An Encounter with Anacondas

It’s not often that a tourist visit to Fiji offers a chance to engage with giant monsters. It happened to me just the other day.

We’ve been on Viti Levu (“Big Fiji”), in Suva to be precise, visiting fellow horror writer Kaaron Warren, who lives there with husband James, son Mitch and daughter Nadia. Kaaron has been very tolerant and has taken us around the place on various dark and mysterious excursions into Fijian esoterica and through assorted Emporiums of Dubious Taste.

One such excursion led us to the Lagoon Resort — a tropical retreat situated about 45 kilometres west of Suva at Pacific Harbour. The reason for our trip through the spectacular Fijian countryside was two-fold. First off, Cat wanted to visit a place Kaaron called “the Tiki Bar”, which contains a giant cannibal-pot spa and pool presided over by a daikaiju-sized Tiki head.

Yes, that’s me waving out of the giant’s left eye.

That was pretty cool, but the most exciting reason to visit the Pacific Harbour (for me anyway) was the Lagoon Resort’s star attraction — the “Bloody Mary”.

In case you don’t know, the “Bloody Mary” is the rather dilapidated boat (“She may be ugly, but she puts out…”) hired by the self-destructive protagonists of the 2004 sequel to Anaconda, Dwight H. Little’s Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, to take them into the loving coils of the legendary 40-foot anacondas of the Borneo jungle.

The story goes that Jim Sherlock, the current owner of the Lagoon Resort (which had apparently begun life long ago as a high-class bordello), one day noticed a group making their way downstream past his establishment, so he yelled to them, suggesting that they come ashore for a drink. It happened that the group were Hollywood types scouting for locations. The following year they turned up in larger numbers and stayed at the resort while they filmed Anacondas — Fiji and the Lagoon’s environs standing in for Borneo. The movie was a huge success in Fiji, I’m told, running for a month or so at the local cinemas.

The Art Department had carefully created the Bloody Mary at the resort (for a reported A$200,000) and afterwards Sherlock bought it from them for $2000. It now rests dry-docked at the edge of the Lagoon. Jim Sherlock has kept its tacky, dilapidated condition pristine and lets enthusiastic tourists (like me) wander around it.

The vessel is full of all sorts of stuff and we had fun imagining we were fleeing through the jungle-shrouded rivers of Borneo, hounded by giant snakes. The kids thought we were nuts.

That last shot is me about to enter the loo — yes, the boat actually has one, though it’s not what you might call functional. (I didn’t attempt to use it.) Kaiju-fans should note the Godzilla vs Barkley t-shirt I picked up in a department store sale in Suva, after seeing it advertised on telly the night before.

The following snap shows Cat and I trying to stir up the snakes in the galley.

You’re probably wondering — as I did — whether there are any giant anacondas in the Lagoon itself. Well, I found out soon enough. I managed to take this snap before the blighter consumed me whole and I was forced to dig my way out of its belly using the sharp end of a cocktail umbrella that I happened to have in my pocket from the previous evening’s debaucheries.

Okay, that last paragraph is something of an exaggeration…