Taveuni, Fiji

We had an early 4:50am start to catch the bus / ferry combo to get to Taveuni. The sunrise was beautiful, the first cloudless morning here, although we didn’t have much time to admire it.

One final drive up the steep driveway, tossed out the garbage just before joining the main road, and then off to the bus station.

I dropped off Heather at the bus station with our luggage, and then carried on a few hundred metres to drop off the car. They had to wake someone up to open the office and retrieve my cash deposit, which threw off my timing a bit.

The Hot Bread Kitchen was en route so I stopped in and bought a danish for the road.

Made it back to the bus station a few minutes before the scheduled 6am departure. While I was returning the car rental, Heather had figured out we had tried to board the wrong bus (there’s two companies that run the same bus/ferry route, on different buses and boats). Anyways Heather was waiting outside the bus we’d bought tickets for, and we boarded.

It’s one of the few times we’re taking public transit on this trip. It’s quite the change from our first trip together through Morocco!

The bus left around 6:15am, which I figured wasn’t too bad (although, they did have a boat to catch). The bus was one of the most-windowed buses I’ve been on, with excellent views to counter motion sickness. Plus the windows opened so we didn’t need to wear our masks (we haven’t seen much mask usage at all in Fiji, just a handful in the domestic terminal in Nadi).

It’s a very scenic 1.5 hour drive along the Hibiscus Highway. It mostly follows the coast before cutting inland to Buca Bay for the last 15 minutes.

Buca Bay was literally as smooth as glass. I’ve similarly commented on other bodies of water, but this was perfectly still.

It’s usually about an hour wait for the boat; the locals all waited on the bus. It felt a bit enclosed now that there wasn’t breeze from the open windows, so we waited outside in the shade if the bus, and ate our danish.

The jetty is being built (or rebuilt) and was just mud on big boulders, with some wooden planks near the docking. Lucky for us it was a nice day, as it would be pretty messy otherwise.

I moved our suitcases from the bus hold to the front of the docking, balanced on a less-muddy group of boulders. At first I repeated our bus error, moving them first to the other company’s section of docking, until a helpful person asked if I wanted the red boat.

The other boat arrived first, and many more people disembarked than I could first see. The waiting passengers boarded quickly, in the meantime our red boat arrived (formally called the Taveuni Princess). Luckily our boat was not crowded at all, only about 20% full. Folks were really nice, helping us carry our suitcases onboard and showing us where to stow them (on a mat in the middle of the boat).

I thought the water would become rougher once we exited Buca Bay or rounded Kioa Island, but the water was just as calm in the middle of Somosomo Strait. The only waves were the ripples from the boat. Heather actually read a bit of her book and then took an nap! Based on other recent ferry crossings (eg Faial to Pico) we were expecting the worst, with motion sickness pills on hand just in case.

We arrived at Taveuni Island around 10:20am, 10 minutes ahead of what the ticket agent had told me in Suvasuva, one of the more accurate forecasts from someone in sales that I’ve received.

A driver from Nakia Resort pulled up shortly, and after about a 15 minute drive we arrived at the resort, a very relaxing transit door-to-door!

Robyn greeted us at the main lodge (the owners are Jim and Robyn, expats from California). Shared a fruit platter and had a coffee (some much-needed caffeine), before checking out our bure. Way back in April we had booked the Sunset Bure, which now seems a lifetime ago. Nakia only has four bures, it’s in that sweet spot for us for hotel size.

After a small lunch (we split an order of grilled cheese and fries) we walked down to the house reef to cool off. Snorkeled out about 100m before turning back, having accomplished our main goal of cooling off. We did see more coral and fishes than I expected though.

We had an afternoon chai tea and banana cake which we probably should have skipped as it had more sugar than we normally eat in a week.

Watched the sunset from inside our bure, rather than from the main lodge where supposedly the pics are better, mostly to stay away from mosquitoes.

After dusk, we enjoyed a nice dinner at the main lodge, although we were still pretty full from our earlier snack.

Tried to avoid stepping on the Fijian ground frogs on the 20m walk back to our bure. We’ve also encountered the frogs at the Doubletree in Nadi, they’re about golfball sized and tend to come out at night. They don’t move until you’re upon them, and then hop away. We’re phobic about them hopping into us.

Anyways made it back to the bure without incident and went to bed.