A Good Day for Frogs in Fiji

8/3/2019 A Good Day for Frogs in Fiji

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A Good Day for Frogs in Fiji

The first we heard of a cyclone was Monday afternoon in Port

Vila, Vanuatu. We sat, pouring sweat, at a terrace on the onlyproper street, trying to lunch on burger and beer, but ultimatelydeconstructing a thing on a bun that started with the kitchen sinkand then added beets, onions, carrots, eggs, bacon, cucumber,cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, salt, pepper, chillies, ketchup - andmaybe a tiny little speck of free-range, no insecticide Vanuatubeef. In there somewhere.

Next table over a bright pink, corpulent fellow told his ni-Vanuatulunch mate "Bluh bluh rain, bluh bluh cyclone bluh Fiji.

"I inquired.

"Yeah," he said, "It's southeast of here toward Fiji. We just had alook at it on the internet and it's a big mean thing. It's what'sbeen causing all the rain."

Since we were bound for Fiji in 18 hours this was notable,although just then it was sunny, hot and about 600 per centhumid in Vila. We were just in from Espiratu Santo, another islandin the Vanuatu archipelago where we'd passed endless sunnydays in relentless, blistering sun.

But in the taxi home we heard the cyclone warnings in threelanguages on Vanuatu's only AM radio station, with a particularwarning for the southeast island group centered around the cult-and-volcano island of Tanna. By now the cyclone had a name.May I introduce you to Jo.

This night we stayed in one of those swishy over-the-waterbungalows at a resort called Le Lagon Park Royal, five minutesout of town on the Erakor lagoon. There was a healthy chop in the

lagoon and the water lapped the pilings under the hut likesmacking lips, but there were nothing more than the usualtowering clouds at sunset, sunlit long after the ground went dark,and not much more than brief rakings of rain across the deck.

We let ourselves imagine the pounding reef out at the end ofErakor Island was more fierce than it ought to have been, and


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maybe it was. But this luxury bungalow had air conditioning andeven a TV with taped, day-old Australian Broadcasting Companynews pumped in every couple of hours from down at the frontdesk. So we barricaded ourselves tight, turned up the AC andendeavored to freeze.

And the next morning we asked the desk clerk while settling thebill, what about the cyclone?

"It's gone," she smiled brightly.

Really?

"Yes, I think it has gone to Fiji."

We were bound just then for Bauerfield airport to catch an AirVanuatu flight to Fiji, operated by the national airline of Fiji, AirPacific, using a leased Qantas jet and its leased pilot. And in theair, he showed us the cyclone, 200 miles south of our tiny, little,eensy weensy 737.

"You can see the associated weather systems out the right sideof the aircraft."

Twice he told us there was some "rain in the area" of Nadiairport, and when we came in to land it turned out he was veryright. Scarcely 100 feet off the ground, already on airport land,between the fence and the tarmac of the landing strip, we werelashed by blinding rain and Captain Ian Richards floored it, pulledus up and took us around. After the full power of the jets (wewere so close we must have been very nearly at stall speed) heeased back as soon as he could and tried a little nonchalance."

As you could see there," he told us, "It was a bit too rainy for me

to put us down, so we'll call it a missed approach and go around,and I'll try to have us on the ground in seven or eight minutestime."

And that he did.

You could see on the way from the airport that it had beenraining tons and buckets - turned out for the past three days. A


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slow, cautious approach through water up to the car framebrought us to a hotel where the proprietor greeted us with,"Welcome to sunny Fiji."In the afternoon bands of rain lashed thebure. Everything, every last possible thing, was wet and had beenwet and much had begun to mildew. Nothing had the slightest

intention to begin to dry. Wind whipped coconut palms to afrenzy, rain hammered the roof and the frogs, the frogs gloried init all. We sat in the twilight on our expensive, fabulous, drenchedscreened porch and watched a dozen of the frogs at any onemoment, bounding, jumping, head up, head down, throat pulsing,hurrying this way or that, up the path or under the bush, and wesaluted them and their day.

Originally published here:

http://commonsenseandwhiskey.com/commonsenseandwhiskey/2011/10/fun-for-frogs-in-fiji.html
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A Good Day for Frogs in Fiji