16-21 July Life on the beach in Fiji

Treasure Island, Fiji

Oh boy it is tough being on the beach in Fiji... How will we ever be able to return to the harsh realities of cocktail free life.

Treasure Island, Fiji

We left San Francisco on Sunday 15 July with 30 minutes to spare on our visas and Arrived in Fiji on Tuesday 17th July after a 10 hour flight. We crossed the international date line on our way here and managed to miss Monday morning. One less Monday morning in our life will not hurt us.


We landed in Fiji without anywhere to stay. Our flight arrived in Nadi at 5.10 am (bad planning) and we spent the morning waiting at the airport while reading the Fiji Lonely Planet Guide. In spite of our early arrival a small group of Fijians singing and playing guitars had assembled in the arrivals hall to welcome us. They managed to completely distract the 300 people on our flight and we all stood and gawped at them and forgetting that we needed to get through passport control and to collect our luggage.


At 8am we made our way to Nadi city centre. Our destination was the official tourist information. An incredibly friendly and helpful lady there arranged booking an ocean front bure, a small Fijian style house, at Treasure Island. She also organised the logistics of getting us to and from the island as well as one night in another resort closer to the airport.


While we were in Nadi we sampled some local fish curry, it was very nice, and we also got to experience the hard sell of the street boys. Street boys are men rather than boys, they are not homeless and their objective is to prey on unsuspecting tourists. Their tactic is to ply tourists with Kava, the local narcotic fire water and then sell whatever wares they have available at hugely inflated prices. We managed to steer clear of them but not without one of them explaining to us that Fijian are no longer cannibals!


Treasure Island is a tiny coral island, about 10 miles west off the coast of Nadi. It is a haven of peace and relaxation. There is not much to do here apart from snorkeling, swimming, reading our books that we didn't have the energy to read while we were cycling and just sit around enjoying the good weather and those cocktails. It takes about 15 minutes to walk all the way around the island. There is a white sandy beach that stretches around the island and coconut palms and hibiscus bushes growing on the island. It looks much like what you'd imagine a tropical island would look like.

How high can Stephen manage to swing the hammock before Mette gets thrown off??

We had a very nice stay in Fiji, but the coup at the end of last year has left the political situation unstable and it has manifest itself especially on the mainland. Our last 24 hours in Fiji was a comedy of errors and all the warnings about Fiji time and being careful on the mainland came into reality. Our luggage got lost when we left Treasure Island and made its way to another glorious island and not the mainland where we were headed. Thankfully we were re-united with our bag a few hours later.

Running around Treasure Island while the sun was setting was very nice and the cocktail afterwards tasted sooo good. The resort rugby team was traning in the background

The following morning we got up at the crack at dawn to catch our 8.45am flight which it turned out had been rescheduled to 7am. We rushed through securityand managed to get through with a large bottle of water in our hand luggage. We rushed through emigration and didn't pay the Fiji $30 departure tax. We ran to the gate only to be told by a cross lady "not yet, not yet". The entire crew on our flight had gone on unofficial strike and the plane was waiting for another crew to arrive. 4 hours later we were very glad to be on our way to New Zealand... The joys of Fiji time and too low wages for flight attendants working for Air Pacific.