Getting from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to Suva, Fiji is definitely a road less traveled. So we had to get a flight out of Uzbekistan to someplace that will have a flight to an airport where you can fly to Fiji. So our route took us to Dubai, UAE, then to Singapore, then to Melbourne Australia and then to the international airport in Nadi, Fiji and finally a 3 hr. bus trip around the southern part of Fiji to the capitol, Suva.

Dubai
In the Dubai airport they have a whole terminal for Emirates airlines. Our layover was something like 11 hours so we went to a nearby hotel and got some sleep. Our Emirates flight was long to Singapore and then long again to Melbourne, Australia.
In Melbourne we got a Fiji Airlines flight to Nadi on the west side of the main island.
Now we’ve been on the road almost 48 hours. We got to Nadi, Fiji pretty early in the morning and got through customs, etc. and found where the ‘Express’ busses pick up passengers.
The more than three hour bus trip took us around the southern part of the island, across a few rivers and finally to the capitol, Suva. Suva is about 330,000 people. The largest city in Fiji. We hopped in a taxi to take us to where we were going to live for the first month here.

It was about a fifteen minute ride to the hotel. They showed us our room overlooking the swimming pool.
Yikes! It was like a cesspool. And that is just the starter. We asked about the wi-fi in the room that they listed. No. No wi-fi in the room. They wanted $5 a day to connect to the wi-fi in the public areas. That would be over $250 for the month. No to that. We worked out a way to turn our phone into a hotspot and tether our laptop and iPad to the phone to get internet at no extra cost. Ok. Next, the restaurant. Nope. No restaurant. Closed down. Ability to cook? No cooking. That’s not going to work. We complained that they advertised we could cook and that is important to us. So they replaced the rusted out toaster and supplied a rice cooker and an electric skillet. Then they gave us access to the large refrigerator in the shut down restaurant as the one in our room is smaller than those dorm or hotel room refrigerators. Out on our balcony there were three chairs. All rusted out and broken and unusable. We complained and they gave us two chairs we could actually sit in. Onward to the bathroom. I know, this is getting to be a sad saga. We took a shower in the tub/shower and as I was turning off the water, the showerhead blew off and just missed me. Water shot across the room and blasted onto the far wall until I got the water shut off. Later they replaced the showerhead for us. Charlotte put her towel back on the towel rack and it fell out of the wall onto the floor – not the towel, the towel rack. They sent a guy to fix it, but the same day after he fixed it, the rack fell out again. You can see how they are trying to make things right, but there is so much to get right.
When we woke up the next morning, they had drained that nasty water out of the swimming pool and scrubbed the scum off the walls and replastered.
Over the next couple days they retiled the whole swimming pool.
They are still working on it. They have filled it with water. There are cool underwater lights now. Today they are still working on rebuilding the deck around the pool. Do you think we will actually be able to use that pool before we leave?
In the restaurant area we eat our meals out on a deck overlooking a mangrove forest with the sea in the background. The ocean water actually comes right up to the building.

We are definitely seeing the Fiji that tourists don’t usually see. At the end of our driveway was a huge pile of trash.

Not just this pile, but every third or fourth house had a similar pile. And then there was a huge amount of trash just everywhere along and on the streets everywhere.
It’s about a half mile walk to the large grocery store and this is the ditch along the sidewalk as you get close to the grocery store.

Found that Coca-Cola and Fiji Water had a bottle/can buy back program at their factory where they paid five cents for every one of their bottles and cans and recycled the rest that weren’t their brand. Then found the factory was less than a mile from where we were living! A few days later we walked the streets to their factory, picking up all the plastic and aluminum cans we found. We filled three huge bags before we got to the factory. They gave us a free coke while we waited for the crew to get done with their tea break and then we watched them sort it all out, add up the ones they pay out and they gave us $6.95! First time anywhere in the world where we got paid for picking up stuff! The next day we got 5 bags of that trash strewn on the streets. The fishermen here set their nets where the rivers empty into the sea. They bring in as many as 10,000 plastic bottles at a time and get about $200 for their haul.

