Raining in buckets!…Touch of cabin fever?…Unreal video of another steep road…

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Steep road to the house in Savusavu!

With our lifestyle geared toward making events less stressful when its within our control keeps us at “home” on rainy days. As of today, we’ve been in Savusavu for 15 days and its rained for 13 days.

My dish towels have been hanging outside on the ropes of the railing for days, partially drying during short dry periods and then becoming soaked a short time later. There’s not a single spot indoors to hang them.

These dish towels have been hanging outside for days unable to dry with the constant rain. We can’t throw them into the laundry when they’d be covered in ants by morning.  When necessary, I place the dirty towels in a bag in the freezer overnight.

Shalote will take the soaked towels along with our dirty laundry to the mysterious washer and dryer she and Usi use to do the laundry. I saw a clothesline in an obscure location on this five-acre property. I longingly think of those stand-up racks we’ve used in various countries throughout the world where we did our own wash, hanging the clothes to dry. This way I wouldn’t have this daily dish towel issue. 

We’d love to get out, me more than Tom. If we hardly ever went out and about, he’d be content. Somehow, he manages to entertain himself constantly reading online; looking for future cruises, airfares, and car rentals; listening to his favorite Minnesota podcast, Garage Logic (three hours daily); checking stock prices and financial matters; and, spending time spewing a variety of opines on Facebook, Cruise Critic and a few other choice newsy sites he fancies.

If we sat outside in the rain we’d be protected by the overhang. But, the mozzies are in full force during this rainy period.

I, on the other hand, prefer to be out exploring and taking photos. Good grief, I prepare a daily post and need photos! The great part is the enjoyment I derive from taking the photos and from posting them along with the story of an outing. It’s an indescribable pleasure. 

Fortunately, we’ve gone out during short dry periods able to take the many photos we’ve shared to date with still a stash in “inventory.” Our goal is to have no less than five or six days of yet un-posted photos on hand in the event of inclement weather. 

Tiny purple flowers with a tiny bee on the flower on the left.

At times, our photos may appear to be repeated, but we do not post repeats unless we mention in the caption they’ve been previously posted. Of course, there always will be the repeated “year ago” photo at the bottom of each post.

I’ll admit from time to time I have no choice but to wander about the yard looking for new photo ops to post over the next days if for whatever reason we haven’t been able to go anywhere of significance. 

Flowers are blooming with this excessive amount of rain.

Here in Fiji, with the slow wifi, we’re limited on how many photos will upload without taking hours. Once I start a post I usually stick with it until it’s online except for the time the photos take to load during which I usually chop and dice for the evening’s meal. Not one to sit and stare at the computer I can’t otherwise use, I find other ways to make use of the time.

Most days, it takes the entire morning to write, edit, and upload photos. Our post may not be editorially perfect by any means, but, we do make the effort. After it’s online Tom also proofreads it, often finding errors I missed after which I immediately return to the editing page to make the corrections.   

Another house in the area, down the hill from us.

Tom, whose grammar may be a result of growing up “in the hood” is actually an excellent proofreader. He waits to listen to his podcasts until after I’ve posted, offering considerable assistance in researching and fact-checking many aspects of each post. It truly is a team effort requiring our combined attention each morning.

The remainder of my days at “home,” referring to the afternoons, I spend searching for future locations and vacation rentals, working on the financials and our spreadsheet, and communicating with friends and family. I don’t spend more than 10 minutes daily on Facebook or other social media, preferring to spend time up and out of this chair when possible. 

Bougainvillea isn’t as prolific here as they were in Kenya.

With our limited way of eating, it’s always challenging coming up with new ways to prepare our food, creating and/or following new recipes I’ve found online at the zillions of low carb sites, many requiring tweaking here and there to make them suitably free of sugar, grains, and starch.

Last night, instead of plain steamed green beans with butter, I created a recipe for stir-fried, cooked in ghee and coconut oil, Asian seasoned green beans infused with bacon I’d first pre-cooked in the microwave. 

Baby palm fronds growing up on the sides of a larger frond.

We seldom have plain meat, veg, and salad.  In most cases, I make a “dish,” of some sort or other put together with a variety of ingredients making dining more interesting and varied. This requires a lot of work and time, of which I have had plenty, especially on these rainy days.

