Fiji & Deck Party

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For our second visit to Fiji we decided to do an organised ship's tour entitled 'Rain Forest Walk in Fiji' - this turned out not to have been the best of choices. We arrived at Cola-i-Suva Forest Park which is about 12 kilometres from the capital - along with three coach loads of fellow cruisers. We don't like big tours - it takes the edge off the trip and slows us down to the speed of the slowest. The walk was quite enjoyable though.

We followed Waisila Creek which makes its way down a valley to the Waimanu River, forming several swimming holes along the way. As we walked through the rain forest we passed a dozen or so locations where the creek was dammed to form waterfalls and smallish rock pools. The last of these was deep enough in which to swim. - we didn't but 20 or 30 did! The trail was busy and there was a large amount of litter which also took the edge off the trip. We were through by 11.30 am, but then had a quite a walk uphill via the Falls trail back to the buses.

We were then driven to a lodge for a soft drink and cakes. Here we were supposed to be entertained by Melanesian dancers, in traditional costume, preforming tribal dances. This was a joke as the queue at the entrance to the performing area was blocked by the dancers themselves - so progress was very slow. We left the queue after 20 minutes and went round the back to the poolside veranda. It was a waste of an hour or so as we didn't get back to the ship until around 1.30 pm (and never got to see the dancers) .

We had lunch on the ship and in the afternoon we posted our blogs which had been building up since Manta. We also needed to make contact with our friend Andy in Sydney as we were going to disembark again so as to have more time in Australia while the ship was on its way to Tasmania where we would rejoin it. We also had to book accommodation and flights for this trip and car hire for both New Zealand and Tasmania. This took a couple of hours, but having been round Suva extensively on the previous visit we were not inclined to repeat the exercise. We went back to the ship around 5 pm and had dinner on board.

In the evening, the dance troupe we had seen last time we were here came on board for a repeat show. We gave this a miss as there was only one performance and the lounge gets very crowded when there is only one show. Afterwards there was a Fijian Deck Party. This got off to a bad start as it was tipping it down - but the rain soon stopped and the party got going. We wore the same outfits as last time - may as well get some use out of the sulus we had purchased on the last visit. There was a competition for the best costume. All in all a good end to the day.

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