Nadi, Fiji

Spent yesterday doing nothing and that’s about as long as we can do nothing :)

So today we had a small excursion into Nadi Town to see Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple and then the food market. Took us a while to get our day packs together, we’re a little out of practice.

We took the ferry back to the mainland and took a hotel taxi to the temple, about fifteen minutes.

It’s FJD 5 to enter (about CAD 3), they grumbled about having to make change for my FJD 100 bill (that’s all the ATM gave us). Used the change to pay our taxi driver.

Shoes and hats are not allowed. Heather got a sarong to wear over her pants. Pics were allowed from the outside but not inside, however it’s all open air so even outside pics give a good idea of the temple.

Walked around clockwise. We arrived during daily puja and were lucky to witness devotees walking around the temple with their offerings.

The temple was very colourful, similar to the Hindu temples we saw in Sri Lanka.

Next we walked into Nadi Town to check out the food market, about 500m down the main street. There were several touts on the street; the temple and market are a common day trip from the resorts nearby.

The market was excellent, one of our favourites. Yesterday on our drive from the airport we had seen the trucks coming in from the interior filled with fresh produce. We recognized a lot the fruit and vegetables from our lunches and dinners. The vendors were very helpful with the stuff we didn’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it, but this is one of the first trips we’ve taken where English is an official language the whole trip. (Fiji has three: English, Fijian and Fiji Hindi, with English as the lingua franca).

Tried some kava from a market stall. Kava root is ground to a powder and then mixed with room temperature water. It’s a popular drink in Fiji, used for relaxing. It’s a reverse tolerance drink (new users need to drink more to feel effects). We just had a small amount to taste, to me it’s okay flavour-wise but I’ll just stick to Fiji Bitters (the local beer).

That was it for our little half-day of exploring. It was fun to finally be out and about while traveling. It was still too early for lunch in town so just took a metered taxi back to the hotel (about half the cost of the hotel-organized taxi).

Spent the afternoon reorganizing our packs for the next leg of our trip, five nights on Ono Island. We’re taking our big suitcases and leaving our backpacks and carry on suitcases at the hotel.

(You have to check out the satellite view of Vunisea Airport on Kadavu. The airport literally goes from shore to shore).

We will have wifi access from Oneta Resort so I’ll be able to post blog updates, hopefully a pic of us seeing giant manta rays :)