Back to Nadi, through Rain and Sun
22nd December, Fiji, Coral Coast
Today we left the Coral Coast - and The Beachouse - for good. It was with mixed emotions. Sure, the service we'd got hadn't been great here, but perhaps we'd just drawn the short straw? Who knows? The location was great, though, so it would be a shame to leave that behind. On the other hand, the Yasawa Islands that awaited us were supposed to be stunning, so we had that to look forward (albeit with the 'promise' of hotter temperatures and mosquitoes that would apparently 'eat us alive' ... we'll see).
The drive back to Nadi gave us the perfect demonstration of just how changeable the Fijian weather could be. As we sat in the mini bus waiting to move off, the sweat was dripping off us. It was a beaten up, much lived-in van that almost definitely didn't include air conditioning. Actually it did - it had windows. The driver got in, let out out a "phew" followed by a "It's very hot - let's get outta here." I replied: "If a local is saying it's hot, it's got to be hot!"
We got moving and just a few minutes down the road, the weather changed from being baking hot to torrential rain. The 'air conditioning' was switched off to prevent the rain streaming in (ie, we slid the windows shut!). It really is surprising just how different the weather can be from one minute to the next. Despite the coach journey taking over two and a half hours to get us from Nadi to the Coral Coast a couple of days ago, our return journey was just shy of 1 and a half hours. That could be attributed to the driver's carefree overtaking and general fearlessness or the weather conditions.
Moody skies over Nadi.
Nadi Bay Hotel does not have the most exciting location - there are no views of the ocean, town is a bus ride away and the road it sits on is nothing special. However, what it lacks in location it clearly makes up in service. Walking back into the hotel reception, we were immediately met with smiles of recognition (or at least that's how it appeared), and I was met with more smiles at the bar shortly afterwards. Good old Nadi Bay Hotel. We would only be staying for one night, but this was a little bit of comfort before the island jaunt that lay ahead.
For much of the afternoon Manda luxuriated in the air-conditioned room while I made tracks into town to use the Internet Café there. I waited for a short time by the bus stop and ran for a bus that pulled up further down the road but it drove away having dropped just one passenger off. The young girl then explained in perfect English to me that it was a privately chartered bus and that I could get another bus or jump in one of the mini buses for the same price of 50 cents (approx. 17p). By mini bus, she was referring to the numerous Toyota mini vans in various state of disrepair that continually went back and forth through Nadi Town and the surrounding areas. These were not licensed taxis, but that did not stop people using them. In fact, most had had three rows of seats put in and most of them would be full. Unlike buses, these entrepreneurs would pick you up anywhere and drop you anywhere along the road. It's traditional for no single seat cover to match any other in the the minivan, as far as I could tell.
One thing about travelling with a laptop is that you can very infrequently get emails downloaded to the hard drive - mostly it's a case of checking messages online and responding accordingly. Sometimes, though, the sheer number is too great to respond to. It would be ideal to get all of that stuff on the laptop, take it away, consider each response and reply offline, then send it all at a later date. This is what I wanted to do today. However, here was the challenge:
- I was in Fiji (lest you forget)
- I have a Mac
- And it's running OS X 10.3 (Panther)
That is not the best combination when trying to get connected on their network, but given their excellent English and Panther's connection setup assistant I was up-and-running within minutes. I'm not sure I'll always be this lucky.