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Published: September 17th 2023
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Last blog of a monthlong trip! I hope you enjoyed the reading as much as I enjoyed the ride!
This blog is about my three short stays in Fiji, plus a night lay-over in Auckland, a lunch time lay-over in Sydney and some notes about this crazy trip!
This is my second time in Nadi, Fiji. I first visited the place back for Christmas 2011. I knew one thing, if you are short of time, the area of Nadi is not my type of tourist place, but that's what it is. The more remote diving area of Taveuni is superb, but you can forget about it if you do have 2 or 3 nights lay-over in Fiji. The ideal would have been for me to do Tarawa, Kiribati direct to Honiara, Solomons...but Air Solomons haven't re-started those yet. Next, Honiara to Port Vila have direct flights, but I believe only twice per week these days, and they were not on my planned days! So yes, Tarawa-Honiara-Port Vila-Nadi would have been way better, instead I did Tarawa-Nadi-Honiara-Nadi-Port Vila-Nadi-Auckland-Sydney-Bali! Good that immigration on Nadi only stamp the passport on arrival!
Those are therefore 3 layovers in
Fiji. First one was 2 nights, spent at the Hilton Denauru...in my room just before Sunset, left the hotel 2 nights later way before sunset! Next was a short one night stay at the Novotel next to the airport. Last stay was one late night stay at the Novotel, plus 2 nights at the Doubletree 45 minutes out of Nadi.
These places are perfect if you try to avoid the winter of New Zealand or Australia, but this is it! Got some solid deals with Hilton, so I'm not going to complain, it was cheap stays in places I would not have stay if they hadn't been that cheap. I knew about it since in 2011, I stay for 3 nights with the kids at the Westin next door. Not my type of place, but would have been impossible to reach the more remote islands without adding days to this month long trip!
Auckland was great to pick up some wine...I know! Plus a usual stop at the local Belgian restaurant for some local mussels and Hoegaarden beer! Was happy to be back to the Hilton, finally a hotel with charming and efficient/caring young
staff! From there should have been an easy ride back home on Qantas. Well, they changed my schedule months ago...had to wake up at 4am and now my 2 hours layover in Sydney looked more like 7 hours! So yes, no point of staying 6 hours in the below average Qantas Sydney lounge, I hopped on the train to the city for a nice three hours walk on a sunny Sydney Autumn day...
This trip is a wrap, and it has been a pretty exceptional experience! Thanks to my lovely wife to have allowed me to escape Bali for so long!
The main challenge was to sort out the flights. There were 20 of them on 10 different airlines! Costing, a pretty good deal at just above 2,000usd plus 80,000 miles! After Covid, flights options are slowly coming back, but not sure I would have had the same value if I had attempted this trip in 2024!
With all those flights, my biggest delay was only 2 hours between Majuro and Tarawa. Trust me, on such an itinerary, I can consider myself very very lucky. My bag didn't make it with me on
Air Vanuatu from Santo to Port Vila. I had to do my homework with some convincing smiles in Port Vila, and the bag did get reunited with me 28 hours later in Fiji!
Next, accommodation! My average night cost me 100usd. not that bad considering how remote some of the places are. To find a bed in Pohnpei (Micronesia), Majuro (Marshalls), or Tarawa (Kiribati), there is nothing available online...you have to call and send emails to hope they will hold your bed! Everything else was pretty much a breeze. The idea was not to go for luxury but rather for value...and availability too!
I knew it would be easy to play golf in Fiji, Solomons and Vanuatu, but the diving was another story. I did book ahead for Palau and Vanuatu dives! But no dive center was open in August/September in Majuro, Tarawa and Honiara. Even with this, I did manage to dive the three places, so yes, very happy!
To conclude, the funny note. I play the game of marking the map provided by Tripadvisor with the places I've visited. Prior to this trip, I had, as per their algorithm,
visited 93% of the world. I know, this is the biggest joke ever! I believed I would jump maybe on more percent over this trip! The end result was a jump to 96%, and I still haven't visited 41 countries! Are we assuming by TripAdvisor algorithm that those 41 countries worth less than 4% for the travelling crowd?!? Pretty crazy!!
Hope you enjoy the last serie of blogs! I'm done for a while! Back on a plane jumping continents, but you'll have to wait middle of October for the next blog!
Stay safe, keep traveling and enjoy life!!
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