Sunday morning we decided to be mellow and explore the area near the resort. After breakfast we walked about 3 miles outside of the resort. Everyone waves or says high, just like rural America. It's very bucolic. Bula cows. Bula goats. Bula chickens. We greeted all the critters running around under the palm trees. There are various shanties and houses. There's always the ocean. We went beach combing and mostly soaked in the sun. Then we found a bridge to nowhereFiji's Bridge to Nowhere
You've heard of the Alaskan "bridge to no where"? Ted Stevens has secured millions of dollars for it and it would serve a community of about 50 people. I assume that it must have other vast benefits but honestly I haven't studied it. I'm a big fan of large engineering projects and basic infrastructure so I'm assuming Alaska really needs that bridge and it's just getting a bad rap in the press. Well that said, Fiji has it's own BTNW. Which almost certainly they may need some day.
Fiji is made up of 300 some islands with about 100 of them inhabited. That leaves a lot of islands for exploring. Lucky for us up the road there was one for us. Oddly, it has a really hefty looking bridge out to a nice little island. I bet it was about 10-12' wide because at one time it could accommodate vehicles.
Once you're out there you can see that there's a would-be resort being constructed so we assume that trucks brought the materials out there as some point. Why else would there be a bridge, much less a really solid bridge in the middle of nowhere??? We crossed more than one bridge on the main "highway" (another term I use loosely) that did not look sound in anyway whatsoever that was being crossed all day long by island traffic. This bridge looked like the work of outsiders to me. But that's just my two cents. Crossing it looked like a fun idea. Sure! Why not? Off we walked.
Turns out the bridge was a little misleading. What looked like a 10 foot bridge on thick beams and steal reinforcements ends about 15 feet short of the island. The water isn't very deep you can see right through it. It's 4 feet deep with rocks. It's a bout a 10 foot drop to the water. It's just far enough you can't jump down and if you fell the water is so shallow you'd probably get hurt. So there we are just short of the uninhabited little island and the bridge stops. It narrows to 4 boards and eventually 2 boards. They're haphazardly nailed down, or not nailed at all. The rest of the bridge was totally modern western style. Now suddenly we were in the developing world where nails are for sissies. And let me say, I'm a sissy!!! Well, I'm really not a sissy so much as clumsy and I could totally picture my demise in the 4 foot waters short of my island adventure. Geeze. That's not really how I want the honeymoon to go. We nearly had to turn around as I contemplated every options besides walking on the little board. Finally there was no choice and like a 3-year old I bent at the knees an shuffled that last few feet.
Once we over there it was very beautiful (like the rest of Fiji) - we swam in the warm water, walked the beach, posed under palm trees. It's the South Pacific it's what you're supposed to do.
Then we turned around and made the trip back. We played some cards and read. Dinner.
Back to bed for 10 or 12 hours.
Another glorious day in paradise!!!
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