Where Are Ron and Ellen?
New Zealand (Ron and Ellen), Fiji (Ron), 5 January - 9 March 2015
Ellen and Ron near Milford Sound, NZ, January 2015
Fiji
13 February 2015
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
My trip home from New Zealand was long but uneventful. I arrived in Los Angeles a bit after noon, on 2 February and wisely had opted to spend the night in LA and fly back to DC the next day. Arriving in DC at 5:30 pm, I picked up my luggage, took the hotel shuttle and picked up my car at the hotel where we'd left it on 5 January, and drove home to Afton.
On Monday 2 February, the day before I got home, there was incredible wind here (I'm told it blew big trucks over on the interstate highway), and there were wild and frequent power outages, glitches, and surges, which blew out the pump on our geothermal. Sharon discovered this when she stopped by the house on Tuesday morning and found the house at 52F. The contractor and his crew who have done all the additions and repairs to our house over the years had been busy in our absence doing an assorted list of things, currently partway through replacing the particle board siding which was on the 1993 addition with Hardy Plank. They started fires in the two wood stoves Tuesday morning, and Jeff came back around 5 in the afternoon to stoke both stoves, so the house was warm when I got home. This, of course, is why we kept the wood stoves and have wood in the wood shed. Wonderful to have a contractor who is also a friend! Since then, the pump has been replaced, and also sensors for the upstairs and downstairs systems, and all was working well until this morning when I got up - temperature was 8F outside, 55F inside downstairs, but the upstairs heat is working fine. I have the wood stoves going again, have called, and someone will be here later today to figure out the problem.
Ron has sent me several short (and I mean short!) messages, but the message below is the first report (such as it is) of any length I've had from Fiji. He is still having technology issues. He did eventually get the bluetooth keyboard working on his tablet, but continues to be hampered by the lack of anything like Notepad or Textpad (it is an Android device), and reported irately that he had lost several drafts of the message before finally composing this version in gmail on his phone. I'm just glad I was not there to listen to him complaining!
While he has been struggling with technology (even if on a beach in Fiji!), I have been busy with the ~2000 photos we took in New Zealand, and have now gotten both our New Zealand reports and the associated photos posted here on our Web page. I managed to narrow the photo selection down to around 225, but it was hard!
Love to all,
Ellen
Fiji - Mana Island Lagoon
12 February 2015
Nadi, FijiHello, my dear,
While it is raining I am sitting in my hotel watching TV, having my hot tea, getting ready for my move to Ba tomorrow and writing this report.
I am now trying to write this report on my phone in gmail after losing three drafts on my tablet.
While wandering around on my first night in Nadi, I found a large and very colorfully lit Hindi Temple with lots of people in their finest colourful Indian clothes. After finding the entrance I was told I could enter and where to leave my shoes.
This was the Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple, the largest in the southern hemisphere.
I wondered around for quite a while and found out it was a week long special holiday. One lady who was in charge of customer service for a large company in a building she pointed out to me invited me to go to eat with some friends, but in the confusion of putting on my shoes and someone else dragging me away to talk to someone else about different hotel possibilities, I lost the lady who invited me.
There are not many reasons to stay in Nadi, but it allowed me to get oriented, find travel info, get my sim card for my phone with 4Gb of data (I can turn on my phone's hot spot and through WiFi get Internet access for my touchpad) and generally get my bearings.
During the day I would take the bus to the beach and hang out at the Bamboo Backpackers and Smugglers Cove talking to the other travelers, but there were too many people, which made it more difficult to meet people.
I think this place on the beach must have been a wonderful travelers hangout 10 years ago but today they are building a couple of large hotels and the sprawl is spreading inland and the prices for accommodations are shooting up. Most travelers stay in dorms and the private rooms are too expensive for a single person.
I bought a package for 5 nights on Mana Island. There was an upscale resort owned by a Japanese company, a backpackers place and the smaller place called Mana Lagoon, which was mine. My private room with bath was OK but not up to what I had expected and the food was plain and got boring. However it worked out to be the best choice for me. The long time travelers also chose it for some of the same reasons as I.
I really just wanted a place to sit, read, and talk for a while. That is what I got.
There were lots of young people, mostly European, who were making trips around the world or other extended trips. Because of the small number of people and because they were long term travelers, I could slowly blend in and make friends with a lot of them and spent many days exchanging stories. I have many fond memories of the young people. Especially an older Canadian couple I was most fond of.
I think I may make a couple of more trips to the islands. Stay tuned.
Retuning to the main island I moved to a very nice Hans Inn, much better than my first place for only $US33 instead of $US25. Between Nadi and the airport, near Ed's Place.
My favourite restaurant is TU's Place where I recommend Fish Lo Lo, which is three layers of breaded fish with vegetables cooked in coconut juice. It came with sliced lime and basil leaves. I repeated twice.
On the island I met a group of students from Free Bird Institute which calls itself the FBI. They were Japanese, Korean and Chinese and toured some of the islands on a day trip.
Retuning to Nadi I visited some of the students and was not impressed with their ability to speak English, but that is why they are here. One Japanese guy impressed me. He used to be a professional soccer player before getting injured and he is now going to go to work for one of the largest companies on Japan. I hope to see him again.
I continue to want to visit Japan by finding a medium sized town where I could rent a place for a couple of months to experience Japanese culture.
Tomorrow I will travel by mini-buses to Ba, a small town which does not appear to be a tourist destination. Stay tuned.
Love you,
Ron
Forward to Leleuvia Island, Fiji
cfw.com
Questions? Send email to Ellen, ebouton 
Last updated: 27 February 2015
