Adoption of a mantra – Fiji Time

I’m quite a punctual person, and growing up ‘pre’ the mobile phone era if I said I was going to be somewhere at a particular time, I made sure I was. Even now I have the latest iPhone I still like to keep to time or at least close to that time.

Whilst traveling you will experience things run late, be it flights, tours, people… you have to adopt a very tolerant attitude towards most things. However never have we ever encountered such a laid back attitude to time as on the Fijian island of Nanuya Lailai. It was here that we really learnt that island life never really runs to time.

We booked a boat trip to a see the Sawa i lau sea caves, that were rumoured to be an essential experience, not to be missed. The trip was scheduled to start at 11 am, so we arrived at the beach at 10.50 in plenty of time for the tour to catch the transfer boat; we sat for 20 minutes in the hot sun and waited. Another 20 minutes passed, and still nothing. Thinking that we may have missed the boat, we went back to the hotel and inquired, we were told ‘no worries its Fiji time’.

This was my first introduction to ‘Fiji time’, which soon became a mantra I began to truly appreciate.  We waited on the beach for another hour, indulged in a swim, played some football and even took advantage of the lunch buffet before miraculously just before 2pm a speedboat arrived. The driver jumped off the boat and the only explanation we got was ‘Fiji time’.

In all honesty it didn’t matter what time we got to the caves, they weren’t affected by the tides or the sun and actually we continued to have an amazing experience. It suddenly occurred to me that we were on a sandy island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there was no need to run to schedule or stress about an experience – the whole place was the experience… it was time to Relax

Throughout the trip I came to embrace ‘Fiji time’, as nothing, and I mean nothing ever ran to schedule, be it the buffet meals, tours, transfers… and no one including me cared.

What an incredible way of looking at the world, a phase that was synonymous with Relax, chill out, it will happen when it happens.

In response to the daily posts photo challenge of Relax

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