Monday, July 19, 2010

Fiji Honeymoon: Day 8 (Liku Liku) OR Get that Starfish

Katie Writing...

Today has been another wonderful day in the life of the Bloodworths. We started off the day waking up to the sunrise. I assure you, Russell was not as excited about this as I. I went to bed thinking about the sunrise and woke up twice making sure not to miss it. When I opened my eyes, the sun was just coming up on the horizon, so in sweet wifey fashion I yell "Look! Look! Wake up and look!" So Russell jumps up saying "Wha, Wha, What's going on?" and I smile and say "The sunrise. Take a picture. Hurry! Oh, and good morning." So I sat quietly after that, satisfied to see the sun come up and watch the sky turn all sorts of beautiful.

Since we were up, I finished the previous day's blog posting and we fed fish with leftover cookies. Then it was off to breakfast where once more, I made a bad choice. Russell ordered the cheese souffle which we already knew was awesome. I ordered it before I entered my streak of mediocre food choices. It's made with gruyere cheese, onions, hot red peppers and green peas. I know, green peas sounds like an odd choice, but it's REALLY good. I, in my adventurous nature, chose the mud crab omelette. Could be good right? Nope! It was very bland and crabby tasting. Did I eat it anyway? Yep...and followed it up with a full bowl of granola complete with yogurt and berries. That's my kind of breakfast.

And now a note about service. On par with previous dining experiences, breakfast came with it's glitches. Nothing terrible, but still noteworthy. We were seated in a lovely spot facing the ocean and the pier and given menus. Catch one: one of the menus had no actual menu inside, it was just a folder. Catch two: our waitress seats us and asks us if we would like water. We reply "Yes". The question was followed with "Would you like tea or coffee." We go against our routine of just water and add in a request for tea. Away she goes. Eight minutes later, no tea, no water and no order taken another waitress approaches the table. She asks for our room number (of course, however we still haven't figured out why everyone wants to know our room number), asks us if we'd like something to drink and we give the same order of tea and water. She then takes our food order. She repeats the order "Souffle, omelette, and coffee." She is corrected, "we'd actually like to have tea, not coffee." and off she goes. Five minutes more pass. Tea arrives from the initial waitress and she does not take our order. Five minutes after that, the second waitress brings tea. Oops! Lack of communication...who would've thought?!

Ok, that's all for meal bloopers, at least for now.

We finish breakfast and head back to the room for a little snorkel. One of the perks of these over water burres is that you have a ladder off the side of your porch that goes right down into the water. We don't even have to go anywhere to see the beauty of the coral reef! Down we go to see what there is to see. The fish here are beautiful! We see fish that you've only ever seen in Finding Nemo. Clown fish, Parrot fish, fish that look like leopards, clear fish, fish you can't even describe. My favorite thing and what I'm most fascinated by are the bright blue starfish. My mission for the day- hold one.

The first step of my mission is to figure out if the blue beauty I've admired from afar is actually a starfish and not a piece of coral (which is what Russell believed). I dive in and take time to enjoy the view. Rainbows of color everywhere you look. Even the nasty sea cucumbers are cool. Now I know the general population's fascination with neon, everyone wants to have a piece of this beauty below the ocean. My opinion, keep the neon on the fish...it does not look good on humans. Anyway, I find the bright blue object about six feet down. As I've discussed in a previous post, I have become a floater and not a sinker so getting below the surface of the water proves to be a challenge. I swim down just long enough to poke it. Hmm, it's rigid. It does not seem to budge when I touch it, maybe it is coral. I swim on to shallower water to see if I can find another one. I find one on a big piece of coral. I pull, it doesn't budge. However, I've decided it definitely IS a starfish, each one I see has five arms; some of them are hiding halfway in the sand or in the holes of other coral. I continue the mission. I swim over a shallow bit of sand and spot one, it's not too deep for me to grab and there's no coral for it to attach itself. I pick it up, it doesn't squirm like the other starfish I've held on this trip. I get really excited, this may be the most beautiful thing I've held in my hand yet. We must take a picture. Somehow, Russell isn't quite as excited as I am about my discovery. I get him to hold it and he does so like he's found a dirty sock- far away from his body with just his thumb and forefinger. I laugh and take it back into my possession. When we get back to our dock, I place the starfish carefully on the ladder so as not to drop it or harm it in any way. Now is when he decides to use his tentacles. They're tiny, and strong! The starfish is stuck to the ladder! I pull and push and try to slide him off, I mean, he's got to come off sooner or later or he'll dry out! I feel terrible when I pull him from the stair and he leaves a few tentacles behind. Starfish have the uncanny ability to regrow missing parts, right? It's just a few tentacles right? Either way, I apologize profusely, we take it's photo and I swim him back down to the bottom of the ocean. (Thank you for reading this part...I'm sure I've enjoyed writing it much more than anyone will enjoy reading this play by play).

We end our bit of snorkeling and do a bit of lounging and cookie eating (might I add that one of the room service men called us the cookie monsters today). After that, we packed our bag and headed to lunch with the expectation of spending time at the pool and making some friends.

Lunch: Russell scores, I fail...surprise! Russell gets the pesto risotto with squid and I order the chicken ramen in honor of my sister. Russell's lunch was rich and flavorful, mine fell flat- watery broth, unidentifiable chicken pieces, bitter mushrooms, soggy tofu. These aren't your average ramen noodles and ( I can't believe I'm saying this) I think Manchu Wok is better. Please, write that down. Lunch brings the crazy bad service once again with an empty drink menu and no water or any sort of service past the part of being seated for 15 minutes. Several waiters look at our table and a few even ask if we've been helped, but to no avail. Finally water comes followed by appetizers and food and even mojitos that we ordered after Russell goes to the hostess desks and requests it. The rest of lunch is uneventful.

And we're off to the pool for some friend-making. Have we mentioned that we aren't good at this? We met some people who arrived two days ago that have become best friends with every American couple in the resort in less than 48 hours. Russell and I feel like we're back in elementary school trying to break into the "cool group". We're sissies. At the pool, we eaves drop on a few conversations, watch people making friends and take some paparazzi pics of the guy who is in his late fifties and vacationing with his mother.

Let me introduce you- Adorned with a handlebar mustache, he drinks wine straight from the bottle and balances a CD Walkman with really nice Bose headphones. He does a little dance that he thinks no one can see. I can only imagine that he's rocking out to some vintage hip hop from the 80s. He comes complete with a gold chain and a plumber's crack. It's possible that he shaves his chest. This is the same guy who wears sunglasses to dinner. Don't worry, he changes them up, sometimes he wears reflective lenses ( you know, the ones that look like rainbows) and sometimes, on special evenings he brings out the yellow lenses. Russell says he looks like Jeff Bridges, from the Big Lebowski. He wears his house shoes as flip flops and has taken special care to get some frosted tips in his shaggy brown hair. His outfits are an endless array of ridiculousness from white steel toed boots to button downs replete with images of skulls and lightning bolts . This man scares me to death. Every time he walks past me, I envision him slugging me in the face and laughing as he continues on.

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