Blogs from Fiji, Oceania

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 ... read more

Sitting in Nadi Airport at 11 am, our flight was supposed to leave at 1:00, then changed to 2:00, now it’s 3:00 pm. May never make it home. We may miss the Auckland connection which means we would definitely miss tbe Vancouver connection to Toronto. Have to sit looking at all the duty free - so tempting but I don’t need any of it. Well we didn’t miss our Auckland connection and we are waiting in Vancouver to get on the flight back to Toronto any minute now. If all goes well I will make it back to Tillsonburg.... read more

It is extremely humid this morning after the rain yesterday. And our room air conditioner decided to quit working so I guess it’s time to hit the pool again. We have two boat trips booked this afternoon. At 12:30 we go on the glass bottom boat to see the coral reef and then at 2:30 we go on a longer trip. Back from the glass bottom boat over the coral beds. It looks like a lot of the coral is dead but there is still some pretty blue and green tree looking coral (fire coral according to the boat captain). I didn’t add any pictures of the coral through the glass bottom because it just didn’t pick up very clearly. We didn’t go out to the big reef that surrounds the island where the waves hit ... read more

There are lots of activities that take place on this resort every day. Yesterday there was aerobics in the pool that I had fun taking part in and there was pool volleyball that I had fun watching. This morning some of us are going on a small shopping jaunt. The resort provides a bus and takes us into a small town about 40 minutes away. No requirement to buy but a chance to get to see the area in the daylight and see how the people live. When we arrived the other day it was pitch black at night. There are 3-4 small villages between the resort and the town and everyone waves and hollers “Bula!” as we drive by. Once in town we have 3 hours to wander and shop and find something to eat. ... read more

The islands which collectively constitute the South Pacific were all lined up in a row, ready to be toppled like the most entertaining dominos display ever conceived, yet as I have already pointed out, this was a free-spirited travel episode, and as a result, the 4 or 5 nations originally part of the original blueprint were in the end whittled down to just one nation, that nation being Fiji. Given that it was a combination of price and flight schedule convenience, the flight to Suva, the largest city in Fiji was to be the first leg of the South Pacific episode, and even I was majorly curious to know precisely how it would measure up. Truth to tell, Suva comes across as a fairly unstructured city, with an Indian and Chinese influence running right through it, ... read more