Adagio Cruising: October 23, 2017

Greetings from Fiji.

Our flight was delayed leaving Seattle due to issues at LA, then we arrived Saturday morning about 40 minutes late due to an additional delay leaving LAX. Other than that, it was an uneventful flying experience. The plane from LA to Fiji was the biggest that Cindy has ever been on. 8 rows wide. There was good in-flight entertainment and we each watched several movies during our 11 1/2 hour flight.

Cindy's largest airplane. Cool, trendy lighting!

Once in Fiji, we went to the car rental place to get our car, which took FOREVER to get through. There was nobody at the Bugdet car rental desk when we arrived. After about 10 minutes the agent finally returned, but then she seemed to be having troubles getting our transaction completed. It took well over an hour for her to get it done, even though we had booked it online and had our confirmation number printed our for her. Then, we went to get the car and she could not find one, except a purple Suzuki. Purple! She looked at that car for about 5 minutes and then wandered around the lot for a few minutes. Then, she said, "Follow me. I'm going to get you a different car." So back inside we went, with all of our luggage. It took another 10-15 minutes for her to get a different car lined up for us. Finally, we got out of there with a very small, bright red Suzuki 4 door. By the way, they drive on the left side of the road here, so it is a very strange experience for Cindy because she has never seen this before. She has just finished Driver's Ed, and seeing me drive on the "wrong" side of the road is freaking her out a bit... :-)

Waiting, and waiting. It seemed to take forever to get our car.

Cindy and I then tried to drive to our hotel, but got completely lost. I had the mental picture in my mind completely backwards somehow. I thought our hotel was in one direction from the airport, but it was in the exact opposite direction. Finally, we got oriented and made it to our hotel. We were there at about 8:30AM, but check-in time was not until 2:00PM. We then left our luggage in their storage room and went out to drive around around for several hours exploring. This island is not the lush, green, tropical, jungle-like paradise I had imagined. It is more open, with fields, cows, flat land, and far more brown than I expected. I was expecting something like Hawaii, Bora Bora, or Tahiti. In some ways this place reminds us of Mexico. We drove through some residential areas and there were dogs running loose everywhere, fences around most of the homes, many with barbed wire on the top, and barred windows. The houses are small, with metal roofs and stucco siding. Much like parts of Mexico.

We drove to Port Denarau, which is where most of the boat-based tourist activites depart from. We ate lunch and walked around. It was hot, in the upper 80's. We are both very tired and decided to take it easy today, so we did not schedule any activity. We went back to our hotel, but got totally lost again and ended up going the wrong direction. My internal compass is NOT functioning in the southern hemisphere. Maybe my orientation system is working, but I have not adjusted to the fact that we are on the other side of the equator? Hmmmm.....

We went swimming in the ocean in front of our hotel. The water is very warm, perhaps in the low 80's, so you can stay in the water a long time without getting cold. However, the swimming was not inspiring. The wind was blowing and the waves were just big enough to stir up the sand/mud and made the water very murky. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant and ended up going to sleep about 8:00. Neither of us could stay awake any longer. We slept in until 8:30 the next morning. Wow, that's the longest I have slept in years. Hopefully, we will be mostly over the jet-lag now. It is 5 hours earlier here than at home, but it's a day later since we crossed the international date line.

View from our dinner table at our hotel.

The first sunset in Fiji. Ominous clouds. It never rained though.

Our hotel offers a free breakfast, which was good. After breakfast we booked a half-day cruise to a small island where we spent the day snorkeling, looking at coral, relaxing, and enjoying the beautiful climate. It was in the upper 80's again, but the nice breeze made it much more comfortable.