April 15, 2016
Lautoka, Fiji: They think it's all over
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A bent derailleur was hardly the worst of our problems, however. While I was busy messing about in Vanuatu, Dea had noticed a yellow/white spot had appeared over her left eye. It looked pretty gross, I had to admit, and surely more serious than mere conjunctivitis. The next day, which was another sea day, we went back to the medical centre to visit the doctor again. He was a young South African man, of only about our age, who looked concerned when he saw the nasty looking white spot. It was right over the front of Dea's pupil, and seriously affecting her vision. At first the doctor tried to remove it with a swab, but it was below the top layer of the cornea, and, perhaps realising he was a bit out of his depth with this, told Dea that she needed to get to a specialist eye doctor as soon as possible.
The next day we arrived in Lautoka, Fiji, the second largest town on the island. The capital, Suva, was 250 kilometres away and we thought was probably the only place Dea could get to see that specialist. The staff of the medical centre had assured us that they would make all of the necessary arrangements for us, and so we went down to it at 8am, just as the ship docked in an overcast Lautoka. I'd been up on deck to observe the town and I had to admit its corrugated roofs did not look like the kind of place that would hide world-class eye specialists. But as we made our way down to the medical centre we were confident that they would have everything in place ready to take Dea to Suva, or wherever she needed to be. No such luck ensued. We sat there on the hard chairs of the waiting room for an hour, being told that the port agent, who was apparently responsible for such things, was busy doing the hundred other things the port agent must be responsible for.
Eventually, gone nine o'clock and completely frustrated, I went off the ship to look for a taxi and begin making my own arrangements. I asked one of the taxi drivers lined up at the end of the port how long it would take to drive to Suva and back.
“It is a three and a half hour drive. When is the ship leaving again?” said the taxi driver.
“Four-thirty”
“Oh, it's difficult to get to there and back in time. Especially because the road is wet.”
“Okay. How much does it cost?”
“It doesn't matter. You can't do it.”
I was pretty annoyed, especially when I got back to the medical centre and found our doctor conducting a google search (which could easily have been done the day before) and telling us that it looked like the only eye doctors were in Suva. Had we been readied to go at eight in the morning when the ship arrived, we could have got there and back in time. Now we didn't have time to get there, because we'd wasted the first hour and a half of the day in a waiting room. I was pretty mad. This was really serious. Dea really needed to see an eye doctor, and now it seemed like the only way to do it was going to be for us to actually disembark the ship completely. Which meant my attempt to travel around the world by bicycle and boat was effectively over.
With the medical team still saying they needed to wait to hear from the port agent, and having no actual idea where he was, I went to look for him myself. I wanted to get away from there and try and do something, I was really very angry about potentially everything being ruined by their incompetence. I couldn't find the port agent of course, and when I returned inside I discovered that he had finally been in contact with the medical centre and, miracle of miracle, an eye doctor had been found in the nearby town of Nandi, only thirty kilometres away.
It was a huge, massive, giant relief, and with it being so close Dea was happy to go alone in a taxi so that I could keep up my record of not using motor vehicles. When the taxi arrived I was a little concerned by the driver, who certainly did not give the impression he knew where he was going, but I packed Dea off with him anyway, and went to get my bicycle. With it not being a tender port it was easy for me to get the bike off, and I thought I might as well nab country number 47 while I still had the chance.
It was really strange to cycle through the streets of Lautoka. It had that chaotic and run-down appearance that had been so common-place across Asia. I'd almost forgotten such places existed after the orderliness of Australia. I didn't ride too far, of course. Just through the busy Lautoka streets and out the other side far enough to get a glimpse of the Fijian countryside. The rolling hills merged with low-hanging cloud on this day of uninspiring weather, but the open road promised much of a country that I'd loved to have had the chance to explore. But the necessity of returning to the boat, not to mention my broken derailleur (which made it impossible to change gears), forced me to turn back. I did meet one Fijian, a nice man named Charlie. He was on a bike himself, and offered to help fix mine with a spare jockey wheel he apparently had at home. With the actual derailleur being so badly bent I thought the chances of that working were somewhere between nil and nothing, and so I thanked him for his generosity and grinded my way back to the ship.
I got back and waited in our room for Dea. She soon arrived looking very happy. The doctor in Nandi, though working in rather primitive conditions, had been a really nice woman. She diagnosed it as an infected corneal ulcer, and prescribed some different medications, but the prognosis had been good. Hopefully it would clear up soon. Another eye doctor would check the progress on our next stop in American Samoa, and until then we just had to proceed with the hourly eye drops and not worry too much. It was the best possible outcome. We had come close to having to leave the ship, close to the end of my continuous journey, but somehow, as I looked out over the mountains of Fiji as we sailed away that evening, it seemed everything had worked out okay in the end.
Today's ride: 8 km (5 miles)
Total: 48,596 km (30,178 miles)
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