The Pursuit Of Nothingness

Wednesday

Ro was scared last night because he thought he saw a monster in the ocean and was afraid it was going to come through our patio door, or so he said. Even so, letting Ro sleep in our bed probably wasn't the wisest move. We never let him do it at home for a reason: he's got the jimmy-legs [insert your best Michael Richards impersonation]. He turned himself perpendicular between us, prodding Sherry with his feet all night and head-butting Mark. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep after our long travel day, but Ro slept fine and was rarin' to go at 6am. Ughh. By the light of day, it turned out the thing in the water he was scared of was a buoy.

We also discovered that our room, although striking in its design, works much better if you're alone. The partitions separating the portions of the room are sliding translucent glass, so if you turn on the bathroom light, there's no way to block it from illuminating the bedroom. There's also no lock (or even latches for that matter) on the free-swinging toilet or shower doors (also translucent glass) - not the greatest idea with an inquisitive kid. There's also no blackout curtains, only a nearly transparent window blind on the sliding patio doors. Speaking of the window blind, Sherry was in the process of pulling the chain to raise it this morning when the whole apparatus crashed down in her hands. On closer inspection, a plastic part on the other end of the rod must have broken, causing the whole thing to fall off its mounting. We let the housekeeping staff know, hoping they wouldn't think Ro broke it and charge us.

As Mark was shaving and showering, Sherry took a hungry Ro on to breakfast. Mark stepped out of the shower to find them walking back in the room a few minutes later, with Ro soaking wet. To hear Sherry tell the story, Ro ran ahead of her despite her calling out for him to stop. When she rounded the corner, he was on the steps of one of the pools. Unfortunately, the last step was a doozy and he plunged in over his head. He panicked, flailing about as Sherry raced over to drag him out. Only a few other people saw what happened, but Sherry was mortified nonetheless, and brought him back to the room to change clothes.

"This is the pool I drowned in daddy!"

Breakfast at the hotel is served at Nuku. They tried to upsell us to the "full breakfast," but we knew from experience that the continental breakfast would be more than enough. Plenty of cereals, pastries, and fresh fruit to choose from, plus some really tasty yogurt parfaits filled us up easily. On our way back to the room, Ro made sure to scope out which of the 7 (yes, seven) pools he could stand up in, and proceeded to splash around in all three of them. Two were shallow decorative pools around the restaurant, and the other was a 1 meter deep kids pool. He was now petrified of the deep pools, which was probably a useful thing for the time being.

Snaggletooth happily working on a donut

Sherry took Ro down to the kids club for the morning, but she was a little hesitant to leave him there. There were only two girls much younger than he there and the toys looked a little young for him, but Sherry felt a little better when another boy Ro's age showed up so he would have someone to play with. Then we set about doing what it was we came here to do...absolutely nothing! We lounged by the pool, drinking a cuppa; Mark zoned out with his iPod while Sherry read her book. The sky was a little overcast, but that was alright with us since we weren't looking to get burned on our first day.

Relaxing under the palm trees

Eventually, we got a little restless; with a five year-old, we're not used to sitting still for very long. Mark went to go scope out the day trips at the tour desk, and Sherry browsed the hotel stores. She began feeling guilty about leaving Ro at the somewhat lame kids club, especially once she discovered there was another kids club for older kids that seemed to be doing much more interesting things around the resort instead of being cooped up in a daycare-like room. So off we went to pick Ro up early. When we got there, he was sitting in a circle with a bunch of other kids his age, having fun eating watermelon and didn't want to leave. We weren't about to hoof it back to our room (the Hilton is BIG) and back to the kids club again; fortunately the word "pool" was all the persuasion he needed.

Mark and Ro played in the kids pool while Sherry hopped on the Bula Bus to do some grocery shopping in Port Denarau. The open, thatched-roof bus is only $5 for an all-day pass, and it makes a circuit around the island stopping at the port and all the major resorts, coming around about every 15 minutes. The port is the next stop after the Hilton, so getting there took next to no time at all; getting back was another matter. In addition to food, Sherry picked up a sarong for herself as a beach cover-up and a Fiji rugby sevens jersey for Mark (the Fijians are the only two-time winners of the Rugby World Cup Sevens). For those of you Stateside who have never seen rugby sevens, you'll get your chance at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, as the sport was just recently added to the games.

Meanwhile, Mark taught Ro how to do a cannonball into the pool, which he loved. Some other boys showed up soon after, relieving Mark to relax for a bit. Ro also met a little girl who's attention he kept trying to get, not realizing she had speech delay per her grandmother Leigh, a former Emergency Dept volunteer at Tauranga Hospital. Small world, eh? It seemed almost everyone we met around here was from New Zealand, mostly from Auckland. Mark and Leigh tossed the kids around the pool for a while until she got tired, then Mark began tossing them both, much to their delight.

