Fiji

It was a short hop across the International Date Line to our two ports in Fiji. First stop was Suva, Fiji, the largest town in the South Pacific. It was a gritty place, but, interesting and we really felt like we had arrived somewhere different. Even though we were in a big town, there were still natural sights to be seen, like these flying foxes (bats) that were hanging in trees near the Parliament buildings.

These colourful little birds were only about as long as your thumb and it was a delight to see them flitting about the lawns.

Outside the Parliament buildings there was a Changing of the Guard at noon which we were lucky enough to catch.

Unusually, it was a cloudy day in Suva, with occasional deluges of rain. I can’t imagine how the guards stand out there, in uniform, on a hot sunny day. We enjoyed the rain even though it was still steamy because, I have to say it, we’ve been finding it too hot! The contrast between the freezing cold air conditioning on the ship and the real world doesn’t give us any time to acclimatize and we’ve been having difficulty getting up the energy to do a lot of walking in the heat. With the rain we were able to walk for about three hours which was enough to get a good feel for the town and visit the small, but, excellent Fiji Museum.

We left Suva in torrential rain at midnight and headed for a small island chain to the south.

At seven a.m. we anchored just off Dravuni Island where about two hundred people live on a speck of land about two miles long inside the Great Astrolabe Reef (the fourth largest barrier reef in the world).

We were only going to be there a few hours, so, didn’t have much opportunity for exploring, but, we did go ashore to walk the beach and see the village. There is a small school and the island is lush with coconut and breadfruit trees.