Taveuni - where today meets yesterday

And here the road ends. Only the "Rich, Famous & their Beauties" make it further - just over the date line. I guess it's not the curiosity to re-live the day again to spend a night more thousand dollars than toes on your feet - in honor of the globetrotters that stay for less than 10 dollars at one of the neighbouring islands. "7 stars, yes, my son", Nau (granny) Tila insisted while jewing some herbal leaves from her tropical garden to ease her cough, "and he is Austrian like you!". "You mean Australian ...", I doubt. "No, no, he is ... Red Bull ... Arnold Schwarzenegger and his family, Oprah, they all come ...". Later I can find even a small note in the Lonely Planet budget travellers book: The billionaire and owner of Red Bull, D. Mateschitz bought (?) the island from billionaire M. Forbes, and turned it into Laucala Island Resort, including a 18-hole golf course and a private (?) international airport.

Don't know, nor won't spend my time to "google" it. I stay on today's side, though eventually Bradbury's novel (and movie starring Oskar Werner) of a strange and weird future published in 1954 - Fahrenheit451: the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns - is indeed a journey back to the future. I grabbed it from a dusty shelf at Lavena Lodge, gateway to the Bouma National Heritage Park, enjoying the sea breeze in the shadow of a tall tropical tree.

  

But let me tell you first my story of Nau Tila, her place, and - off course - the "efforts & rewards" of getting there. No better way of refreshing my memories of a Taveuni that didn't change a lot since my trip around the world some 20 years ago. Still it takes that timeless journey by ferry from Suva into the bay of Savu Savu, onwards Somosomo. And only two weeks after my great time at the Tuamotu archipelago, I found another magic spot under giant Vutu "fish poison" trees: Beverly's Campground.

Someone may say the ferry arrived late, however, just on time to catch the "last" of the two busses that operate on a daily basis two to three times along the 76km of the islands Pacific Highway in opposite directions. Locals call that (with a big smile) Fiji time! "Beverly", the driver called twice half an hour into the trip up north, while all faces in the crowded bus turned on me. My turn, obviously. I jumped off the bus and someone handed my backpack through the open windows. Here I am! The thick, black smoke of the departing bus settled and my little "paradise" became visible: a small wooden hut and covered veranda overlooking the lagoon in dense costal forest. "Nau Tila will be back at eight", a girl shouted from her bike towards my hide-away. "So I'd better put up my tent before darkness", I said to myself, finding a way through the tropical vegetation.

No paradise is for free. Already the illustrations of "Adam & Eve" back in school made that clear. What are the sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) in the sandy lagoons of the French Polynesian atolls, are the water snakes along the rocky, volcanic stone coastlines of most Fijian islands. It didn't take an hour to have my first F2F encounter, right at sunset time. So I felt rather happy that news of "the new arrival" won't take long on an island, with or without the convenience of mobile phones. Torches made their way to the veranda.

  

Relatives, to tell me they'll inform Nau Tila. Indeed, it didn't take long, Tila showed up in company of some dogs. And there was light! "We only use the generator when we have guests", she explained to me while a boy kept the small generator alive. And so it went on for the next days: electricity from 6pm to 9pm - a few bulbs around the place ... and some kids from the neighborhood to do their studies. The stars at this side of the international dateline are on the sky only.