Jan 15-25


It will be too embarrassing to go home after 4 months in Fiji without seeing the island, so we are going to take a road trip.  We have the car reserved for 3 days.  The plan is to drive completely around the island with a two night stay in Suva.  Browsing the web brought up several possibilities of places to stay.  After all of Alan’s convention work, we are not really interested in nice mid-range hotels.  If we can’t have 5 star then we will go for super budget.  We settled on the Capricorn Apartment Hotel,  located in downtown Suva with parking and a kitchen for $50 per night  (the exchange rate is about 2 fiji dollars to 1 US $)  We almost stayed at the  City Private for $20 with the bathroom was down the hall but by the time i went to book it they were sold out..  For our last night we booked a room in the Colo-i-Suva Rainforest Hotel.  $30 for a hostel type room located just out of the city on a river. 

We have no map except for the one in my old Lonely Planet tour book.   I have been trying for weeks to get a map of the island but no one seems to have one.  Since there is only one main road around the island we should be OK.  We have our iPad with the GPS.  So off we go. It is a cool, cloudy morning.We are at the beginning of the much needed rainy season and the hills are looking dry.  The road follows the coastline with occasional jogs inland.  There are scattered houses, small garden plots, cows and goats in the fields.  From time to time there is a larger grouping of houses that constitute a village but it is all very random.  There are no cultivated, fenced fields or neat little villages like you would see in Europe or the US.  The fences, where they exist are rows of posts that have started to sprout and turn back into trees.  Here and there we see lines of trees that obviously used to be a fence.  About mid morning we stop at a wonderful small hotel, just along the road and get coffee and banana cake but mostly we just keep driving. 

Just past the northern tip of the island  the road veers inland and we climb up into the mountains.  Now there are no more fields.  The road follows the river through the trees.  The villages cling to the side of the cliffs.  Each village is  marked by a pair stylized entry and exit posts.  It is the same shape that we have seen on phone booths and government buildings, a long pole curving into a U shape at the top.  We discover later that it is modeled after the mast on the old sailing outriggers. 

Late in the afternoon we come back into civilizations, with more houses, more traffic, mini marts, gas stations and all the trappings of city life.  The main road skirts the edge of the hills while the cities down along the waterfront.  Driving becomes complicated, more so since we do not have a good map.  As we work our way down into the city we come to more and more one way streets.  There is no such thing as neat, tidy blocks.  The streets wander every which way, going off at odd angles and circling back on themselves and changing named at each corner.  We figure out where the hotel should be and aim in that general direction  Eventually we even spot the hotel but it is several streets away and we cannot figure out how to get there.  Just when we get close we are diverted off by a no left turn sign or a one way street and sent back up the hill again.  An then suddenly, we find ourselves right in front of it.  Quickly we pull into a parking place and take a deep breath.  The car stays parked unless we leave town.  We will explore on foot. 

As usual, the hotel does not quite match the impression given in the on line pictures.  We get checked in and climb two flights of stairs to the top floor and a very large room overlooking the pool with a view of the city.  The first impression is that the room is cool, almost cold    We have been hot and sweaty for so long.  And the second is a large free standing bed.  Wow.  We have not slept in a whole bed since we were home six months ago.  A bed where we can get in and out without crawling over each other.  A bed where my feet can’t touch the roof.  A bed we can sit on and bounce on and stretch out on.   This might be worth the price of the trip right here.  The room itself is large with a kitchen area about four times as big as the boat galley.  There is a stove, refrigerator, sink, electric tea kettle and cupboards with various dishes and utensils.  And a bathroom with a shower.   And a lounge area with a table and chairs and a couple of couches.  Not fancy but so much more room than we are used to. 

Once we are settled we go out exploring.  the city is not large but we have the same problem of streets not going where you expect them to.  Al least we don't have to obey the one way street sign.  We grab some dinner and groceries for tomorrow and soon head back to our wonderfully cool for mor a good nights sleep, with blankets. 

One of the reasons for the trip is to pick up parts for the boat and see if we can find someone who knows how to splice wire.  One of our shrouds has one broken wire.  Does not sound too bad but if it lets so we look the past and have a potential disaster on our hands so Alan wants to fix it now.   Supplies in Vuda are limited and Denerau is not much better. Suva is the main port  with a large yacht harbor and The Royal Suva Yacht Club so there should be a lot of boat repair shops and chandleries along the waterfront.  As far as I can tell, they are just north of town, too far to walk, so next day we reluctantly get back into the car and fight our way out of the city.  After several wrong turns and reroutings down one way streets, as we are passing the market going the wrong way for the third time, Alan finally makes an illegal U turn followed by a left across 3 lanes of traffic and we are headed in the right  direction and shortly spot a sign for the yacht club.  From the website, we had been led to expect something fancy, complete with security guards, super yacht docks and a dress code.  Not so.  It was just a small cluster of buildings in an industrial part of town fronting a shallow bay.  There were a few sail boats but mostly power boats for fishing tied up to the rickety docks.  There were the typical group of people drinking beer and exchanging sea stories in the bar.  We also somehow expected to be greeted with enthusiasm and a free beer or two when they learned that we had sailed fro the US but our introductions were mostly greeted with indifference.  We didi manage to get directions to one chandlery where there might be one man who knew how to do wire splicing   When we finally tracked him down and looked at a sample of his work Alan decided that he could do it himself just as well, without having to take it off and bring it into the shop and figure out how to put it back on again. 

Back in town, we spent the afternoon and the next morning exploring.  We walked through a lovely botanic garden, past a cricket match to the museum where we saw a wonderful old double hull canoe like those that populated the South Pacific islands.  The magnificent Palace Hotel has been completely restored to its former glory as a 19th century edifice on the outside.  Unfortunately, the new wings and the all of the bedrooms inside have been done in a modern steel and glass stye which does not really fit with the lovely, ornate grander of the main building.  However, the entrance lobby is stunning and there is a real Swiss bakery which actually has a happy hour, half price off of whatever is left after 4:00.  Alan had a ball.