long ago I went to Fiji, where I just spent a week, and if I think so, now, on this trip, ¡pop!, I come two completely different spirit momentazos. A, McDonalds Suva, Fijian Capital, which he smelled of disinfectant and had a Roland McDonald sitting with peeling paint something trying to be ambassador in an environment of cement, neglected park and intense tropical humidity. of, an English boy about 18 years, in a youth hostel and true Mana Island, He showed me a world map folded paper brought in his backpack and used as if it were the Campsa guide on their journey through the planet. I had no notebook, or a camera, nothing more than a backpack with some clothes, A little bit of money, passport and map of paper that he had left his home to see the world.
I came to Suva without a clear plan, with the idea of staying a couple of days "in the capital" and then take a bus to take me to a port where a ship would take me to some island. But, I had not opened the room "hotel" and already I realized that two hours in the city would have been enough to pasearla and Fiji, My Fiji tales of pirates, of colored films with flower necklaces and parrots, My fantasy Fiji – ay disparities between fantasy and experiment – beginning, if he began somewhere, and my fantasy was to take care of it, on the islands of transparent waters in between the sea.
However, insuflada traveler told me optimism: "Give an opportunity to 'this'…”, and I looked out the window to watch Suva, I saw some of the colored blocks and cement, tropical rain puddles and a sign of Vodafone.
The sad McDonalds, lonely, Ajax Pino smelling and often fatal primitive consumerism
Washing teeth, incomprehensible ritual of arrival to distant hotels, and my Chinese plastic slippers, infallible and fundamental weapon in the Pacific against rain, heat, hiking and holdups, I went out to discover the city. The heat was impossible, moisture of a hundred per cent, very sympathetic and Indian people mostly, and the sad McDonalds, lonely, Ajax Pino smelling and often fatal primitive consumerism.
So the day was articulated with the bone traveler commendable discovery, that does not condemn nor twist an ankle on a cobblestone street corrugated anarchic way by the roots of trees and garbage aromas emerging from a casual cloaca. I bought Indian pulserillas, I ate at an Indian restaurant rich -very -, I entered Indian bazaars, I bought those green Japanese wasabi snacks that taste and give bellyache, and I walked, very lively, to the bus station so I will explain how to reach the sea, how to get out of broken concrete colorines, the smell of curry urban, open my endless desire to live in the islands of the southern hemisphere.
– You have to go to a peninsula and from there out many ships to small islands, choose one and stays or, if not, You can download and upload, and then return to Suva.
– Not, in, not return - I made it clear to Mr..
– Ah, because then you can get there. In a resort, in a shelter, that you will see. There's a lot, look - and showed me a map with dozens of islands and routes of large ships and small, They are ranging from one to another in a joyful network of competition from operators of varying magnitude and range of action.
– OMG, many islands ... and there are some small, solitary, where not many people go somewhere and have a bed, beer and?
– You can go to Mana.
Mana took a wooden boat painted white
Mana took a wooden boat painted white on traveling other people who were leaving for other islands. When we arrived and went ashore the boatman told me good-bye, after explaining that it was an impassable half island resort for millionaires and the other half, "where could I be", It was the poor part where there was an inn in which I could install.
Or at best my dreams I could have imagined something like. Penance of cement gnawed omnivision of Suva, the roar of the exhaust pipes, the smell of pine Ajax Ronald McDonald were mere appetizers sacrifice in the absence of role and that place rutilancia, to clear the simplicity and beauty of this landscape untouched, that existed, unpretentious, amid seas.
I settled on "youth hostel", captained by a smiling and chatty little old woman unmemorable nationality, and I spent the next few days walking, swimming, casting siestas and exploring the poor life of a village that flourished, with barefoot children, wandering chickens, rusty smell of stew and decks, adjacent to the international resort. Sometimes he is talking to who crossed me and, if not, He teemed and drank beer with members hostel, I had only a room with six beds where there was an Asian reporter, a partner and my English friend.
Some boys and a man sweeping the sand on the beach with a perfectly harmonized slowly
I do not remember what it was called that guy or what was the city from which he left, but I remember just like it was yesterday, one afternoon we were having a beer and watching the evening leaning on a wooden railing without saying anything. Ahead of us some boys and a man sweeping the sand on the beach with a perfectly harmonized with the local slow movement of the stars and English, stuck in the moment, in the cigar, in his beer and something in life that I have taken as 40 years to learn to do and still force myself- He said "Fiji time" watching the horizon.
I think I've never again be in a place with so few tricks like that and one person with so few tricks like that. That he knew me to life. A salitre. In real life we revere, love, serve and evoke when the other, pseudo, mental, we do not like it, exhausts us, We finally got confused and no longer interested. Real life, the children and animals, of some grandparents and some brave kids, silent heroes like my friend, who leave home to experience the world with open senses and a paper map.