Fiji, Day 6

With nothing planned and no desire to stay in the resort all day, today was spent in the sea, in a jungle and at a market. We had heard that there was a walk in the jungle opposite the resort that would take us up to the top of a big hill, which would be like a lookout. This walk took us through a tiny village, which felt really intrusive as we seemed to be walking right through people’s homes, and into some quite thick forest, along a river and up through some land planted with crops – all the time accompanied by a small herd of dogs from the village. We soon lost the path, and never did find the lookout, but we did get a mini self-guided trip  through the jungle.

Fiji, Day 4

Today we went for a day trip to Suva, Fiji’s capital city. We went by bus, which takes about 2 hours so there was a film on for the duration of the trip – it was unsubtitled Bollywood, so trying to work out what was going on passed the time. Normally, I would have wanted to look at things out of the window as I’m so far from home and what I’m used to, but the rain was coming down so hard that I can’t see anything further away than the edge of the road. Not being able to see wasn’t much of a problem with the Bollywood distraction, but the difficulty came when over half way there it was unwillingly revealed the the rain was now so bad that Nadi (the other city) was flooded and so there would be no return bus that day.

Day 50

Spent the morning at the Salamanca Market,  which is fantastic. 

Day 23

I started off today with a walk through the ‘award winning’ Flinders Street market, which was very nice for a local market,  but I’m not sure what they could have won an award for.  I didn’t buy anything,  but I’m always tempted by the belts made from crocodile skin,  and this time by the cane toad purses,  although I’m not sure how I would feel about actually getting one of those out in a shop.

Day 21

The final day on Magnetic Island,  and the 32 degrees weather has caught up with me, and I’ve spent the morning being tired and reading a book. About an hour on the beach in the afternoon has added to my collection of tan lines but thankfully not my ant bites, so the insect repellant must actually be working!  In the evening I visited the other night market, and was lucky that I hadn’t had pudding yet and so could justify a mango pavlova and sharing a pineapple cake and packet of Christmas fudge.