional small water falls, water features, and ponds. Alas, local officials had blocked off access to the caverns and we were not able to get closer (without violating some sort of ordinances) than about 40 feet to the openings.

Gauguin

By the time we had finished wandering about, it was lunch time, so we made our way south to the Restaurant/Bar of the Gauguin Museum, which was actually located one kilometer north of the museum, and not connected to it in any way we could discern. One of the attractions of this restaurant, other than the fact that it sat on the water, was that there were several large penned off areas in back, along a pier, filled with a type of jack, some surgeonfish (the largest we have ever seen), and a few pufferfish. As it turns out, these fish are fed table scraps, and respond to feedings like a blend of aquatic dog and piranha. One would not want to fall into the fish pens by accident, as the water boils from frenzied action even at the drop of the smallest French fry.

The food at the restaurant, as well as the service, was passable, and not worth the high price. While portions were large, several of our dishes were overcooked and chewy. They did serve an excellent tuna tartare, and one of the fish dishes, featuring an over-baked Mahi-Mahi, was made very edible via a delicious vanilla-based sauce. A tour group arrived by bus shortly after we placed our order, and that delayed our meal quite a bit as well. Our advice - find someplace else to eat, but do check out the fish pens.

We headed onward to the actual Gauguin Museum, which, much to our pleasant surprise, featured many placards in English, detailed the life and times of famed artist Paul Gauguin and his love affair with Polynesia. We learned that many of Gauguin’s paintings were either staged or fabricated based on real people Gauguin had sketched, but put into more “native”-like settings. That was a bit of a disappointment, as his images of Polynesia served as the bases of many a fantasy about life in the tropics. One thing, however, that Gauguin lamented about in his correspondence with associates in Europe was the very same thing I touched upon earlier in this post, namely a concern that Polynesia’s culture and way of life would be irreversibly changed for the worse as a result of French (and European) influence. His idyllic paintings were an effort to preserve some of that culture.

The Gauguin Museum, while being rather informative, was sadly shabby and run-down, mostly because it was open to wind and reflected sunlight, and all the reproductions of Gauguin’s works had faded and in some cases browned, losing the colors one can see in the originals. If a visitor did not know what the originals looked like (fortunately there were reasonable reproductions in the gift shop at the museum), the faded images would give them serious pause about the quality of Gauguin’s works.

Tahiti Botanical Garden

Once we finished our visit, we went across the parking lot to the Tahiti Botanical Garden, primarily to see the Galapagos Tortoises we had read were there. However, the tortoises were a bit of a let down, or more accurately, the muddy conditions the Botanical Garden staff had them living in were. As far as we know, Galapagos Tortoises are more used to drier climates, and to us the pair of tortoises just seemed miserable.

Having paid our 1500 XPF (US$17.50) admission however, we decided to check out the rest of the Botanical Garden, and were happy we did. The vegetation was lush and huge, with a blend of dry and wet lands. There were also few other visitors. The only odd thing we noticed (other than a bit of disrepair in the man-made walkways) was a dearth of birds and insects. We would have assumed that tropical plants and wetlands would have attracted both, but instead, the only living things we encountered were plants.

By the time we concluded our visit at the Botanical Garden, it was close to 5pm. We continued our drive south, around Tahiti Nui, ending up on the north road as we passed the road to Tahiti Iti. We intended to stop at the Arahoho Blowhole, but managed to miss it as a result of road construction and a resulting lack of parking and signage.

We also discovered where people go to surf on Tahiti (which we’ve been told is the home of wave surfing, not Hawaii as people might think) - namely around PK15 on the north part of Tahiti Nui. Dozens upon dozens of surfers were out in the water enjoying the large waves.

Papeete

We had originally intended to visit Papeete and check out the shopping, but by the time we finally made our way through the city, everything was closed, traffic was horrific, and the general ambiance uninviting. Papeete was gray and dingy - a stark contrast to the green beauty of other parts of the island. We were glad in retrospect to not have wasted our time by starting our day in Papeete.

Winding Down

We got back to the hotel a bit after 6pm, and Linda, Bas, and I headed down to check out the cool-looking pool at the Le Meridien. From the photos you can see in our gallery (see link below), it appears the pool has a sand beach around it, and in fact it does. And, in fact, the sand is actually spread throughout the pool too. It’s effectively a fresh water (chlorinated) sandy beach area, and the water was comfortable, even for thin blooded islanders like ourselves.

After a proper soak we got Bas back to the room, ordered him and Krystyana room service, and then had a date night at Le Carre, the in-hotel “restaurant gourmetique” (as our driver, Center Lily, had referred to it the prior evening when she delivered us from the airport). We had the eight-course Chef’s tasting menu, which was interesting and tasty, but lacked inspiration. There were also no suggested wine pairings, so we had to come up with our own - a thing that surprised us at a French restaurant. The desserts were excellent, as one would expect as part of a French dining experience, however.

