Day 1 – Bula from the beautiful island of Viti Levu, Fiji Islands. Flights from Toronto to Los Angeles and on to Nadi were excellent. Both flights operated on time and with no issues. The flight from Los Angeles departs late in the evening, and arrives before dawn (5am) in Fiji. 10-1/2h in duration, it gave us a good chance to rest, and we managed to get going without too much drama.
We’ve rented a car to get around. Driving hasn’t been too tough, and the transition to driving on the left has been without incident. Driving around Sudbury before setting out has helped Brent prepare for driving on the roads here, which are equally full of potholes. As for the car, she’s a beauty – certainly the pride of the fleet at Budget. The Suzuki SX4 has more than 105,000km on it. That is an incredible distance considering there is no appreciable distances to be travelled on the island.
We drove to the coral coast and had a nap after the long overnight flight. In the afternoon we checked out the pier and had a walk along the beach for quite a long way to past another resort. That was it for the day!
Day 2 – We went to Sigatoka sand dunes National Park. It was really enjoyable and certainly worth a visit. There were nice walking trail and the dunes were huge. After a couple hours enjoying the park, we had lunch in Sigatoka at the recommendation of the park ranger and went to the market for some groceries. Produce was cheap and great quality.
Day 3 – Headed to Suva and started at Colo-i-suva forest park. Walking trails along rock pools and waterfalls were really neat. There were many spider webs across the trail and spiders with red dots in them which we were concerned about (later googling told us they don’t have poisonous spiders or snakes). Next we had a great lunch at the café by the museum, and toured the museum after. We were planning to go see the parliament but it seemed closed to visitors, and there was no parking near the markets (and we were tired) so we headed home.
Day 4 – A slow moving storm got situated off the coast southeast of Viti Levu. We had some high winds and bands of rain so we did not get out kayaking as we hoped. Despite the barrier reef 600m out from shore, there were still one metre waves (rollers) coming all the way into shore so there were no snorkel boat tours running. We have been wanting a turtle experience, hoping to find them on a beach or to otherwise observe them in the wild. Kula Wild Adventure Park was not all that we wanted, but we did get up close to four endangered Hawksbill Turtles. They also had some fish, lots of birds, and a few other things. It was ok. In the afternoon Bron gave snorkelling off the pier a try. It wasn’t super great….. it was pretty choppy and there wasn’t all that much to see.
Day 5 – Brent worked on the blog and Bron went for a long walk on the beach. That was about it! Still recovering from the jetlag.
Brent And Bron Abroad 