Thank goodness, we aren’t typical travelers on a two-week vacation/holiday to Fiji. We’d be sorely disappointed with the daily rain. Who wants to walk through a rainforest or visit a waterfall in the pouring rain? Maybe 20 year olds.  

The sun almost peeked out a few days ago.

It would be dangerous for us to walk from the house to the steep driveway in the rain, especially when we read online in a review for this property that a younger visitor had fallen on the road.  Why take a chance? The views easily make up for the potential risks so we’re not complaining, instead of being careful and appreciating the lovely home and location.

We can’t imagine driving in the rain on the steep driveway to the house as shown in the video we posted above.  There’s no doubt that the skies will eventually clear for many days in a row before too long. We had this same rainy early on in Trinity Beach with resulting sunny skies day after day when the rains finally died down.

These unusual flowers are blooming below the veranda.

Luckily, with the house on a hill with a solid tin roof, we’re not suffering any ill effects of the rain inside the house. So what about the soaked dish towels and being stuck indoors!

In our old lives, we wouldn’t have been doing much more when it rained with wild thunder and lightning, knocking out the power, a blizzard leaving snowdrifts taller than the tops of our heads, and with record temperatures in Minnesota dropping to -60F, -51C, with an estimated lowest record wind chill of -100F, -73C. 

We saw the same variety of beautiful yellow flowers in Trinity Beach.  As much as we’d like to post names of every flower posted, many we simply don’t recall and, are unable to use data to look to find them online.

Tom always says Minneapolis is as cold as Moscow. He spent 42 years working in that weather and remembers it well. A bit of rain in a tropical climate, even over a period of weeks is unimportant to us.

We hope our readers continue to enjoy our posts with the photos we do have available during this rainy spell. As soon as it clears we’ll be out and about, taking photos of this beautiful country. 

Instead of fussing over the weather, we find ourselves grateful for our lives, for good health, for being together, and for having this opportunity to stretch our wings and fly…and fly…and fly…

Photo from one year ago today, September 23, 2014:

One year ago, we posted our total expenses for six nights in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as we prepared to board the ship to Hawaii the next day.  For more details and the listed expenses, please click here.

In anticipation of goodbye…

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Tom and I have four adult children between us; his son is 37 and his daughter turns 42 tomorrow (Happy birthday, darling!).  I have two sons, one turning 43 today (Happy Birthday, honey!) and the eldest 45, living in Henderson, Nevada for the past 25 years. We will surely miss them.

Three of our four kids live here in Minnesota and between them, we have been gifted with six grandchildren, the eldest and the youngest sharing the same birthdays on September 21st, ages ranging from three to twelve.  We will surely miss them.

With their significant others, we’ll be leaving behind here in Minnesota 12 immediate family members as we venture out into the world for the next 5-10 years, moving from country to country, for as little as one month to as long as five. 
Tom has lived in Minnesota all of his life, leaving behind his family of four generations totaling well over 100 unique individuals.  Inviting his family for dinner is comparable to planning a major event!  We will surely miss them.

Living in Minnesota for the past 42 years and coming from a small family, I also leave behind my younger sister, a TV producer in Los Angeles, an older sister living in Boulder City, Nevada, two nieces and their families and a dear cousin from Boston along with her two adult daughters. We will surely miss them.

And the friends that visit more frequently now than ever with offers of help, some confused by our decision to leave, others to travel along with us in spirit, following our every destination.  Some promise to visit us along the way.  We will surely miss them.

And the neighbors… so close for the often daily interactions, the lazy walks in the neighborhood, the hilarious happy hours, the happy hour boat rides, the outdoor parties on the lawn, the helping one another when snowed in during the long winters, the playful little dogs, (many now passed on) and the recent loss of one we loved so much, as written in my post of June 1.  

As they plan a neighborhood party for us for October 13th we are reminded of the 26 years together and how hard it will be to drive away 18 days later on Halloween.  We will surely miss them, too.
No, its not all joyful anticipation of one long “vacation,” kicking back, relaxing in a hammock overlooking the sea or trekking through the plains in search of the “Big 5” while on safari in Africa.  

