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Published: August 18th 2007
It is winter in New Zealand. It is very cold.
It is winter in Fiji. It is not so cold.
So I went to Fiji.
Normally I travel alone, but this time Robyn came with me. She wanted to go diving, and I of course was going birding. Because it was only a two week trip I decided to leave the Travelblog entries till after I got home, which turned out to be a good decision. While over there, one of Travelblog's servers crashed and tens of thousands of members' entries from the previous three months got deleted. Oops!
Anyway, we flew into Nadi at 10.30 Saturday morning, having left NZ at 6.30, after having to be at the airport at 3.30, after getting up at 2.30...
My "airport bird" (normally the first bird to be seen in a new country) was a Pacific swallow, called a welcome swallow in NZ. The second was a common mynah, also found in NZ (it was introduced to both countries from India). We went to the travel agency at the airport to arrange some flights to the islands we were visiting. An Australasian harrier soaring in the distance became my third
Fijian bird, and feral pigeons my fourth. Four birds in and all were readily available back home. Excellent start.
As usual when I travel I completely bewildered the poor travel agency girl with my non-conformist choice of destinations. "We'd like to book some flights to some of the islands," I said. "Of course, which ones -- the Yasawas or the Mamanucas?" she responded. "Uh, neither...Kadavu and back, then to Taveuni and from Savusavu back to Suva". "Oh..."she said, confused, "do you know people there?". Travel agents always get odd expressions when the tourists they are talking to don't want to book a tour or go to regular tourist haunts. Actually the places we were going were well-travelled by birders, just not by the regular people. I'm so glad I'm a birder. Otherwise what a boring travel life I would lead.
With the flights sorted we set off in a mini-van to Suva. Once there we checked into the South Seas Private Hotel, chosen for its relatively close proximity to Suva Point, reputedly one of the better sites to spot shorebirds although we didn't actually end up getting there until the end of the trip. The gardens outside along
the street finally provided me with some new birds in the form of Fiji parrotfinches and wattled honeyeaters, both endemic to the island group as were the Fiji woodswallows spotted perched on powerlines en route to Suva. We went down the road to get some food and saw mudskippers in ditches and Pacific fruit bats flying overhead. Also a couple of mongooses making dashes for cover across the road. Mongooses are to Fiji what stoats are to New Zealand. They were introduced to Fiji to hunt rats but because rats are nocturnal and mongooses diurnal, they hunt the native birds and lizards instead. Back at the hotel the room was full of little teeny ants and mourning geckoes.
Although Suva is the Pacific's largest urban area outside of Australia and New Zealand it is not a big town, and it has a distinctly colonial feel. In fact it looks like it was built by the colonials, abandoned, and nobody has bothered to try fixing things up since. Robyn cleverly observed that while she likes Urban Decay as an art-form, its not so great as a holiday destination...
Animal of the day: Fiji parrotfinches and wattled honeyeaters.
Robyn's animal
of the day: the gecko she got to play with, and the mudskippers which she didn't.
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Divey Spidey
Robyn W
Awww I miss playing with cute geckos. I want a pet one!