Starfish and Flowers and Crabs, Oh My!

I just thought I would post a few words and photos about the natural life here in Fiji.  We have had a chance to explore the aquatic life a bit and seen tons of colorful flowers.  The biggest thing about Fiji is that everything is so GREEN.  Not like the green at home, it is a deep, rich green.

Cava... So Cava is a plant that grows locally around here.  It is sort of the ancient, highly respected drink around the islands and in the villages.  The root is pulled from the plant, dried and ground up to a powder.  Then you add water and it makes this muddy watery concoction that people drink.  It has narcotic like side affects but the villagers drink it plenty.  It is prepared in this cauldron like wooden bucket and drank out of dried out coconut shells.  Once you finish your gulp, it is tradition to clap three times as a sign of thanks and respect.

As far as native Fiji creatures... I will start with some of my favorites.  Dad, we always wonder where all the hermit crabs went in GLP... Well, it would appear they all went on permanent vacation to Fiji! There are so many hermit grabs here! Literally piles of them on rocks.  They seem to have a contest for who can occupy the coolest shells because some of them are insane.  Grandma had requested that I bring back a cook shell for her so we've been trying to collect a few.  I say trying, because almost all of them are occupied by a hermit crab! We've had to bring them home and put them on a piece of paper on our table and see if they move over night.  Several of them had, and even fallen OFF the table! I have no idea how those little buggers inside of those big shells can manage to move them! It's been quite amusing, though it means we have not found too many EMPTY shells. We've taken a few pictures as proof of the awesome beautiful shells down here...

My next favorite thing here are the crabs.  There must be 50 different types of crabs.  Most of them very small so far.  I need to do some research when I get back to see what types of crabs they are, but I could spend hours watching them.  Two in particular, they each seem to live in a perfectly round hole.  At low tide they come out and wave their one large claw, sort of like they are chopping something.  They are brightly colored, one type is brown with a yellow claw the other black with red claws and almost tribal blue markings on their shells.  I have a video of the yellow claw.  When viewing, in your head, you should repeat the line the crabs say in Finding Nemo... "heeeey, heeeey, heeeey" However the internet connection here won't let me upload it, I will have to do so later.

Starfish! There are two mains kinds of starfish that we have seen here so far.  One of them has a round button like center with tentacle like arms that come out.  These are everywhere and making walking in the water difficult.  The second starfish looks fake.  It is blue.  And I mean straight out of the tube, cobalt blue.  They look and feel like they are wrapped in hard blue rubber. They just litter the brown rocks and looks quite funny in an otherwise not so colorful surrounding.

Birds! We haven't seen as many different kinds as I thought there would be here.  There is this one bird that sort of reminds me of a dinosaur that seems to be the Fijian equivalent to the NYC pigeon.  They hang out around the club house and wait for crumbs.  We caught a few glimpses of these awesomely cool red and green parrots but never have our camera ready.  Then yesterday, on a beautiful sunny day, Justin hit the jackpot.



Flowers and trees etc...