Suva Trip, Day #9

Our day started off with some peanut butter toast, fresh coconut, pineapple, papaya and some coffee (the usual breakfast, but I tried to make it sound yummy!)

After breakfast, the front desk called a cab for us to go to the big city of Suva. But really there are only 190k people in the city including surrounding areas, so it's pretty small. The cab came and the driver chatted with us the whole time. He was born in Fiji and worked as a correctional officer in the prison next to Nauva for 25 years. Now he's driving a cab and it's his own business. It took about 45 minutes or so to get there and $45 dollars (which is really only $23 US). Pretty good deal, huh!

We got out of the cab just north of Victoria Pde and walked south. Within the first 2 minutes of us getting out of the cab and man on the street started talking to us and tried to sell us souvenirs. We were warned about people bugging us, so it wasn't a surprise. We do kinda really stand out, especially me with my pale skin. When we got rid of the guy on the street we walked south and found a familiar cafe from the Fiji book I bought. It was the Bad Dog Cafe, so we stopped and got some coffee and figured out where our next stop would be. I got a caramel latte and Wes just got a shot of espresso. It was actually really good coffee.

We decided to go down to the Thurston Gardens and check out the Fiji Museum. On our way down the street, we walked past what looked like a carnival being set up and it was the Hibiscus Festival for later in the month. This is one of the biggest festivals in Fiji. The ferris wheels looked so old school and I'm pretty sure they were all hand cranked, not power run. A few minutes later we made it to the gardens and walked through them to the museum. There was nothing exciting about these gardens. It's the same plants and trees we've been seeing everywhere in Fiji.

We made it to the museum and paid $7 dollars fiji each to get in. There were 2 or 3 grade and middle school classes in there, so it was so loud, but it made it fun. They must have been on a field trip to study their countries history, because they all had paper and pencils and writing stuff down. The kids were so interested in us. When we walked next to one of them or they walked next to us that would stand there and stare. It was pretty funny, because we were foreign to them.

The museum had a lot of wood boats from the 1700 and 1800's that were used in the ocean. They were canoes that I couldn't believe made it through the ocean's waves. Then there was some pottery from 3,000 years ago. They must have had some good clay, because clay usually crumbles after a while. Then we walked upstairs and saw clothing samples and some wedding dresses they made from the inside of mulberry bushes. It looked like a really stiff material, but they still wear it today.

We did a little shopping in the museum gift shop and then headed north of Victoria Pde to Tiko's floating restaurant. Wes was wondering if it was actually a floating restaurant and it was a boat and not a very big one, because we could feel it really moving back and forth as we ate. This restaurant was recommended in our book, but I didn't really like the Seafood Pasta I got, but Wes seemed to like his breaded fish platter & chips.

Luckily neither of us got sick from the moving boat, so we went to the Curio Market about 2 blocks north. The market was cement storage units with open gates on each of them. It was all compact and tiny. Most of them were selling wood carvings, masks, bowls, etc.... jewelry and baskets.

There was a bus that left from the Holiday Inn at 4pm, so we walked back down Victoria Pde for 10 minutes or so and got on the bus. It was only $9 per person, so a lot cheaper than a cab. I was slipping all over, because it was raining pretty hard and I was wearing flip flops, but we made it.

On our way back we noticed the Fiji Brewery, that produces Fiji Bitter, Fiji Gold and Fiji Premium beers. We had the bus drop us off at the Village Center, so we could get some more snacks and water at the grocery store. We made it back to the hotel and watched a bit of the movie Ocean's 12 and then went to dinner downstairs. I got a caesar salad and Wes had a fish salad called Kokota. Then we shared a small pepperoni sausage pizza.

During dinner we could hear the waves crashing, so we walked over to the beach to check them out after we were done eating. You could see one big wave crashing in, which is a lot more than there usually is. We walked back to our room for the night and had to watch out for all the frogs jumping around on the grass, I was worried we'd step on them!

House in Fiji, not so pretty:


Wes at Bad Dog Cafe:


Government Building in Suva:


Wes eating at Tiko's the floating restaurant:


Setting up for Hibiscus Festival:


The School kids in the Gardens: