Fiji

Apologies for the tardy update of our travels, we had an internet (/life) detox in Fiji. I’m currently sitting in a hostel in New Zealand, just around the corner from the campervan depot ready for our pickup tomorrow. A quick summary of Fiji follows. 

We arrived into Fiji at 5:30, and still missed the sunrise. Walking out of the plane into a warm, delightfully humid, sunny day gave that real ‘holiday’ feeling instantly. After the cold of Canada it was truly delightful. We were immediately heading to the Yasawa Flyer, a boat that took us out to the series of islands known as the Yasawas (funnily enough). Our island was, to Amelia’s delight, the furthest away, taking us 5 hours to arrive at. For me the boat trip was great, the islands are stunning, we even had a warrior greeting us from the top of a rocky outcrop. However I feel Amelia would have liked the trip to be about 4 hours shorter, (it was roughish in places).

Our lodgings for the week were The Safe Landing Resort, which is basic, potentially too basic for Amelia’s liking. The shower room did slightly resemble the interior of a prison cell from Saw (horror movie), not helped by a horrendous purple paint job. It also looked like our neighbours, who we were sharing the washrooms with, didn’t enjoy the shower head, so it was taken off and discarded on the floor regularly. It was also a cold shower, actually lovely after the heat of the daytime, but nowhere near strong enough to lather up Amelia’s shampoo, first world problems. I digress. Our first lunch there, on our arrival, was of course octopus, one of Amelia’s favourite foods (she can’t stand fish of any kind), so I ate handsomely (most of hers). It was, as with most of the food there, actually really great, much better than expected. 

I’m not going to summarise every day individually as it would make a series of pretty dull entries, unless I posted a book review of each book I’d read, which I don’t really think is the point of this blog. We basically relaxed. Really relaxed. Soaked up the sun (in very limited durations due to our fair complexions), read books (many many books), swam, kayaked and ate. A complete contrast to our activities in Canada. Which I absolutely loved. 

However certain aspects Amelia had some issues with. There was a few dead cockroaches which I dealt with in the bathroom, giant grasshoppers with accompanying swooping birds on the walks and apparently a mouse that ran across the room when we were watching the rugby, which I of course missed due to my unwavering attention on England’s thrashing of the puny Aussies. This series of insect issues have led her to reassess the Borneo portion of the trip. We’ll see what happens there. 

As the Fijians are as crazy about rugby as I am they fortunately had on both the quarter and semi finals (England beating the all blacks, just excellent), which was our only real interaction with the outside world as we’d decided to not spend $20 on internet, adding to the off the grid beauty of this week. There were a wide variety of people checking in and out of the resort while we were there, which included (but by no means limited to) an extraordinarily annoying Belgian/English/Aussie complainer, very chatty American, cool Italian granddad, and on our final day some other brits. We ate lunch and dinner each day on a long table with them all so got to know some of them, which all added to the experience. 

The Fijian islands are beautiful, hospitality brilliant and weather wonderfully hot. A real beach paradise. As you may be able to tell, I really enjoyed this break from civilisation. 

Upon our return to the mainland we checked into a home stay next to the airport, not realising it was Diwali. Which actually led to a really nice evening celebrating Diwali with an Indian family by setting off an excessive number of fireworks, playing with sparklers and eating some ridiculously good curry (surprisingly not too spicy for me) and homemade sweets. They also had Wales’ defeat on tv, a delightful bonus. A lovely surprise to finish off our stay in Fiji. 

Once at the airport, at the check in desk, we again had the initial shock of needing an eta (yet another version of a visa someone’s invented) to enter New Zealand, apparently which came out a month ago when we were already away on our travels, but they have a grace period so don’t actually need one yet. Fortunate. Brace yourselves for more campervan fun in the upcoming (regular and on-time) entries.