Thinking Allowed: As far as you can get

(It's Jakob writing for a change.)

As a kid, I read a lot of books like Shipwrecked and Treasure Island. So Fiji, for me, was all wrapped up with pieces of eight, and green parrots on your shoulder, the fabled Solomon Islands, and maybe a grass skirt or two. Even the name is exotic. Fiji! Seeing those dots lined up makes me want to say words like hijink and Beijing (I can't think of any more, can you?)

The point is, if you told me at age ten that I'd one day spend a week in Fiji, I would have wriggled with anticipation. And it's been a lovely week, although staying at the Sheraton resort isn't exactly Robinson Crusoe. The highlight was a day spent on South Sea Island, a tiny sandbar miles out to sea surrounded by a coral reef. The reef is mostly dead, but teeming with fish of every stripe and colour. Tamar and I took turns snorkeling, while Aurora eagerly tagged along with both of us. She was so keen that at one point she threw herself off the kayak (much to Sophia and Tova's alarm) and snorkeled her way to shore. I've always adored diving amongst fish and seems like Aurora's got the same bug. Sophia and Tova were brave enough to jump off the boat a couple hundred metres offshore, but the choppy waves and dizzying view to the seabed far below were a bit much for them…maybe in a year or two.

We also visited Nadi, the local town. Conversations with locals hinted at tensions between the Indians and Chinese, who seem to own many of the shops, and the indigenous Fijians (in fact, Indians living in Fiji are legally prohibited from calling themselves Fijian). The open-air market vendors were equally split into: Fijian women selling baskets of fruit from their backyards; Fijian men selling spidery kava roots; and Indian men selling American apples and oranges and other "exotic" fruit. We mostly stuck to guavas, coconut, papaya and other local delicacies. The town itself is nothing to write home about; lots of poured-concrete blocks, many textile shops, a few mangy dogs, lots of people taking it slow.

Otherwise, we were pretty segregated within our resort…they've really cordoned off a manicured green peninsula for the tourists and, to be fair, it is awfully nice. The girls frolicked for hours in the pool, Zadie spat up on every surface in our room, Sophia defected to the Kids' Club for a couple of days, I reconnected with McKinsey people (this weekend was my company's regional retreat), Tova had some tantrums, Tamar swam in the ocean … it all seemed pretty remote from the glimpses of a very different Fiji that I'd occasionally catch: minimum wage is only $1.50 per hour? You must declare all holy water upon entering the country? A leading cause of car accidents is men stupefied on kava and falling asleep at the wheel? Kava, by the way, is the local drug of choice; you grind a root up into a powder, infuse it into water (much like tea), drink a few cupsful, and you're off to la-la land. Tamar came upon a Kava Tasting one afternoon and had a cup, without much effect. Still, she was quite bemused and came back imagining tourists in Compton sampling the local smack as a hotel activity.

So now we know a bit about Fiji. The people are incredibly warm. Island-hopping is probably the best thing to do there. I wouldn't want to be a dog in Nadi. Snorkeling is great. We're pretty privileged and often exist in a bubble so cosy that we hardly notice it. We don't seem to have contracted dengue, though, so hooray for bubbles when you've got a two-month old. And we hope we get to explore Fiji more properly one day!