Fiji Trip – The final post

Me at Nadi Airport.

And now, finally, is the last post in my series about my trip to Fiji. I planned on doing this last week, but life got in the way. It’s not the first time that’s happened, of course, and it certainly won’t be the last. On the positive side, the delay gave me time to fix the typos in the parts of this series I’d already published.

The day we left went reasonably well, all things considered. I say that because the rental cars we had weren’t great, and the replacement one was smaller than the original. So three of our group took a taxi to the airport, and I went in the care they would’ve gone in, something that gave me the entire back seat. The other four went in the car I had been in on the trip to the resort and on our little trips. What this meant in practice was that we were all more comfortable—less squashed—than we were on the trip to the resort.

We got to the airport in Nadi with plenty of time. I went inside with the sister-in-law I’d travelled to Auckland with so we could check our suitcases. The selfie up top is shortly after I was inside the terminal.

Our flying chariot awaits.

When we went through security, I took my devices out of my bag, of course, but I also put all my leftover Fiji coins in the tray and took off my belt, too, something that I didn’t do in Auckland. It worked: I didn’t have to go through full body scanner (aka “the porn scan”) or get a pat down. In fact, it was the fastest I’ve ever gone through security ever since “security theatre” began at airports in 2001.

We went to the gate area and had a quick lunch (I had Burger King, for the record). I bought some snacks for the plane (rather than buying anything on board), and basically waited and waited and waited. Boarding finally started, and we headed toward the plane.

In Auckland, we had to take a bus to the plane and walk up steps. In Nadi, it was a normal boarding through a skybridge. Much more civilised. I found my seat, and just as in Auckland, the screen in front of me said hello to me—here’s the evidence, along with my on board selfie:

The flight was uneventful, and we ended up landing roughly on time, despite waiting around 20 minutes after boarding to be cleared for take-off. Once in Auckland, I had to go through the “something to declare” line in customs because of the artwork the family had given me: The hook looked like it might be made from a seashell, it had a line woven from natural fibres, and it was in a wooden frame. The agent cleared me without even inspecting it.

It was a loooooooooong walk to my sister-in-law’s car (the carpark area is being totally reworked, and the complaints about it have piled so hight that planes have to fly around the stack. Sort of.

When we were on the road and close to Hamilton, I texted my cousin-in-law who’d offered to bring Leo to my house, and shortly after that we found out the motorway was closed (it’s being re-built for around the hundredth time since it opened a decade or so ago (slight exaggeration, but it has been worked on many times, allegedly because they cut too many corners when it was first built on the swampy land, and constant repairs have been necessary). By the time we found that out, my cousin-in-law was already on her way.

We needed to take a detour, and at first neither of us knew where we’d ended up—but then we reached a roundabout and I knew exactly how to get to my house from there, something that’s still a pretty unusual thing for me in Hamilton. My cousin-in-law was already at my house when we finally got there.

My sister-in-law left for home, and I rushed inside and turned on the air conditioners. My cousin-in-law and I visited for awhile, with Leo sitting right up against her on the sofa. He eventually forgave me (I shared a photo of him and me from that night in a post a few days after I got home).

In each of my posts in this series, I’ve talked about some of my impressions relating to the things I saw and did on the days I was talking about in the post. Some of what I said, like about the omnipresence of overt Christianity and religiosity in Suva, was actually true about what I saw elsewhere, too. I also saw what we’d consider poverty everywhere: The traditional lodge-style thatched homes had nearly all been replaced by simple frame houses that can be seen in any New Zealand town, but with one difference: In Fiji, they often had no doors nor glass in the window openings. Instead, the windows might have wooden louvres, or maybe just some sort of sheer net-like fabric, a bit like window screens in curtain form.

Every village along the road had speed bumps in them to slow down traffic, but those same speed bumps were sometimes in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. In general, the roads we took were pretty well maintained, with some exceptions here and there.

The road from Nadi to the resort often reminded me of New Zealand, with similar vegetation. However, the road from the resort to Suva was more what I expected Fiji to look like: Lots of palm trees of various species, and other tropical plants.

The people I dealt with were all polite and friendly, and they really do say “Bula!” when you enter a shop or whatever. I’d seen that in tourism commercials, but I didn’t know if it was real—it is (it essentially translates as “hello” or “welcome”).

Cash was still used a lot—something I’m not used to anymore—but EFTPOS (debit cards not on a credit card network) were harder to use. The resort had fairly decent wifi (I installed a VPN on my devices right before I left Hamilton so I could use their wifi safely), but there was no television, and I know Fiji has TV broadcasts. Some TVs in the resort were “smart TVs”, so they could stream Netflix (I don’t have an account), and some rooms had DVD players with a selection that could be borrowed, though some of our group tried that and found that many DVDs wouldn’t play. I never even turned the TV in my room on.

Once I was on the road to Auckland, I felt better than I’d felt in weeks, because I was beyond the stress and anxiety of my preparations to leave, especially having to leave Leo in someone else’s care for so long. Apart from the rocky “pre-trip” time, I enjoyed the experience, and had a good time with our group.

Having said all that, I have no desire to go back to Fiji, nor to go to any other tropical south Pacific island nation. They’re all different, and absolutely are not all the same, but this trip taught me that I don’t cope well with heat combined with high humidity. Also, I learned a long time ago (when Nigel and I lived in Paeroa) that I’m a city boy at heart, and a short time in a remote area is fun, but if it was too long, I’d get over it pretty fast.

The length of our trip was perfect: The day we left I was absolutely ready to go home, and looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, a decent warm shower, and, most of all, seeing Leo. I think even one more day could well have been too long for my liking.

I don’t know how many more opportunities to travel I’ll have in the years ahead, nor whether they’d be solo or a group trip (though I doubt I’d be willing to go on a long trip by myself). I know that, as I said only once at the very start, the trip would’ve been more fun for me if Nigel had been there. I was well aware that my last overseas trip was when he and I went to Australia’s state of Queensland in 2017, and my last trip away anywhere was to Queenstown in the South Island back in November of 2020. It turned out that it was good for me to get away: I didn’t realise how much I needed a complete break until I was on one.

Now, though, it’s time to push on with everyday life again.

Previously:
”Travelling gratitude” – After I was home.
Fiji Trip, Part One
Fiji Trip, Part Two
Fiji Trip, Part Three
Fiji Trip, Part Four
Fiji Trip, Part Five