Around The World In 80 Waves

I have a ridiculously early flight from Sydney to Nadi in Fiji and of course get the usual surcharges for daring to travel with a surfboard. However I should say that with Fiji Airways it was at least done with a sympathetic tone and a smile.

I manage a two hour kip on the four hour flight too, but end up being the very last person off the plane due to waiting for the lady sat next to me and her elderly mother, who wasn’t at all mobile, to be able to get up and slowly make their way into the terminal without holding up the other passengers.

I didn’t mind too much because I have learnt that travelling anywhere on this trip, is a non event of a day, so there is no point rushing it.

That was until I saw there were only a handful of immigration desks open and I had to wait in line for over an hour, which was tad tedious.

Fiji is no further from Australia than New Zealand, and with it’s close ties to both I had high hopes of my phone working for a change when I get off a plane. Par for the course on this trip though, I don’t get a working signal when I switch my phone on upon arrival.

The trip around the island of Viti Levu to get to the Waidroka Bay resort  on the southern coast where I am staying for the next few days takes hours. As a consequence my driver suggests we stop along the way to get a bite to eat and a drink at his friend’s restaurant

Raju’s is run by Rakesh Singh who you see here posing in front of his bar, which is adorned with pictures of his sporting family. He used to be a professional boxer although I couldn’t understand if he had actually retired or not despite being in his forties. Like everybody I meet in Fiji he was incredibly friendly, and if anything in his case it was too much so. He couldn’t have known anything about it but after recent events I wasn’t really in the mood to hear every gory detail about how he had found his father after he had killed himself in the first five minutes of our conversation. 

It made me incredibly uncomfortable and that he wanted all my contact details in the UK and to know how long I would be away was a bit weird too, so I passed on the address of my old flat and just said two weeks!

The food was great though and the beer was cheap so I left on good terms after me meal. Once back on the road I arrive at the resort, after a few hours looking out the window at the local countryside and sugar canes crops .