Today’s excursion was a Eco Park visit which involved 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the park, lunch, shopping, 1 1/2 hours bus ride back and about an hour at the park. And it was a fun excursion. The busses on this excursion held about 35 people and were comfortable and air conditioned.
Fiji has 14 provinces and over 100 dialects including one that ‘everyone’ knows. Their main language is English and their main sport is Rugby. They are incredibly proud that they won the gold medal in 2016 at the Olympics in Brazil. The guide said they celebrated for months.
Their main crop is sugar cane and it was their primary source of income until tourism became number one. They use the sugar cane for sugar and then use the molasses to make rum and other alcoholic drinks. They also have pine trees and sell pine chips to Japan to be made into building material.
Many of the houses are on stilts but some have started enclosing the bottom story for more living space.
Their main religion is christian but they are tolerant and accepting of other religions. I saw many different churches on our drive. These are the ones I managed to get a photo of:
- Salvation Army Church
- Mosque
- Methodist Church
- Hindu Temple
- Islamic mosque
- Baptist Church
- Korean Community Church
- Seventh-Day Adventist Church
- American International Church
- Gateway Harvest Center which I couldn’t tell if it was a church or place to collect product but the sign said “God is King”
- Christian Greek Orthodox church
- Shiri Vishnu Temple
- Revival Fellowship
- Aastaana Aaliya Saifiya (a religion I never heard of)
There were a number of colorful billboards along the road- many of them selling alcoholic drinks. I liked the one that was advertising Fiji water since it showed the same bottle of Fiji water that I see for sale in the local grocery store back home. They also had a ‘don’t drink and drive’ billboard that said ‘choose your ride’ and showed a picture of a taxi and a picture of a police car. Another fun one was for a cheese snack that turns your tongue blue.
The Eco park was fun. I held a snake and a blue and green striped iguana. The Hawksbill turtles had beautiful shells-which is probably why they are endangered- and sharp beaks. We were allowed to feed them as long as we didn’t get our fingers near their beak. The Red-Breasted Musk Parrot was beautiful and Fiji “enjoys five distinct island races” of them. Apparently they have different scents on each island. They had an exhibit of medicinal plants too.
Between the clouds, cloud shapes and color, we had an amazing sunset this evening
