To the Navua River

Whitewater rafting the Navua River, Fiji from David Lansing on Vimeo.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent less time at a resort than I did The Pearl South Pacific. I checked in very late Sunday night and by 6:30 the next morning I was in the lobby, packed and ready to go. I was also badly in need of coffee.

“Daryl, could you get David a coffee?” said Julie Hodson. Julie and her husband Daryl are the managers of the Royal Davui, the resort in Fiji where I’ll be staying. They’d come over on a boat from Davui the day before expecting to have dinner with me at The Pearl but when I still hadn’t shown up by midnight, they’d gone to bed. Sensibly, I think. Still, Julie had arranged to have a platter of food brought to my room (some wonderful cheeses and fruit and the like) Sunday night so I’d have something to eat when I arrived, and god was I thankful for that, having not had anything to eat since breakfast some 20 hours earlier.

Anyway, Daryl got me a coffee and we sat around The Pearl’s lobby watching the sun come up and then around 7 we walked over to the resort’s pier and waited for the boat coming over from Davui. Daryl and Julie were heading back over to the island while I’d be joining up with a small group coming over to go white water rafting down the Upper Navua River.
I know what you’re thinking: white water river rafting in Fiji?

That’s what I was thinking as well. But my buddy Marguarite, who’d arranged this trip, told me it would be fun.

“You don’t have to do it,” she’d said, “but you’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

Well, I didn’t want to be sorry. Even if I was so tired at the moment that all I could think about was how envious that Julie and Daryl were just now getting on the little boat taking them back to Davui where, if I was with them, I could check-in to my villa and take a long nap.

I waved good-by as Julie and Daryl pulled away from the pier and headed out onto the open ocean. Then I climbed on the bus with the others and headed off into the rainforest towards the Navua River.