Fiji

We landed at Nadi airport and picked up our pre-booked hire car, It was a cheap rental through a local company and you could tell, the boot wouldn't close properly and the fuel gauge did not work, but like I said, it was cheap and it did get us about! We drove over to our accommodation, unusually for us we had booked one place for the five nights as we planned on a bit of a chilled beach holiday. We had treated ourselves for a change and booked a Beachfront Bure at the Mango Bay Resort in Namatakula on the south coast, it was around a 2 hour drive from the airport. On arrival we were pretty impressed, we had our own beach front thatched cottage with under the stars shower room (a private shower without a roof) set in formal tropical gardens. There were sun loungers, hammocks and large bed swings, a pool shop and restaurant and direct access to the beach.

The following day we spent exploring the local area, we had a few hours on the beach and then we drove back along the coast road and explored a few of the local villages. We popped into a supermarket and couldn't believe that all the alcohol was sold in a separate caged room that resembled a prison cell, and the prices were through the roof, apparently most alcohol is imported and carries a hight tax, but we were glad of our duty free allowance when we saw Smirnoff vodka was around £80 a bottle, 5 times the price of the UK! The coast road is flanked on one side with lush tree covered hills and the pristine beaches and resorts on the other. We stopped at a few places, but Baravi beach was nice with a jetty that runs out into the bay. Later we returned to the hotel and chilled with the view as the sun went down.

The next morning we were up early as we had to drive over to Pacific Harbour, it was only about 25 miles away, but we had to be there for 8:15am as we had booked the Ultimate Shark Encounter with Aqua Trek dive centre. This is a two dive trip around 10 minutes outside the harbour. You dive down to around 18m and wait as up to 8 species of sharks begin to assemble in anticipation for the main event, a short shark feeding activity that gets the sharks going wild and in great numbers, at one point there seemed to be hundreds of sharks. The day is not cheap at around £140pp for the two dives plus snacks, but well worth it if you want to get up and personal with a few sharks. The following photos don't really do it justice so I have included a link to a video I made at the bottom of the page.

After the shark dive we spent the next couple of days in the resort enjoying the facilities and generally chilling on the beach swings, having a swim in the sea and  walking along the beach, occasionally popping in the car up to the supermarket a couple of miles up the road. We don't usually sit and do nothing, but after flying half way around the world, the mountains in Australia, the whales in Tonga and the Sharks in Fiji we felt we had earned a few days doing absolutely nothing!

After our relaxing day at the resort we decided to drive up to Suva, the capital city of Fiji, it was around 55 miles up the coast to take a look around. Suva is a quite uninspiring capital, a little bit grubby with a large docks area. The City seemed to revolve around its markets, there seemed to be several, separate fish, veg and flower markets, there were also quite a few over priced souvenir complexes where smaller retailers rented a shop space. We spent most of our time there wandering around the markets as it gave you a great glimpse into the tropical delights that were for sale and unfortunately all the types of fish and octopus.

Finally on our last morning in Fiji we had a drive back up to Nadi where we had a mooch around the shops for a few last souvenirs before returning the hire car at the airport and catching our flight back to Sydney for our last few days in Australia.

Click on the photo to follow the link to our video oe the Beqa Lagoon shark dives, the photos don't do it justice really, the sharks were close enough to kiss and too numerous to count!