On the surface, the kids of Fiji seem deprived: fewer than two shoes, no Nintendo DS's anywhere (seriously! not one!) and they participate in harvest work a little learning to stand on their own. Turns out these are some of the happiest kids of seen and they're a lot of fun. Here's what happened on our second day...
We set out to climb Des Vouex peak--the second highest peak on Taveuni. At the top there's a type of flower that grows nowhere else (like in Batman Begins) and, if you're lucky, you can see the crater lake off in the rainforest on the other side.
It's about a five-mile bike ride to the start of the trail and then it's a (practically) unbroken ascent over unpaved, rutted, rocky and unstable ground. We locked the bikes up around a village and proceeded on foot once the road/trail got too steep.
Here's the village we passed on the way up:
You can click on any of the photos for a bigger version.
Just after this village we ran into a bunch of young kids carreening down the mountain (shoeless) with plastic shopping bags tied to strings trailing above and behind them. Kites! They were having a blast. They were much to quick for my camera, but I did manage to get these kids playing in a tree. There are three kids in this picture... can you spot them?
Now we're onto the real hike. Serious up-hill. But the kids from this village came running after us and asked if they could join us! Why not? So here's our rag-tag band of hikers:
They like being in photos a lot. I'm the head poking out in the way back. About an hour into the hike the kids took us to a "water stop". Which was somebody's uncle's house that had rain water coming out of a pipe and into a drinking trough. Not wanting to seem rude, I splashed some on my face when offered. Here are the kids taking break:
Our next rest-stop was another hour uphill. Apparently some Indians live way the heck up the hill and are smoothing out the road with this:
It gets colder and steeper and harder as we go on. The kids are kicking a soccer ball around. Many of them are barefoot and a couple are one-shoed. Periodically, the one-shoers would trade (or steal) each others shoes. Nobody seemed to mind the rocks but Angela and I.
By the time this picture was taken, I was getting a little tired. We asked the kids if we were almost there yet and they argued for a few minutes in Fijian before telling us, no, we were not even close. We trudged on as long as we could, up into thicker jungle and colder mist. Three hours into it, we realized we weren't going to make it without turning it into a death-march kind of adventure. The trek down was fast, but a little dangerous. Here I am cooling off:
As we came back to the village at the bottom of the trail, we spotted these kids playing a game with tires. As far as I can tell, there's an offense and a defense. The offense rolls the tires down the hill--pushing them with sticks--towards the defense. The defense tries to stop the tires before the careen way, way, way down the hill.
When we got back to the bikes we found a group of kids who got very quiet once they saw us. They'd been trying to figure out how to undo the lock! When I went to put in the combination, they all crowded around to see what I was doing. It wouldn't be cute here in the states, but something about these would-be unauthorized-borrowers was fun.
When we finally got back, we were pooped. Awesome day!
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