Fiji Pictures

It’s been a pretty good, if slightly unreal week in Wellington, about which I hope to write more later. It’s been a little bit of a tough day today though, for no particular reason: I have a sore throat and I am worried about getting a job and I want to have a conversation that doesn’t start out with “So, what part of the States are you from?” Through the unstinting generosity of Deirdre and Nahum, my Wellington sugar-mama-amd-papa, I was able to finally get my Fiji pictures off the camera, and so while I wipe my nose and cross my fingers that my various interviews and meetings go well next week, let’s remember a time when I was wearing my lost bikini and lost sunglasses every day and feeling that everything is going to be all right.

Here is a beach. A beach in Fiji. What you don’t know when you look at this picture is that beneath the surface of that blue blue water was where I saw the octopus.

And, hey, look, here is an octopus on a hammock.

And here is an octopus on…follow me closely here…a coconut.

Here are some of the awesome people I hung out with at the Octopus Resort: Damien, Alice, Andrew and Keri.

Here is a rather far-away shot of the lovely Christine and I. Christine was the first person I met there, when I was sad and alone and jet-lagged. Hanging out with her (and going snorkeling with Damien that first afternoon) convinced me not only that I should not immediately go back home but also that I should extent my stay on the island by another night.

A very dark photo of the fantastic Georgina and Frances, from Australia, who were excellent in every way. This was taken on the day we went on the Manta Ray Safari. The Manta Ray Safari was funny for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was our all being very high from the horrid gas fumes emanating from the boat the entire hour on the boat to the manta rays. And then when we got to the manta rays, the two Fijian guys Viti and Sivuku would like, sit on top of the boat while the rest of us jumped into the water, and would yell THAT WAY OVER THERE GO GO GO and we would try to…chase…the manta ray. The gigantic, beautiful, elegant, extraordinarily-well-built-for-eschewing-tourists manta ray. It was pretty fun.

I wish I had a better picture of Cheryl and Charlie, this very awesome couple who were moving from LA to New York “the long way around,” via Fiji and the Phillipines and Australia, how cool is that. They were also with me on the fantastic night snorkel we’d done the night before, where it felt like we were space explorers with our flashlights, floating perfectly over the deep dark reef.

Apropos of nothing, here are some “fish on fire,” a delicacy that was on the menu almost every day. I sure miss fish on fire, man.

The staff of the Octopus Resort, singing goodbye to us as we go out to the boat to take us back to Nadi.

And here’s one more beach photo, just in case you were wondering if the week was really as wonderful as I’ve been telling you it was.