Its “life” with noisy disorganized airports, congestion at the buffet line on the cruises, lost luggage, bug bites, uncomfortable lumpy mattresses, bad Internet connections, no TV, no food processor, customs curious as to why we have so many bottles of vitamins, no air conditioning, bad weather with no escape to a basement, stomach distress, a burned out hair dryer, running out of contact lens solution and on and on. 

Why?  Why put ourselves through this?  Why not settle down into a “senior living” condo in a warm, humid-less climate, coming back to Minnesota twice a year to visit those we love, freely traveling by car to visit the others?  Why?

As we said before, because we can, because we want to. Because, we both feel we have one last hurrah deep within us.  Did we hunger for this adventure all of our lives? No. I’ve always dreamed of going to Africa, but the world? Not so much. As written in our prior posts, we only gave birth to this idea early in 2012.  

The timing is right. The downturn in the economy has affected the availability and phenomenal pricing of the homes we’ll be renting around the world; Tom’s pension after 42 years; the timing of the sale and ultimate unloading of our house (a painful loss); our improved health due to our diet change a year ago. The stars were aligned. 

As we travel from location to location, ensuring that Skype will work, we’ll make the online call, see their smiling faces, hear their sweet voices, jittery from afar. We’ll revel in the connection, grateful for technology all the while talking, laughing and sharing, no doubt with tears in our eyes. Yes, we will surely miss them.

Missing…

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Last Saturday as I was getting ready to head out the door to a family member’s baby shower, Tom said, “Move slowly and look out the window to your right.”

As usual and to our delight, there was one of Mother Nature’s delectable morsels in our yard. I moved gingerly toward the window to my right. 

A wild turkey lumbered around the stone patio with eyes darting fervently for a possible intruder. As I moved to grab my phone’s camera, which proved to be too quickly, he spotted me and scurried away. A wave of sadness came over me, not over missing the shot, but after missing the frequent sightings of God’s precious creatures, abundant here in Minnesota, abundant here on the lake.
I will miss the coyotes, their grace, their piercing eyes, their hunger for the little dogs here at the point, along with the caution we’ve exercised all these years to avert their consumption of own little wonders. I will miss the eagle that swooped into our yard to settle high up on a favorite tree, the glaring stance, the perfectly poised talons, easily able to grab a fifteen-pound unsuspecting furry pet in seconds.
Early spring this year, the loons appeared. With their pointy beaks, banded throats, and musical calls they flirt with one another primping for the prospect of little chicks yet to come, who will somehow know that shyness is quite appropriate in this land of predators and humans. I will miss that sound.

We will miss the adventure of the one-day event of baby wood ducks being mercilessly tossed from the wood duck house by their parents, hoping they’ll survive the long fluttery jump to the ground, the short trek to the water.
They scurry about the yard frantically, unsure of which way to go, a few wanderers ending near the house, only to be coached along with us humans, careful not to touch and leave our scent. The cheep, cheep, cheep of the fluffy little puff balls will be hard to forget in the days to come.  

The heron, so playfully referred to as “Big Bird” by my husband, to our long lost WorldWideWillie who enthusiastically ran to the end of the dock to chase this leggy character, unfazed by its disgruntled roar as it flew away. With the utmost curiosity, he’d sniff its remains. I will miss “Big Bird.”  

Of course, I will continue to miss Willie. No longer will we be able to stand by his little grave marker in the yard. Willie inspired me to write my first blog, a blog that will end on April 9, 2012, the one year anniversary of the day he died. Each night after writing that blog, I’d read aloud the day’s writings to Tom holding back the tears. 

It’s sad and ironic that when losing a beloved pet, we not only cry for the loss of their companionship, we cry for the loss of their peculiar habits, their tricks, their ticks, their characteristics, and their rituals all of which bring us humor, familiarity, and comfort.  

And sometimes, when we cry for the loss of our pet, we cry for all the losses of our lives at the same time; the loss of people, the loss of relationships, the loss of meaningful work, the loss of success, the loss of hope, the loss of health and the loss of a dream, whatever that dream may be.

Yes, we will miss Mother Nature’s gifts here in Minnesota, but the nice thing about her is, she goes wherever we go, even if we only stop for only a moment to we breathe in the fresh air, to look and to listen. She will be there.