Ro gives chase

Sherry came back with the food, so we coaxed Ro out of the pool and back to the room for lunch. The hot ham and cheese sandwiches Sherry had planned to make with our sandwich press were quickly vetoed when she discovered that the bread she had bought was sweet coconut bread with sultanas in it. It went great with a grilled PB&J, though! We broke out the Sapphire and tonic as Ro went outside to play on the hammock. We soon joined him, relaxing in the lounge chairs on the beach as he played with his Hot Wheels in the sand. The older kids club happened by, looking for crabs on the beach. Their Fijian guide showed them how to find the crabs hanging onto the floating rope marking the swimming area.

A friendly gardener giving Ro a helpful push

It wasn't long before Ro wanted to go back to the pool. Sherry played with him, while Mark went to book our tours. We all enjoyed throwing and chasing after the sinking pool toys Sherry had bought at K-Mart before we left NZ. Ro and Sherry searched under the water for a toy orca for at least 15 minutes, scouring every inch of the huge kids pool, not realizing Mark had stashed it in his togs; then, just as they were about to give up, he surreptitiously dropped it under the water for Ro to triumphantly find. Sherry still doesn't know. Ahh, good times...lol.

Ro picking up Sherry

We played in the pool all afternoon, but as the light dimmed we started getting hungry again. We rinsed off and lounged around the room for a bit, Mark and Ro watching old Tom & Jerry cartoons while Sherry dried her hair. Sherry was going to have a relaxing espresso while she got ready, but couldn't quite figure out the machine and managed to spray espresso EVERYwhere, sacrificing one of our sporadically-replaced bath towels for the cleanup. At least the hotel staff had fixed our window blind while we were gone. The service at the hotel was always very friendly, but prompt was not in their vocabulary. We're on "Fiji time," remember? Much of the female staff seemed to be visibly pregnant, which might account for some of it. Mark speculated that there was actually some sort of cult, while Sherry mused that maybe the Fijians just used crappy condoms, if at all.

Waiting in the open-air lobby for the Bula Bus

We all boarded the Bula Bus to Port Denarau for dinner. First, we stopped by the chemist for some zinc oxide for Ro's increasingly rosy cheeks. There was an adjacent candy store, which took forever to drag Ro out of; somehow the concept that we were just about to eat dinner didn't register. We escaped only having to buy a small bag of gummies, then headed for Indigo, the local Indian restaurant. We found out later that Saffron (same owners) in Nadi was supposedly just as good if not better and cheaper, but in a much dodgier part of town. Indigo was plenty good for our taste, and we enjoyed sitting outside by the water (under a canopy) watching the gentle rainstorm. Mark thought his tiger prawns were delicious but only got full with the help of some cheese naan. Sherry's palak paneer was great, but Ro wasn't too enthused about his buttered chicken (which tasted fine to us), and mostly just ate rice. After dinner, Ro found a frog (like the ones from last night) on the pier and started chasing it around in the rain.

Boarding the Bula Bus

Sherry at Port Denarau

Dinner at Indigo

These frogs were everywhere

We stopped in a souvenir shop at the port, where Mark found an All Blacks rugby jersey for much less than he would have paid in NZ dollars, so he snapped it up after closely inspecting it for any telltale signs of fakery. The ice cream store at the port serves New Zealand Natural Ice Cream (told you there were a lot of Kiwis here), and Ro wasted no time getting a big chocolate waffle cone. We weren't too sure about letting him eat it on the Bula Bus, but the driver didn't say anything. Ro managed to keep most of the drippings on himself, but after he finished he started dozing off. We were afraid he was going to hurt himself tipping over, so we proactively laid him down on the seat. As we dropped all the other other passengers off at their resorts on the way to the Hilton, we saw a large crowd gathered at the Sheraton to watch the fire dancers. They looked pretty cool, but we didn't dare wake Ro up until we were home. Unfortunately, the Hilton gets the fire dancers on Mondays, so we'll just miss them.

A sleepy chocolate mess

Carrying a sticky, chocolate-coated Ronan all the way to the room was out of the question, so we tried to be patient as he drowsily meandered down the path at a glacial pace. Even so, he was still alert enough to always exchange a friendly "Bula!" with passersby. After a much-needed bath, we arranged the rollaway and a chair next to the couch to make one big sleeping platform for him, then told him he could stay up watching Cartoon Network as late as he wanted. Two minutes later, he was sound asleep and we were outside drinking champagne, intently watching a frog hop around our patio, listening to the waves crash on the shore.