Around Fiji

Slept like the dead last night, worn out from travelling all day. We had a sumptuous breakfast at the Novotel next morning before picking up our hire car from Nadi Airport and hitting the road for Fulton College, via Kings Road across the top of Vita Levu, the main island of Fiji. Weather was fine and sunny, 29o C and moderately humid. The air con in our Mazda 6 handles it well.

Our hire car at Ba Hospital

Ros spent six years of her childhood at Fulton College, a Seventh-Day Adventist theological institution about 30 km north of Suva, which is why we are returning there. Her parents worked and taught there during her stay, and Ros has many fond memories of Fulton.

Fiji’s main export is sugar, judging from all the sugar cane fields we saw. It is cut down by hand still, by men wielding wicked-looking machetes, and stacked on tiny railway cars (see picture) which are shunted by equally tiny rail engines down an extremely narrow gauge track to Lautoka, the main port on the western side of the island, where it is processed and exported. It is also loaded onto trucks, resulting in an extremely wide load – guess what we got stuck behind just after leaving Nadi? Fijian driving instruction is – well let’s say “open to interpretation” and road laws are extremely flexible – so drivers like to do strange things, like overtake me and the wide load on a double white line on a bend. Indicator use is practically non-existent but the drivers are courteous and will give way readily.

Sugar cane train

Cow on roadside

Fijian towns are garish and noisy, visually. Lots of bright colours and over-the-top advertising. All along the way you see people walking by the roadside, animals (mostly cows, goats and horses) tethered to crop the verge, and the occasional smoke-belching bus and taxi. Automotive maintenance seems to be somewhat limited here, too.

We reached the little town of Ba, Ros’s brother’s birthplace (Robert). We saw a sign saying Mission Hospital this way, but after several runs up and down the road without finding it, we resorted to asking a young Fijian woman walking along the road how to find it. She was, as it turned out, actually on her way there herself for a check-up. We gave her a lift and she guided us to it (see photos).

Ba Mission Hospital

Do 60 if you dare!

Next it was time to find Nadarivatu, the place where Ros’s parents had stayed when they first came to Fiji. We found the turn-off and headed inland, but the road quickly deteriorated into a rocky, bumpy, pot-holed, gravel nightmare. We endured 3 km of bone-shaking journey at 20km/hour, a rate that would take us an hour to get there, and an hour back! Remembering the hire car lady saying this car was not allowed off the sealed roads, we finally turned back to save the car and our aching muscles. We laughed when we passed a small town, as the speed limit sign said 60 km/hr, but we dared not go above 20 km/hr! (see photo)

Back on the main road which is a little better than the Nadarivatu road because, although the road is sealed, it has many, many pothole repairs, is narrow and winding and the maximum speed limit is 80km/hour. Not that we could comfortably reach that speed except on a few exceptional parts of the Kings Road. And then there are the speed humps. Not the tame ones we have in Australia, but vicious, gearbox removing humps that you dare not go over any faster than 20km/hour. Every town bar a few have several of these speed-humps, making the 50 km/hour speed limit unreachable as you had to keep slowing down for the speed humps!

Housing is very basic

We saw an incredible range of housing, from basic tin huts with windows made of tin and propped open to let light and air inside. Others can be almost palatial, but most are what we would describe as very humble abodes. Our houses would be mansions to these people, but they are happy with their lot and consider themselves extremely blessed just to have  a roof over their heads.

Road works were everywhere

Taking our lives in our hands

We stopped at Golden Point Lodge, a little backpacker's place on the northern coast, enjoyed a tropical fruit punch and chatted to the owners, who were very friendly. It was then on into the interior of Fiji to head down to Fulton College, where we discovered the roads were not what we expected! For about 50 km we traversed gravel roads being torn up by huge machinery, keeping our speed down to the low 30s and 20s. Some of the bridges we had to cross were a little daunting, to say the least (see picture).

Finally we reached Fulton College and tracked down Nelly who we were to stay with, but it turned out one of the Transit cabins were available, due to a late cancellation.

We had tea with all the students in their cafeteria then retired for bed, as we were very tired from the stress of driving all day.