…I am on the sun deck. I am I am I am I… The sign next to me says: to the Sundeck. I look around, right at the top of the speed cat for Mana. That’s right. The sun is shining again after the last day in Nadi was a disaster. I’ve been scratching a stitch on my foot for the last few days. Cleaning it every day didn’t help. It bled and oozed for four days and four nights.
On my last night in the Horizon, I woke up at two o’clock in the morning. My foot hurts like hell. I go out into the light and see a pumpkin where my foot used to be. Swollen like a bull’s balls during mating season. The little stitch turns into an ulcer. I take a taxi to the hospital. The doctor says: just in time, it would probably have turned into blood poisoning.
After a few painkillers, penicillin and a thorough clean-up, I return home. How does it actually work that medical care is free in the poorest countries, even for rich foreigners?
The next day I pack up. I get some medicine. The state pharmacy would have given it to me for free too. But unfortunately it’s closed on Sundays. I buy water, vodka and cigarettes. Miss the transfer to the ship, take an expensive taxi. The transfer to Mana with South Sea Cruises costs almost twice as much as the small ship from Ratukini Hostel, which I missed in the morning. The main thing is to get away from Nadi. On the sun deck.
The small islands of the Mamanuca group pass by at 60 kilometres per hour. The water glows. There is a small resort in every bay on every island. Some are pirate bays, others for smugglers, many for nouveau riche bores. Most of the sunbeds are empty.
The ferry docks on Mana. Fijisingsang welcomes us. Tui from Ratukini keeps his promise. 21 per night in a dorm, including three meals. I immediately find Ross, the Californian firefighter. Bright red. I have to grin. He asks me how many beers we drank yesterday. Grin again. What firefighter has ever asked how much water it took to put out a fire before?
In the dorm is Hanna, a nice Swedish girl I met five weeks ago in Hawaii. She made it here before me. I walk through the camp. That means village. There are no boundaries between the village and Ratukini. Ratukini is a village. A colourful mix of everything. Simple, sometimes a bit dirty. But even the dirt is beautiful. The nearby generator purrs like an electric cat at night. The beer is huge and cheap. Without exception, the people are all incredibly friendly.
A quiz in the evening. Me again: no name stays in my head for more than two seconds. But woe betide me if I ever read a number. Four weeks ago I was reading Lonely Planet at the Beach House. I still know that Fiji has 333 islands. That gives us victory and four more large beers.
I’m on antibiotics. No alcohol. It’s not bad. Everything is beautiful here and I’m floating on painkillers, whistling over glistening white beaches. On high grassy hills in the Pacific, once around the island with Hanna and into the water. Visibility is limited only by the curvature of the earth.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.