The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America (31 page)

We’re prepared to encounter a far deadlier creature—the mosquito—which is responsible for 1.5 million to 2.7 million deaths each year. While traveling through Asia, we’ll take Lariam, an antimalarial drug that costs about $10 a pill. We’re packing plenty of mosquito repellent and permethrin, an insecticide that is sprayed on clothing. We’ll also carry a roll of adhesive tape to mend rips we may spot in hotel mosquito nets.

We switched our health coverage to a high-deductible plan with Blue Shield because it does not limit the length of time members may travel outside the country. Other health precautions include vaccinations for typhoid and hepatitis A. We’ll also take iodine tablets to purify water wherever the bottled variety is unavailable.

When I told my doctor I was hitting the road for a year, he shot me a look of disbelief. Or maybe it was contempt. His longest vacation over the last 14 years was a single week. I felt more than a twinge of guilt on the drive home.

“Do you think we’re being frivolous?” I asked Andrea.

“No,” she said. “The point of life is to have fun.”

I sometimes need to be reminded of the obvious.

Our budget took a huge hit before we even boarded our first flight. So far we’ve blown about $5,000 on equipment, clothes, footwear, health products, visas and guidebooks. Throw in the estimated $7,000 we’ll spend on air fare, and we’re down to making our way around the world on roughly $75 a day. That’s a handsome sum in Southeast Asia but a pittance in Europe. We’re banking on it all balancing out in the end.

Our first big expenditure was on his-and-hers internal-frame Eagle Creek backpacks—$285 apiece. The shoulder straps and hip belts stow into zippered compartments, allowing you to check the packs like regular baggage. They are appropriate for the moderate trekking we’ve planned and will leave our hands free when we’re moving through cities—better to fend off touts and pickpockets.

As our departure day looms, the pile of stuff we’ll try to cram into our packs grows ever higher. Our purchases reflect all the expert advice: lightweight nylon pants, Gore-Tex rain shells, titanium mugs, sewing kit, drain plug (for washing clothes in sinks), super-absorbent pack towels, 8-inch umbrellas, padlocks…the list goes on. Individually, each of these items makes sense. Collectively, they add up to our own personal outlet store. When Andrea tossed a copy of
War and Peace
onto the pile, it hardly made a difference.

The decision to take a year off and travel the world, renting the house, selling one of the cars—it was all child’s play compared with the awesome task that now stands before us: packing. When globe-trotting, you are what you carry. So we will spend the remaining days before we leave defining ourselves: Five pairs of underpants or four? Yes or no to the miniature pillows? And what of that confounded inflatable contraption of Andrea’s? It’s always the little things that hang you up.

Part Two:

The South Pacific

Watching Life Slip

From Pacific Standard to Fiji Time

LAUTOKA, Fiji — Andrea and I decided to start our trip around the world with a vacation.

The endless preparations for our yearlong tour had sapped us. We were not ready to face the rigors of shoestring travel—incomprehensible tongues, mystery meals, the sweaty press of humanity. We would eventually rally, but first we needed a place where heavy lifting amounted to a cold drink and a back issue of the
New Yorker
.

Fiji beckoned. The 800-island South Pacific nation offered pristine beaches, a pleasant climate and warm, English-speaking people. A first stop here would allow us to wade into the shallow end of the world journey pool.

But we nearly did not make it. Three hours before we were to leave home in San Diego, we had yet to pack. The mountain of clothing and gear piled atop our dining room table mocked our modest backpacks. At the last instant, we panicked and pulled out two more bags, haphazardly stuffing them until they threatened to burst. (Yes, Andrea’s inflatable hanger made the cut.) We told ourselves we would shed the excess luggage in New Zealand, India or wherever our arms fall off from the weight of stupidity.

Our frenzied packing agitated the pets, who will stay with the man renting our house. Aretha, the cat, fled into the laundry room, refusing to come out and say goodbye. Maya, the dog, ran circles around our legs, barking in the direction of her leash. The farewell was made sadder by the sight of my golf clubs, already looking neglected and forlorn in a corner of my office.