We came back to our rooms to find a rather severe squabble had ensued among our offspring. No need to go into details, other than to say that no blood was shed, and no bones were broken. Fences were mended by the following day.

Conclusion

We all decided at the end of our day in Tahiti that the island was far too busy and congested for us. The traffic was non-stop (probably because there was only one main road), and while the island was not remotely dirty compared to other tropical islands we’ve visited (although Bonaire, where we live is a true gem of cleanliness), the perpetual odor of burning plants was off-putting, ruining the natural beauty and ambiance that one would expect from some place as lush as Tahiti. And our brief driving tour of Papeete left us underwhelmed - it was dirty and sullied, and yes, clogged up with automobile traffic. It was good to have visited Tahiti to see what it was like, but we would be hard pressed to come back again other than in transit to some other more desirable location.

Photos

Photos of Day 4 of our Pacific Journey can be found here.

Day 1 of our Pacific Journey - Bonaire to Los Angeles

As the post prior to this one indicates, we started our journey from Bonaire yesterday morning on time. Our visiting friends Martin and Angela saw us off (they are staying at our house for the next week), and we flew with another long time friend, Darlene.

We checked eight pieces of checked luggage for this trip (three of those are stuffed with dive gear for the four of us), and also have the full load of eight carry-ons - four wheeled carry-ons, and four shoulder bags or back-packs. That’s a lot of stuff.

But check-in was no problem on Bonaire. It never has been if you show up early enough.

We had a very tight connection in San Juan due to a schedule change, but thanks to our frequent flyer status and business class upgrades we got to go into the express security line in San Juan and we just barely made our flight. Amazingly, our bags made it to Los Angeles with us, although problems with the baggage delivery system delayed us a bit as well.

We had prearranged with Prime Limousine Service to pick us up in a large SUV to accommodate all the luggage we had, and our driver Gennady managed to just barely squeeze us and our bags into the Escalade he brought to the airport for us. Gennady, an immigrant from Ukraine, was a nice chatty fellow, and curious about Bonaire and living in the Caribbean.

Our Hotel

We arrived at the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel in early evening, and got settled into our two rooms - the kids in one, and the adults in the adjacent one. Things work better that way, we’ve found.

The hotel is located a few minute walk from the famous Farmers Market in Los Angeles, and thus also near The Grove shopping area, and we’ve been told that it’s the preferred hotel for contestants on the TV game show, The Price is Right, which is taped at the CBS Studios right across the street.

The Farmer’s Daughter hotel is a bit funky and kitschy, and features an interesting looking restaurant/bar called Tart (we’ll have dinner there tonight). The rooms are comfortable, but spartan. And as we discovered, even though we had reservations for connecting rooms, there were no such rooms at the hotel at all. But we did manage to get adjacent rooms. The front desk staff was friendly, but there was no bell staff to speak of, so we had a lot of luggage moving to do ourselves once we found a luggage cart. Not a problem, but it did delay our getting to our rooms a bit.

After settling in and opening the FedEx boxes waiting for us (one was a color proof of the forthcoming 2008 Richter Art Calendar and the others for Linda’s new Sony Reader - more on the latter later), we headed out to explore dinner options.

Dining Out - Japanese Cusine

We settled on a place called Kado, which offered regular dining on one side and a conveyor belt sushi delivery system on the other. We opted for the conveyor belt sushi side, as we could get fed more quickly that way, and because the other side was loud and noisy with various actors and Hollywood types (Bas saw an actor he recognized from one of the shows he watches) at some sort of shindig.

The food at Kado was quite good, but service was a bit sketchy - many of the waiters and waitresses seemed a bit distracted by the gathering at the other side of the restaurant in the lounge.

Winding Down

After dinner we wandered over to the party supply store across the way to scout out Halloween gear for use on Halloween aboard the cruise ship. We actually have no idea if there will be anything remotely like Halloween celebrated on the cruise, though. We did not buy anything last night, but did study the options, and ended up buying costumes and accessories today.

After a quick stop for soft serve ice cream in Farmers Market, we retired to our rooms for the night and watched a couple of episodes of Smallville, Season 1 with the kids off the DVDs we had brought with us to distract them with. It should be noted that the rooms here at the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel are equipped with good sized flat screens and DVD players - an added bonus as far as we’re concerned, since watching such movies on the small 8″ portable DVD player is a challenge for four people.

That ends Day 1 of our journey.

Photos documenting the day’s travels and explorations can be found here in our Photo Gallery.