Fiji, Revisited (June 22 - July 04, 2026)

Why are we Here?

On Barb's birthday (May 20) we got a phonecall from Glen and Cheryl aboard Indigo Wave: they wanted us to move up our schedule and fly down to crew during their passages from Fiji to Australia. Earlier plans had us crewing for them between Indonesia and South Africa, in September. The new plan had us embarking in Fiji no later than 03 July. We agreed, and arranged to fly into Nadi, Fiji on 22 June which would allow us time to acclimatize

Breakfast on balcony table the first morning in Fiji

We took a motel room in Nadi the first day and enjoyed breakfast on the balcony. We were thrilled to discover Fiji Breakfast Crackers are still made here.

Common Mynah bird pecking at coconut on beach

The Common Mynah, is seen about as often here as the Seagull back home, eats just about everything, and is noisy too.

Frozen Fries in a bag, labelled Uranus Fries

Another sign that we were in a foreign country was some of the amusing product names.

Pacific Harbour and The Pearl Resort

A 3-hour bus ride took us to the south coast of the large island Viti Levu, for a 5 day stay at The Pearl Resort

We haven't stayed at a resort before, so expected we'd need to make some adjustments to our expectations. Our room view was a whole staircase up from our previous motel, for about 4x the price.	Tropical sunsets don't last long, but the memories do.	Every day and evening featured some sort of activity or entertainment - here five very energetic Fire Dancers perform an activity that originated in Samoa.
Resort staff member Save demonstrated making Kokoda (pronounced koh-kon-dah), from the opening of a coconut, rasping the meat, pressing out the coconut cream, chopping peppers and tomatoes, and mixing it all with diced freshly-caught wahoo that had been marinated in lime juice for 4 hours. The finished dish was delicious (kana vinaka)!	One morning we spied several of Fiji's national bird, the Kula, picking away at something in the coconut blossoms.	We loved getting back in the water and exploring the corals and fish, which were as stunning as we hoped for.
Clownfish are fiercely territorial, guarding their private anemone, which in turn protects them from predators.	In addition to the Bull sharks seen here, countless Sergeant-majors and Moorish Idol fish also were attracted to the smell of the bin's contents.	A dive, where sharks were attracted to food in a large yellow bin, was fantastic. Over a dozen sharks came to the feeding, including these two Nurse sharks.