We walked to the nearest beach access. It was trashed out too.
Payday!!! $6.95 Fiji. (That’s about $3.34 in US dollars)
We kept picking up bags of trash and as of this writing, we’ve made it all the way up to the grocery store. 20 bags worth. And look how better that ditch by the store looks.
We get help from some people and inspire others. A teacher is interested in having us talk to his school kids about doing a trash cleanup project. This fellow thanked us profusely and apologized for his fellow Fijians littering. We assured him it was a global problem, not unique to Fiji. Meanwhile another man started picking up trash by hand and putting it in our bag.

We are about 4 miles from downtown Suva, so we got a bus pass, an e-transport card, to make it easy to hop on these open air busses and get around. No windows in these busses.

If it starts raining, passengers roll down those green canvas covers.
The downtown bus stand is right next to the huge market.
The bus stand and the market are right along the harbor. A person can walk for miles along the sea.
This is the one and only floating restaurant in Suva. We plan to eat there before we leave Suva.
The Grand Pacific Hotel. Outside of Australia and New Zealand, this was the most elegant place to stay in the South Pacific for many years. It went downhill at a point but has been fully restored to elegance.
By far, the most common vehicle here is the Toyota Prius. The vast majority of taxi’s are Priuses.
Now here is just a small slice of what the housing looks like for the majority of people in Fiji. A very different world from the multi-million dollar resorts.
One of the nice parks in Suva is Thurston Gardens.
110 year old water fountain in Thurston Gardens.
Thurston Garden Clock Tower. At the back of Thurston Gardens in the Fiji Museum.
The museum also has a very nice restaurant, Ginger Cafe.
We lucked into watching an Indian band do a video shoot in Thurston Gardens.
Charlotte came upon this Cane Toad in a parking lot near the ocean. What a tongue! They can flick that thing out so fast – 5 times faster than you can blink. The insect that gets stuck to the sticky tongue experience 12g. Astronauts only have to bear 3g.
This is the number 1 rated restaurant in Suva according to Trip Advisor. It is a real nice Indian restaurant.
I love mango lassi.
Yes, this is really where Fiji water comes from. It costs less than half what it costs in the states. (Price is in Fiji dollars – each dollar worth .45 cents US). Here they don’t advise drinking the tap water, although we have drunk the tap water in a lot of places where we were advised not to. So far we have steered clear of the tap water here and in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Nearly 6 years traveling the world now and haven’t had a major intestinal problem yet.
Back to our own restaurant, where we are cooking our meals, love these hand carved ceiling fans.
The nearest restaurant is run by Grace Farms. Three pages of vegetarian options. Great smoothies. There is a bit of controversy about this organization. It is run by a South Korean religious organization that sent 400 followers to Fiji to do business in what they believe is the promised land. Some say they treat their followers here a bit like slaves. Their female leader in in jail with a 7 year sentence for, I guess, human rights violations. But the organization is contesting it.
Even some of the dead leaves are worth a good look.
One of the ‘shacks’ along the road did this hand art on their wall.
Lots of mangroves between the open water and the land.
July moon rise.
July sun rise.

Ok. We’ve been here about two weeks and in the morning we are headed into the rainforest to an eco-lodge for three nights. We generally stay in places we can afford (under $50 a night with ability to cook our own food).

Fiji Rainforest

A twenty minute taxi ride, up and up through the outskirts of Suva brought us to the Rainforest Eco-Lodge. We checked into a small room with a shared balcony overlooking a small pond. Lush trees and undergrowth all around. By far the greatest entertainment here was a Kingfisher that would dart into the water in the flash of an eye and grab a morsel to eat.

The only place to eat was the lodge restaurant. It was on a much larger pond or small lake.

We took a couple mile hike out into the forest to check out some waterfalls. A little disappointed that a gang of street dogs followed us all the way, making sure there would be no wildlife for us to encounter.

On our last day there, we changed rooms to a two story apartment with a wonderfully crafted spiral staircase.