Our travel day to Fiji was full of surprises, not the least of which was that we ended up in Samoa. Tropical Cyclone Mick was hovering over Fiji on the day we were to arrive, thereby throwing all travel plans into disarray. Even before we left Honolulu we were told we’d be making an unscheduled refueling stop in Samoa on the way to Fiji (it’s a little less than 2 hours away) just in case we needed the extra fuel to circle the Nadi (Fiji) airport a few times waiting for an opportunity to land. But after arriving on the Samoan island of Apia, the captain informed us that the conditions in Fiji were worsening and we would instead be staying on Apia for the night.
That turned out to be just fine as Apia is a nice little island and the quaint hotel they put us up in was a good 30-40 minutes from the airport, so our bus transfer turned into a kind of free coach tour. We shared our bus with a friendly chap from Tonga and a group of college-age kids (including an extraordinarily perky one from Seattle) who were on their way to Vanuatu. The simple dwellings we saw from the road were mostly tidy and painted bright colors, with little pigs running around the front yards. Our airline provided accommodation at Aggie Grey’s Hotel in the town of Vaisigano. The exceptionally well-maintained resort must have been at least a hundred years old and had a kind of airy British West Indies feel to it. Very nice.
Our stay at the hotel proved to be quite brief however. We had to leave at 2am to get back to the airport for a 5am flight. By 7am we had arrived intact at the Nadi airport in Fiji. But that was not our final destination. Nadi is on Viti Levu, the largest of Fiji’s 300 plus islands. We were staying on Vanua Levu, the second largest island, in the town of Savusavu, an hour’s flight away. That last leg of the journey proved to be a considerable challenge as windy conditions at the Savusavu airport made landing precarious.
The domestic airline terminal in Nadi was mobbed by people who had been trying to get to their various destinations for two days, but were unable to because of the storm. Making up for all those cancelled flights was a challenge to the airline staff, who were nevertheless calm and courteous to everyone, however it must also be said that they seemed to have no clue what was going on. We were constantly told we would be on such and such flight after this other flight got back from Savusavu then no, no flights have been able to go into Savusavu today, then we would definitely be on the plane that was just now taxiing in, then no, that plane is going to somewhere else, then did we want to fly to Labassa, which is on the north coast of Vanua Levu and take a 2-hour bus ride to Savusavu, which is on the south coast, then no, we were scheduled to be on the 2:30 plane to Savusavu....I think they were literally making it up as they went along. They were just trying to squeeze in as many passengers as they could onto each plane. They even weighed some passengers by having them stand on the luggage scales so as not to overload the plane. Some Savusavu-bound passengers just gave up and got a hotel with plans to try again the next day. Others had already been in a hotel for two days and were determined to press on.
We never did get a new boarding pass, the one airline employee who seemed to be in charge of flights to Savusavu just hand wrote our names on the back of some piece of paper he was carrying around. At one point he just came and found us in the waiting area and told us our plane was ready for us, even though it was 1:30 and just an hour previously he told us we would be on the 2:30 plane. Only when we were actually sitting on the little deHavilland turboprop (about 16 passengers) did they tell us we were flying to Labassa, not Savusavu. Oh, and our luggage wasn’t with us. It would come “later,” which is Fijian for “in a day or two.”
So an hour later we have at least landed on the correct island, albeit on the wrong end. The little airport in Labassa was also predictably a mob scene with a long line of people waiting to get information from the lone airline office employee about buses and flight schedules, etc. We decided to just grab a taxi to get us to Savusavu, damn the cost, and we would worry about our luggage later. The one problem we had was a complete lack of Fijian dollars. The one ATM machine back at the Nadi airport was not functioning due to a storm-related power surge. What few American dollars I had we’d already spent at the café during our 6-1/2 hours waiting at the airport. And credit cards are not an option.
Fortunately, Deborah’s gregarious nature found us chatting with a number of fellow travelers, including a British/American couple with two small children. We ended up sharing a cab with them (five of us in the back seat). And they generously offered to pay. An hour and a half later we were in Savusavu, where we finally hooked up with Steve and Iretta, a very nice retired American couple who live near where we will be staying. Tobi, the person for whom we will be housesitting, is back in New Zealand (more on that later), and therefore unable to meet us personally. Steve and Iretta gave us the keys to Tobi’s house and car and we followed them up to the house. There they showed us around our new home for the next 5 months.
Now, if only we had some luggage...
Our hotel in Apia, Samoa
Our room
View from our room
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