Fiji Trip, Part One

I’ve now been back from Fiji for five full days, which is as long as I was there. This is as good a time as any to blog about the trip. The question I had was, how?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do one long post, break them up by day, or maybe arrange them thematically. In the end, I decided to do a bit of both, and I’ll include in each one my observations and opinions related to that post.

Today, I begin with the stuff I posted to my personal Facebook on Day 1, the day we arrived in Fiji, January 18, 2024.

I’m, beginning ist as I did on Facebook, namely, by sharing some scenery photos first, even though I took the photos of my room first. As it happens, there’s more to say about my room, anyway.

The resort is located on the Coral Coast, along the southern coast of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island. It’s on a road almost halfway between Nadi (pronounced “Nandy” and rhymes with “Brandy”) and the capital, Suva. We arrived and departed from Nadi. The beach by the resort faces a lagoon protected by a coral reef—what gives the Coral Coast its name. The waves break on the reef, but the lagoon is calm, even placid and glasslike, depending on the time of day, the tide, and the weather. Folks in our group went snorkelling and kayaking in the lagoon.

The temperatures were pretty warm—around 30-32 degrees (mid 80s F), however, the humidity was at least 90% every day. Some days it was so bad I felt like I couldn't breathe properly. It rained every afternoon, as it tends to do in the tropics. Sometimes the rain was heavy and with lightning and thunder, and other times it was just steady. Whichever we got, it stopped by evening.

The resort has two distinct sections: The older, original part (where my room and some of the others were—half of us, in fact) and the newer building where the other half of us were, and that has its own pool. I’ll talk about the newer section in a different post.

The photo up top is from the beach right by the resort, just down from where the pool in the older section of the resort is. Here are a couple more photos from the same general area:

This is looking the other way from the same area as the photo up to.

The older pool has a covered area, and we had our lunch there twice, which was really nice. The rooms—called “villas” were very similar, as near as I could tell (I only saw two). My room was on the second floor of the main building, where reception and the restaurant were. And my room is a topic in itself.

This is the view from the pool area in the older section. 

My Room

When I first saw my room, I thought it looked pretty nice, and the air conditioner made it feel especially nice. Before I went outside and took the photos above, I took some photos of my room:

The view from the front door toward the balcony.

Looking along the right wall from the door, there's what appears to be a futon-like sofa with a wardrobe beyond it. The fridge and TV (which I never used) is at the back on the left.

The photo at left is looking the other way, including the strange loft-like space above the bed. I put my phone on the selfie stick to find out what was up there: Nothing but some extra flooring for the room. The top of the bed was very high—roughly hip-height from the floor, so my feet dangled when I sat on the edge. I haven't experienced that since I was a little kid.

When I first looked at the bathroom, I thought it was stacked-stone tile work. It was only later that I realised it was a kind of 3D wall panel made to look like that, however, it was very well done and installed and grouted in such a way that it was really convincing. In the photo above, the thing on the floor by the toilet is a door stop, because the door to the bathroom swings into that space.

The bathroom was quite nice, even though I wasn't going to take a bath, nor do I like bowl-type basins. It looked really nice, which I'm sure was the point.

Aesthetics aside, the shower wasn't great. I started thinking of it as my "morning dribble" because the pressure was so low. There also wasn't any hot water, though it was a cool-warm temperature (staff suggested to others that they let the shower run for fifteen minutes to get hot water). I didn't mind the temperature because it cooled me right down before heading out into the high heat/humidity to meet the others for breakfast. Family members who originally had the room right next to mine were moved because their shower sprayed out on all directions. I didn't have that, but the valve to direct water to either the rainshower head or the handheld thing on a hose didn't work: Turning it to the hand-held one left the rain head still going, but at less power. I left it on the rain head all the time.

In the room itself, I noticed things had become a bit neglected. There was laminate flooring in the room, and it had begun to curl at the seams, possibly because of the very high humidity, but it could also have been because of people coming into the room wet from swimming. At any rate, either porcelain tile or else luxury vinyl flooring would've been a better option, in my opinion.

Despite all that, I had no real complaints about the room. I was quite removed from all the others, though, which was fine for sleeping, obviously, but it meant I had no idea if folks were at the pool or whatever. Still, when we selected rooms, we didn't have a feel for the layout of the place, so we had no way of knowing I'd be off in the edge of the resort.

The food in the restaurant was excellent—no complaints at all (well, apart from poached eggs—they were overcooked). Staff were really nice and friendly, and made an effort to learn our names.

We wanted a mostly relaxing holiday, and we got that. The place was nice enough, and even if it needed a bit of attention, we still enjoyed our time there. I could've done with less humidity, though.