Travelog for: Hedgie

Today we took the bus to USP.  The buses are fun because they drive really fast and they blast Top 40 music (Justin Bieber is really popular here).  This week's lectures are in the Bure.





In here we had lectures on Lapita sites in Fiji (the Lapita peoples were the first inhabitants of Fiji, arriving approximately 3050 BP [Before Present, which is about 1950]), South Pacific linguistic shifts, the different types of sand dunes in the Sigatoka Delta (which is where the excavation will take place), and the archaeology of the Sigatoka Sand Dunes.





USP has a really good coffee shop.  We shared an iced coffee.

Today we stepped onto a private bus...



...And went to the Colo-I-Suva Forest Park (pronounced Thohlo-ee-soova).  It is primarily a mahogany forest.





We soon turned down a very narrow path.



There are swimming holes!











There were many more views, but the path was slippery and Abby didn't want to drop her camera.

Finally we arrived at our destination: our own private swimming hole!  There's a rope swing!





Everyone went swimming and had a lot of fun.

On our last day in Suva, we made sure to buy the custard pie from the hotel.  It is made there and it is really good.



We also made sure to grab a meal at the Old Mill Cafe, which serves really good traditional Fijian food.  We shared roti, potato curry and some sort of fried okra dish.  It was very tasty.

We are waiting to catch a ferry.  It's raining, so We will be staying under the shelter until it arrives.



On the ferry.  The weather has cleared up.





Our destination: the island called Ovalau.  This is the first view of the island.  Can you see the rainbow?





The tide was out, so we had to transfer to a smaller boat.



Are you sure this thing is seaworthy?



The tide was so low, they everyone had to get out and wade to shore.

After an hour long, rather bumpy ride on a truck, we arrived in Levuka, the old colonial capital of Fiji.  The first thing we did was go to our hotel, which is the oldest standing hotel in Levuka.



We were staying with Abby in the Captain Robbie bungalow, on the left side.



Not much to see...





This is the view back toward the main building.



Inside one of the rooms of the main building.  The bottom floor was all public space, and each room was different.  This one looked like it came straight out of the colonial era.



The upstairs of the main building.



It was going to be dark soon, so we took a quick walk through the town.  It is very quiet.

Every morning, from 8-9, you can get complimentary tea and toast at the hotel.  It is really good.



We went for another walk.



This is the local war memorial, for the White settlers that fought in the First World War.







The most interesting architecture in Levuka is the churches.  For a tiny town, they had a lot of them.  This is the Anglican Church, established in 1904.



This is the Methodist Church, established in 1860.  the Methodists were the first missionaries in Fiji, arriving in 1835.



This is an old graveyard for White settlers.  Most of the markers were moved quite a while ago so that the locals could play rugby on the field.



We walked to the end of the town.



Once you cross the bridge, you are in the original village of Levuka, which is on the right.



This is another war memorial, for the indigenous and Indo-Fijians who fought in the World Wars.



This is the old Morris & Hedstrom building, which is now the museum and library.  Morris & Hedstrom is still huge in Fiji and makes up many of the supermarkets.



Town Hall.



The Masonic Lodge, which was burned during the 2000 coup.  Remember the field school that was in Fiji during that coup?  They were staying right near here when this happened.



This is the oldest standing church in Levuka.  Most of the buildings were destroyed during a hurricane in 1895.



This is the Levuka Public School, which was established during the colonial era.  Nearly every important Fijian in the past century went to this school, and now people send their children here from all over Fiji.

A few brave souls went on a hike to what is simply called The Peak.  SunnyHH and I had an easy ride because we just rode in Abby's backpack, but it was very steep and it looks like it was very hard.  This is a view from about a quarter of the way up.





Abby did not take any more pictures of the hike because she needed her hands to scramble up some of the steeper areas.

This is the top.  What an amazing view!  Levuka is below us.  See that field near SunnyHH's ear?  The white buildings in front of that are the Royal Hotel.





The next peak over looks like a monkey head.  the locals call it Phantom Face.





And now a solo picture.



A flag to mark our accomplishment.



The hike back down was just as hard (worse for Abby, who doesn't like heights), and so there were no more pictures.

