Welcome to the jungle!

Jiunta, a guide from the nearby village, leads us into the middle of the jungle. Only two people. Deserted jungle. We walk along dirt tracks through a small village to the edge of the forest. I’ve forgotten all my clothes, the sun is stinging. After the first muddy patch, my shoes don’t want to accompany me either, so I go to sunbathe in the meadow. Barefoot in the jungle.

The trail leads uphill through mud, mosquito battlefields and bamboo forests along a river. The Manoa Trail on Oahu was nice, but only this one is really sugar-free. Jiunta is always showing us new plants for getting drunk on fish, treating diarrhoea, stopping bleeding and much more.

There’s no time to look up and around. I tried it a few times. The results were feet caught under mangrove-like aerial roots, almost falling over rocks into the river, tearing skin open on thorny vines, sinking feet-deep into mud holes or simply sliding downhill over wonderfully slippery red clay. Even the numerous river crossings only marginally rinse the dirt out of my trousers.

Is that fun? Oh yes! Even if you were allowed to play in the dirt as a child. We bathe under waterfalls, swing on lianas, follow wild boar tracks and test the bite resistance of forest ants. It’s all so much fun that we ask for more dirt. Which we get. The way back is cross-country through the jungle. Machetes are not absolutely necessary, but would sometimes have been a nice extra.

Jiunta freshens up the four-hour trail with nice stories from his village. Primary school children armed only with a knife and two dogs kill a wild boar. That should be a different kind of parental pride than “You drew beautifully!”. Jiunta’s descriptions of luau recipes (roast pork cooked in an earth oven) are pure sadism given the lack of cooking facilities in the jungle.

Back at the Fiji Beachhouse, I look like Schwarzenegger in the final scene of Predator. Nobody set off a nuclear bomb, but that wouldn’t have dramatised our authentic look any further. I finally manage to contact my travel agent. Fiji will probably be much longer. Some of the following countries too. Afterwards, I help two employees update their websites. They touch my face, which is actually strictly forbidden in Fiji, but probably not with tourists.

The Fiji Beachhouse is full again, many new guests arrive and the owner returns from Australia with his family. I could hardly sleep last night. Probably something like quarter-trip blues, where to, where from, why and so on. But today the sun is shining. To be precise, there are even a few lights that really dazzle me.

Kurt and Charlotte, two Bavarians living in Napier, New Zealand, give me my first Bavarian conversation since I started travelling, very refreshing. I win and lose chess against a drunken Brit at farewell. Around one o’clock at night, the last table full of Brits, including the boss’s offspring, once again understands my sense of humour completely. I continue to grin at everything I’ve been allowed to observe.