Fiji & the South Pacific
I can’t help singing “I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair” in my head when I hear the words “South Pacific”!
Hmmm … Fiji, difficult to describe. I think it best to say that unless I was on a 5* hotel compound with white sand and crystal-clear sparkling waters, I would give Fiji a miss. This was a real disappointment to me because it was, along with New Zealand and the Panama Canal, on my hit list of places to visit.
I don’t think P&O did us any favours by berthing in two container ports, Lautoka and the capital city of Suva … and Suva on a Sunday – again! Unfortunately, cascading truck-sized piles of rotting vegetation spilled onto the main roads and in 33-degree heat, with 90 per cent humidity, did not paint their capital city in a good light. Man, it was warm and almost like breathing over a boiling kettle. I expressed my mystification to Chris that I didn’t understand how my feet could get sweaty and slippery in flip flops!
It doesn’t appear to be a wealthy island … in fact Fiji itself is split into two, a north and south island, we only visited the south island, more properly called Vita Levu. Lautoka has a municipal market which we wondered around being assaulted by sights and smells of stuff we mostly didn’t recognise and congratulating ourselves when we identified fresh vegetables like okra. Everything looks so different in its natural state, we’ve been sanitised by our supermarkets providing straight bananas and perfectly round tomatoes … there was stuff I wanted to buy but didn’t know whether it was to clean my toilet or chop up into stew. There was a whole table dedicated to fresh ginger and you could barely see the man behind his table because of the vast array of freshly picked green herbs he had on display; the smell was amazing.
As always, the bloody website won’t upload the photos!
Desperate for a drink we were ashamed, when in Suva, we identified the only place where we thought we may get a decent coffee and felt comfortable that we wouldn’t be picking up some fly-borne disease … yep, McDonalds!
Each time you leave the ship in the poorer countries, there are always crowds of locals around the port exit offering you a ‘special price’ taxi, a place ‘only the locals know’ or a ‘city tour like no other’, they’re quite respectful if you say ‘no thank you’ and keep walking. However, returning to the ship after a couple of hours trekking round the town, I almost retched when a lady, seeing me lumbering down the path said “foot massage for you ma’am? 30 minutes?” Oh. My. Dear. God. I didn’t even want to touch my own feet, I could not – if hell had had me – put my feet on her lap and let her touch them!
I hesitate to speak the words out loud, and it’s only taken 10 weeks, but I may have got half a sea leg. My head doesn’t feel quite so cotton woolly and my tummy is a lot less sloshy 😊
We’re on day-2-of-5 at sea but we have to do 11th March twice because we cross the International Date Line, so we’re counting it as 6 days at sea. We also cross the equator again and have the Crossing the Line Ceremony, I imagine this is for all the people who joined in Sydney or New Zealand, much like the last time I shall studiously avoid “kissing the fish” which apparently is the tradition when asking permission from King Neptune to cross the equator. It’s all a bit of stuff and nonsense fun for the passengers but I was very disappointed not to see some kind of colourful bunting rope out, like the end of a 100m sprint race, to signify the equator … I shall put it in my Trip Advisor review; but I don’t know why they ask you to wash your hands every time you enter the dining room and then ask you to all kiss the same manky fish.
So far, I’m 12 novels and 4 audio books in, we’ve watched the same Top Gear episodes 4 times, re-runs of Father Brown, Sister Boniface and Shakespeare & Hathaway and am working my way backwards through GBBO, it’s currently 2023 I think … we have no choice in this of course, the programmes just play on a loop. The ridiculous thing is that the loop is static but our time changes which means that when we boarded, we were watching, for example, Great British Bake Off at 8pm but because of our gaining time, we’re now watching it at 8AM. In the next couple of time changes it will be on at 10am etc until it works its way back to 8PM!
The Captain has been trying to prepare us for not actually getting into Hawaii. We’ve been spectacularly lucky with the weather since we left Southampton; we’ve threaded our way through numerous storms either leaving them before they hit our port or they’ve blown themselves out before we’ve arrived. However, it looks as though we’re going to arrive in Honolulu right in the middle of some of the worst weather they’ve had in ages.
We’re yet to fully work out how the sea can be “confused” 😊
With our six days at sea, I’ve had to satisfy my needlework fix and I’ve been busy. I’ve had a rifle through the fabric I bought in Australia, and balancing the pattern on the end of the bed, I’ve used one of the new ones I also bought in Oz.
I’m already onto my second project! 😊