At the bottom.  See the cliff to the left of the monkey head?  That is the one we climbed.  I almost can't believe it.  It is so tall that you cannot even see the flag from here.

Today we went to the Lovoni Village.  If you know anything about the history of Fiji and the story of it becoming a British colony, you have heard of the Lovoni people.  It is a very long story, but they remain the only indigenous people who were sold into slavery.  They were eventually freed and returned to Ovalau, all except three people, who were sold to an American circus.  The interesting thing about the village itself is that it sits in the crater of a volcano that was active about 40000 years ago.







Instead of church bells, they use a traditional method of beating a hollowed out log with sticks.



This is the monument to commemorate the release of the Lovoni people from slavery.



See the hill in the distance.  The Lovoni people have an impenetrable hill fort there.  They were only captured because they were tricked into leaving it and coming to Levuka.



After the village tour, we had to hike out of the crater, which took about two hours.  We went through a bamboo forest...



Then an area with lots of flowers...



Saw some nice views...





...then a pine forest?  Everyone said that this looked too much like Canada to be Fiji.



Everyone was very tired and muddy after the hike, but it was very beautiful.

After a long day of travelling, we are back on Viti Levu, but on the Western side of the island this time.  It is too dark to see anything, but this is where we will be living for the next four and a half weeks.

This is Tubakula (Toombakoola), where we are staying.  My bungalow is pool-side.





This is the beach.  I am so happy to be here.







Look how clear the water is!

My first sunset at Tubakula.  Beautiful.

The nearest town to where we are staying is Sigatoka (Singatohka).  It's a bit of a tourist town, so there is not too much to see.









They have a small market, nowhere near as big as the one in Suva, but it has a decent selection of vegetables.

Today is the first of our days excavating the Sigatoka Sand Dunes.  SunnyHH and I are all set to go.



First glimpse of the dunes.



This is on the walk to the dig site.



They are building a frame so that we can have a shelter every day. 



Where that group of people are standing next to each other is where the dig will be.



We had a few minutes of free time, so everyone went to the beach.











This is the top of one of the dunes, facing the Sigatoka delta.

Everyone has been hard at work the past few days.  There was a metre of drift sand over the dig site that had to be removed, which took two days.

We took a walk to see how the burial excavations were going.  The bamboo provides some shelter from the trade winds.



Very cool.  The interesting thing about this skeleton, is that it is facing the wrong way.  The head is pointing West, when most of the skeletons excavated previously have been facing East.



This skeleton is very fragmented and looks like it did a backflip down the dunes.



After viewing the skeletons, we got to work.  This is our excavation area, which is a 2x2m unit.  The unit is broken down into four 1x1m units, which are excavated seperately.  Each unit is taken down 5cm at a time.





Neither SunnyHH nor I is big enough to lift a trowel, but we labeled bags for artifact collection...



...And took notes on what was found in each unit, and mapped artifacts left in situ.



At the end of the day, the first layer of all four units were excavated.

Everyone has the weekends off, but sometimes the entire groups does something together.  This morning we visited the Tavuni Hill Fort, which is up-river from Sigatoka.  The hill fort was established in the 19th century by a young Tongan chief who married a Fijian girl.  It prospered until 1875, when the inhabitants decided to restart a finished war because they were against Fiji's annexation to Great Britain.  They went on a rampage and started burning villages.  The colonial government mustered up 1000 men, stormed the fort in 1876, and burned it to the ground.  It has never been re-occupied, but the decendents of the occupants live in nearby villages.







This is the lovo and earth oven used to cook their enemies.  Human flesh was considered special and only eaten during a feast, and if somebody refused to eat the flesh, they were next.



The stones mark where dwellings used to be.  The round ones are in Tongan style.



The rectangular ones are Fijian style.



The view is fantastic up here.  The river is the Sigatoka River.







This is the killing stone.  The victim would lay face-down with their head sticking out, and their head and other body parts would be chopped off.  Two small boys whould catch the blood coming from the drains (between the stones).  Everything would then be carried down to the lovo and cooked.



This is a sacred stone, and before Christianity was considered the god of the hill fort people.



A view into the valley.