Road Blocks, Check Points, and Cannibal Forks

I think I may have come up with a great new blog name with this post. Anyway, Bryan shot me a heads-up from Suva, he arrived safely and launched into a flurry of meetings. Averaging about 12 hour from Los Angeles, Fiji is not one of the most killer of Pacific flights I've had to endure. Heading to Singapore by way of Hong Kong is still topping my list of arduous, painful travel (certainly a slipped disk didn't help). Because Bryan is also visiting PNG on this trip, he's using Brisbane as a hub and stopping point to and from there and Fiji.

Since Suva is Fiji's capital city, it's also where disruptions as a result of the coup are most apparent. While Bryan reports things seem fairly quiet, he did mention there are military check points here and there around the city–though it appears there's more standing around than checking going on. No complaints from me here, to be sure. Bryan's meetings with the Fiji Locally Managed Marine Area (FLMMA) group at the University of the South Pacific went well. Locally Managed Marine Areas are areas of nearshore waters being actively managed by local communities or resource-owning groups, or being collaboratively managed by resident communities with local government and/or NGO's. FLMMA is also home to the international LMMA Network, a group of marine conservation practitioners working in Asia and the Pacific who have joined together to increase the success of their efforts and share lessons learned.

With a slew of meetings under his belt, Bryan mentioned that he saved time to visit the Fiji National Museum. Some of the more memorable exhibits on display include a fantastic Fijian war canoe, the shoe of the Reverend Thomas Baker, a missionary who was eaten in 1867 (presumably his shoe was too chewy), and an assortment of cannibal forks. In case you glossed over that last part about the Reverend Thomas Baker, Fijians practiced cannibalism for a time. While cannibalism has fallen out of vogue among contemporary Fijians (or at least you don't hear about any modern stories the way you do in the PNG highlands today), you will have no problem finding ridiculously high-end luxury resorts throughout Fiji where your final room bill will make you feel as though you're being skinned alive.