A construction crew was tearing up the street in front of our house, replacing the water main, and we had been unable to use our driveway for days. We begged the foreman to let us park long enough to load our luggage, and he gave us five minutes. Andrea maneuvered our Explorer between a bulldozer and a steamroller, I flung our bags in the back and we sped off. Four months of planning came down to this messy getaway, closer to an evacuation than a departure.

Andrea’s mother—she’s storing our car—and grandmother dropped us off at the airport. We flew all night, lost a day to the International Date Line and landed in Nadi (pronounced nondy), on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu. We grabbed a cab and rode 12 miles north to Lautoka, the jumping-off point for the Yasawa Islands, where we would later travel by boat. The lush mountains and fields outside the taxi window were so green in the morning sun, it almost hurt the eyes to look. We passed a train rattling down a narrow-gauge track, hauling cars laden with stacks of sugar cane, the crop that accounts for 40% of Fiji’s exports.

After checking into the spartan Cathay Hotel ($24 a night) we wandered along Vitogo Parade, Lautoka’s palm-lined main boulevard. We were instantly struck by the dichotomy that is Fiji. Only half the population consists of indigenous Fijians. The rest are mostly Fiji Indians, descendants of laborers recruited by British colonialists to work the cane fields in the late 1800s. Today Fijians own nearly all the land, while Indians control the business sector.

The Fijian women we saw wore vibrant floral or batik-patterned full-length dresses. Striding the same sidewalks were Indian women wrapped in richly colored, delicate saris.

The Indians we encountered were reserved, while the natives were the most outgoing people we have ever met. Every Fijian we passed smiled broadly and said “Good morning” or
“Bula,”
the common Fijian greeting, which literally translates to “life.” Some leaned into our path as they spoke, ensuring their salutations were received. Even Fijians across the street called out
“Bula,”
stretching the four letters into BOOOO-LAAAH. At first I was suspicious, fearing they wanted something from us. Then I realized I had grown so cynical that I forgot it is still considered bad manners in some parts of the world not to greet a passing stranger.

We ducked into a Fijian bakery and bought pineapple turnovers, still too hot to eat. We carried them and a copy of the
Fiji Times
to an outdoor Indian cafe, where we feasted on chicken fried rice and samosas. The newspaper, the food, the dessert and a couple of Cokes cost less than $3.

It was Saturday, and the colorful town market was bustling. We strolled down rows of stands, inspecting the fresh eggplant, okra, carrots and an array of other vegetables and fruits. The vendors displayed their produce in orderly piles. Tiny handwritten signs advertised each “heap”—be it bananas or peppers—for the equivalent of about 25 cents.

Back at our hotel, we sipped sodas on the second-story veranda. A rugby match was underway at nearby Churchill Park, and we followed it through the branches of a sprawling tree. It was a serious, professional game, but the lighthearted Fijian fans filled the stadium with uproarious laughter.

Soon the sounds of choir practice at the Methodist church down the road drifted through the window on the breeze. A waitress sang sweetly as she set the tables behind us. The laughter, the singing and the rain that began to fall blended into a beautiful noise.

We finished our drinks and fought the vacation-mode urge to pop up and do something else. We finally realized that for the next year we had to be nowhere other than where we were. We leaned back in our chairs and set our watches to Fiji time.

Kava and Companionship in Paradise

NANUYA LAILAI, Fiji — Our boat was 15 miles northwest of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu when the skipper, Sala Saucoko, tapped me on the knee.

“We are now in Bligh Water,” he said.

It was in this part of the South Pacific, in 1789, that Capt. William Bligh and 18 others were chased by two Fijian war canoes. Bligh and his men, cast adrift days earlier by mutineers on the Bounty, pulled frantically on the oars of their longboat, narrowly escaping the savages.

Saucoko laughed at the image of the sailors fleeing his ancestors. “They were lucky,” he said. “If they catch them, they eat them.”

The Fijians long ago replaced cannibalism with tourism. On this day, Saucoko was ferrying us to the Gold Coast Inn, a budget resort on Nanuya Lailai, one of the Yasawa Islands. The place was too new for the guidebooks (we’d heard about it in a Viti Levu hotel lobby), so Andrea and I were taking our chances—though risking far less than had Bligh and his crew.

When the one-square-mile island appeared off the bow, we broke into wide grins. This was the Fiji of our daydreams, a picture-postcard vision. Separating the green mountainside and the dazzling blue water was a white strip of sand, fringed by a line of coconut palms arching like swans’ necks over the beach.

