We got up early and enjoyed the contential breakfase again before Rae Chris S and I met with our guide for our hike to the summet of the island. Since we were aranging things directly with the guide we were also paying him directly, $100 for three people for a four hour hike...about $8 an hour, realy pretty resonable. There was some wierdness when there were not enough people for the main planed resort hike and they decided to go to the summet as well. It apeared that the resort tried to combine the hikes, which was fine by us.. but the guides seemed to conspire to miss each other so we went seperatly. Presumably that was so that the money would go directly to the guides, which was also fine with us, but I think that the resort was a little anoyed.
Our guide took us over the pass in the island to the village on the other side where he handed us off to another guide, this time about 15 years old. We walked down the main 'street' of the village trailed by the village children and dogs. Both seemed happy and healthy.. oh! We passed the pig village on the way there. Rae and chris had seen it the day before, but it was new to me. Thee were a few dozen pigs being kept in neat pins that looked like something out of 'A Swiss Family Robenson'
We crossed a couple of beaches and streams, the beaches were mildly littered with plastic bottles and plastic burlap from rice bags or tarps. The village was a mix of traditional and cinder block houses.
In any case we entered the joungle past the village. It was less...deep isn't quite the right word... tall I guess, than the jungle on the interior of Viti Levu where we rafted and Zip lined. But it was lush and beautiful. We moved between jungle and grasslands as we climbed. And climb we did. The trail was as steep as stairs and alternatly muddy and slippery with dry dirt. THe ocational volcanic rock patches were a releif. After a half an hour or so we started taking breaks for people to catch their breath. This served to give us an opertunity to take photos, which we did with abandon.
Eventualy we got up above the treeline and the viwe was spectacualr. We aproched the first black monolith of volcanic rock that was the lower of the twin peaks on the island. It rose a good 1000 feet more above us as we circled around to it's back side where the climb was easier. The last 100 feet or so was up a crack and then a scramble up to the flat top of the mountian. I sat there on the coffeetable sizes platform dangling my feet over the drop. Then deciding that peeing my pants would make for an uncomfortable hike back down I crept off the ledge and helped the others up so that they could take photos.
Getting back down was an adventure in it's self. I've never been so glad to have climbing shoes. We all made it off alive though and started our trip back down. This turned out to be far more dangerious than our trip up. Rae and Chris slid most of the way down on their bun's... ok that's an exageration but not by a lot. I wasn't so stable myself and fell and cut my finger on small splintered stump. The cut wasn't too deep but there was a lot of blood. We got down to the village without further injury.
We had to take a detour to avoid the villages bathing pools as people were bathing. So we ended up going by the part of the river where they did laundry. We ran into a small mob of nekkid children....perhaps their clothes were being washed...
We arrived back at the resort in time for lunch.
I grabbed my snorkel gear after lunch and checked out the reef in front of the resort. It was surprisingly good. I saw a ray and got a chance to do some free diving to 35 or 40 feet. We moved to 'Kumar's Room' which was located back behind the servants quarters. It was kind of cool to see behind the scenes, clothes lines drying the bedsheets and such.
