Blake and Deb in Fiji: Taveuni, Part 2 - Vadewa Rainforest and Matei

Our second day in Taveuni included a return to Bouma National Park and, unfortunately, another taxi ride on the posterior punishing dirt road, although not for quite so far as the previous day. The objective this time was a guided half-day hike in the Vadewa Rainforest, which was to feature ancient village sites and bird watching. They told us we were the first tourists to take the hike since the cyclone and warned us the bird watching would probably be sparse because of all the damage. That proved to be true – we heard more birds than we saw – but we still enjoyed ourselves, traipsing through farmland first, past village ruins, into and out of old defensive ditches, and into the rainforest. After the hike we had some time to kill waiting for our taxi so we sat (on the ground, of course) and talked with our guide Rusi and some of the other residents of Vadewa, whose village marks the beginning of the rainforest hike.

The remainder of our day we spent poking around our home base of Matei, a small beachside town – if it can even be called a town – where a lot of expats (especially Americans) have built homes and put down roots. It’s a quiet place with a tidier, more affluent feel than most of the other places we’ve seen in Fiji. Even the dogs look healthier. We discovered the restaurant prices also reflect that relative affluence; no sign of the US$3 entrées we’ve grown accustomed to in Savusavu. Our accommodation in Matei was a wooden burre (traditional Fijian cabin) in the very friendly Tovu Tovu Resort. I'd call it a quiet place as well except for (a) the rooster next door who obviously had no concept of "dawn" or that crowing should be reserved for the onset of daylight, and (b) the fact that, like all establishments in Matei, it had to rely on it's own generator for electricity, which set the entire community to continually pulse with a gentle humming sound.