The Gold Coast Inn is no Club Med, but we were enthralled by its primitive charm. The entire resort consists of six thatched bungalows, called
bures
(BOO-rays), and two outhouses. The lobby is a shady spot beneath a rain tree, the dining room is a picnic table in the sand and the cash drawer is a traveling cosmetics case.

Our
bure
was built of tree limbs, reeds and palm fronds. Its only furnishings were a double bed and a mosquito net. We fell asleep at night to the sound of waves lapping the shore. Each morning we woke to a sunrise that turned the Pacific Ocean the color of a flame. Paying $39 a day for two, including three meals, we felt as though we were stealing paradise.

Little distinction is made between the resort and the village that extends up the hillside. The 20 or so workers are related to the owner, Filo Saucoko, Sala’s wife. They treated us more like family members than guests.

We shared the resort with 19 other travelers, mainly Europeans, mainly young. Most were like us, people who had set aside their routines to explore the world. Our yearlong itinerary impressed our fellow vagabonds, who believe all Americans squeeze their journeys into an annual two-week vacation.

Ben, an Irish veterinarian, and his wife, Liz, an English pediatric nurse, had been traveling on the cheap for close to two years: the U.S., Central America, South America, Antarctica. Someone they met in the Cook Islands recommended the Gold Coast Inn. Both in their early 30s, they were postponing all major decisions—children, careers, house.

“As soon as you decide, you close all the doors,” Ben said. “I used to be a control freak, but now we’re down to our last $1,500, and I’ve never been happier. It’s good to get out of a rut. So many people hate their jobs, but they don’t do anything about it.”

Diana, an advertising executive from London, was nearing the end of a 16-month world tour. Her final stop is Phoenix, where she will reunite with a lover from an earlier leg of her journey. “I’ll see him for ten days,” she said, “though it’s the nights I’m looking forward to.”

Another British woman, Cerys, took a leave from her job as a career counselor to travel for six months. She landed on Nanuya Lailai six weeks ago. “I’ve just sort of stopped here, haven’t I?” she said, smiling.

One day, after a lunch of Spam, stir-fried vegetables and rice, Andrea and I followed two dogs to the other side of the island. As we splashed through the shallow, 80-degree water, poisonous sea snakes darted out of our way. We rounded a rocky point and beheld a deserted white crescent of sand fronting a calm, clear bay. It was Blue Lagoon Beach, one of the shooting locations for the 1949 film
The Blue Lagoon
, starring Jean Simmons, as well as the 1980 remake with Brooke Shields.

We donned our snorkel gear and kicked toward the reef. I peered through my mask and saw that fish of every size and color surrounded us. Velvety royal blue starfish, looking like five-legged Beanie Babies, clung to the sun-dappled ocean floor. The coral resembled massive deer antlers. It was like swimming inside a Discovery Channel program.

On our final night on the island, our hosts prepared a feast in honor of Millie, an Englishwoman celebrating her 19th birthday. Chicken, fish and lamb were wrapped in palm leaves and baked in a
lovo
, an earthen oven. Children draped flowers around Millie’s neck and crowned her with a tinsel wreath. A white cake appeared, and we all sang “Happy Birthday.”

After dinner, several of us joined the locals for a few rounds of kava, the Fijian national drink. We sat in a circle, legs crossed, as a man measured into a cloth some powder ground from the dried root of a pepper plant. Again and again he wrung the cloth in a large wooden bowl of water. When offered a coconut shell full of the grog, the recipient claps once, says
“Bula”
(life), drains the kava and claps three more times. The beverage looks like muddy water and tastes about the same. It is nonalcoholic, though many Fijians get looped from its tranquilizing effect. All I felt after four “high tides” (full shells) was a numb tongue and an urge to visit the outhouse.

In the morning, we exchanged e-mail addresses with fellow travelers we had grown fond of during the previous three days. It was hard to leave them and our gracious hosts. A Fijian woman we had yet to meet hugged us on the beach and thanked us for coming. As our boat motored away from the shore, we looked back and saw the whole island waving goodbye. I recalled a verse from “Isa Lei,” a traditional farewell song the villagers sang the night before: