First of all, I encourage you all to download “My Fiji” by Black Rose and listen to it while you’re reading this blog—it really sets the mood. You can also get a free 30-second sound bite if you Google the title and artist. I’m serious; it’ll bring you right down to the island with me for the rest of my trip…
It’s tough to distinguish between Day 5 and my departure day because there really was no break other than the fact that at midnight my phone said it was technically another day. After the Bartering at its Best Challenge on Day 5, I joined all of the guides from Rivers Fiji at the Tiki Pool Bar to watch a local reggae band that was playing. Nikki and Moses still had their Old Spice Fiji deodorant sticks with them and were showing them off to all of their friends at the bar—it was absolutely priceless. Around 11 PM or so, the concierges, waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and hostesses from The Pearl, where I had been staying all week, joined us at the bar to show me a good time on my last night in Fiji. The staff at The Pearl are absolutely amazing and I’ve never quite experienced a comparable level of hospitality. By the second day of my trip they all knew me by name, but most preferred to just yell “BULA OLD SPICE FIJI!!!” whenever they saw me walking through the resort.
The band was amazing and we stayed until the bar shut down, but the night was far from over. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that my morning had just begun. I jumped into a cab with some of the staff from The Pearl and we headed down a dark road. Normally, one might feel a little nervous not knowing where you’re going in a car full of strangers in a foreign land at 2:30 in the morning, but if you ever visit Fiji you’ll know instantly that you have absolutely nothing to worry about as the folks there are seriously the friendliest people that I’ve ever met! We headed to a barren strip of beach where we proceeded to build a large bonfire out of driftwood and palm fronds. We made impromptu tiki torches and sat on the beach for several hours until the sun rose over the windward side of the island, which was my cue to make my exit. I wasn’t headed back to my hotel for some shuteye, however, because the US had a 6:30 AM kickoff in their Round of 16 World Cup match with Ghana. I met up with some fellow Americans that I had met on the trip that were staying at a backpacker lodge called The Uprising. Thanks to some extremely potent coffee and a couple of Red Bulls, I was able to pull through the morning, but unfortunately the US wasn’t able to pull out another last-minute victory despite sending the game to overtime.
I made my way back to The Pearl around 9 AM, and had just enough time to throw all my clothes in my bags before I received a call from the front desk at 9:30 AM that my transfer to Nadi was waiting for me in the lobby. Thankfully it was about a two-and-a-half hour ride to the other side of the island, so I was able sneak in an absolutely essential powernap before being dropped off at Skydive Fiji around noon. My flight wasn’t until 10:30 that night, so I arranged to do a sunset skydive and in the meantime I could hang out at a resort called Smuggler’s Cove and watch as all the jumpers before me landed on the beach. For the first time on the trip I was able to kick my feet up, lean back in a hammock hanging between two palm trees, and do absolutely nothing—it was amazing!!! I spent the afternoon drifting in-and-out of sleepy beach dreams baking under the golden sun high in the Western sky. Around 4 the Skydive Fiji crew woke me up and let me know it was my time to fly! I headed straight to the airstrip and by the time I had wiped the afternoon nap from my I was in a turbo-prop Cesna steadily climbing three-miles into the endless ocean of clounds.
This was my tenth skydive on my fourth different continent, but there’s still no way to prepare yourself for the moment the door to the plane flies open and the previously tranquil fuselage that you were sitting in a moment ago drops to near freezing temperatures and is flooded by a raging torrent of wind at several hundred miles per hour. I swung my feet over the edge of the landing gear and it was go-time. In all my travels and all my adventures, there’s absolutely no experience quite like the first five seconds of freefall out of an airplane. Your body tumbles in the invisible waves as you approach terminal velocity, whereupon you arch your back and arms and begin to float in the weightless feeling that is achieved as a result of constant velocity and zero acceleration while you plummet towards the earth on a cushion of air drag. I broke through the cloud cover around 3,500 feet in a gush of condensation that coated my goggles, then reached back and pulled the ripcord right on cue at 3,000 feet.
In less than a second the chaos of freefall is snapped by an audible whoosh and then the settling calm of the fully deployed canopy above head. I busted out the stick of OS Fiji that was wedged in my harness and drank in the intoxicating freshness as I looked out over the Mamanuca and Yasawa Island Archipelagos before taking control of the chute and navigating her towards the landing approach. Five hundred feet above Smuggler’s Cove I made my final adjustments and let the tandem instructor guide us to a smooth beach landing in front of a crowd of cheers and applause. My body still surging with adrenaline I walked over to the beach bar, ordered a Fiji Bitter and the largest lobster in the tank, and sat on a weathered picnic table as the sun sank below the horizon.
And that was the storybook ending to an unbelievable week in Fiji. I want to thank Old Spice for sending me on an adventure of a lifetime and all the help that Jessica, Dean, Jackson, Jim, Mauricio, Billy, and James provided along the way. Big shout out to the staff at The Pearl South Pacific, specifically Una, Savi, and Ratu. Props to the people at Aquatrek for three amazing shark dives, and the fantastic crew at Rivers Fiji: Josaba, Nikki, Moses, Pita, David, Mark, and the rest of the guides. Thanks to Chief Leo and the people of Nakavika for welcoming me to your village and making me one of your own during the kava ceremony. To the Annas, expect me in Sydney sometime soon. Jeremy and Steve, I couldn’t have done it without your help filming and shooting. Andrew, thanks for telling me about the promotion, the check for your finders fee is in the mail. To Rocco in the Arts Village, the tabua is absolutely amazing and I will be sending you the photo we took together very shortly. Thanks to Alan and Manoj at Arbitrage.com for being my style consultants and making sure I looked Old Spice fresh throughout the trip. Thanks to the Navy for being a part of my life of adventure that qualified me for this competition, and also for allowing me take three weeks off work to go to South Africa and Fiji. And lastly, thanks to all my friends and family that have been there with me for the ride, I wouldn’t be where I am today without you all. Now do me one last favor and make sure the next time you’re at the drug store shopping for deodorant, pick up a stick of Old Spice Fiji Fresh Collection and breathe in the sunshine, palms trees, and freedom. In the immortal words of James Dean, “dream like you’ll live forever; live like you’ll die tomorrow.”
Fiji Fresh and Bula Vinaka, -Zach Scheel
