When: July, 2009
Companions: acd, douwe, fabio, steph, tonja, vadim
Accommodations: Outrigger on the Lagoon

Trip Notes

This trip was a combination of me wanting to go somewhere for my birthday and Douwe wanting to go to Fiji.  I also feel like I should be taking more full advantage of my proximity to cool stuff as I'm living in Australia.  So, we planned the whole thing with about a week's notice, and off to Fiji we went!

Activities

The short version: We sat around on beaches and ate.  It's Fiji!  Isn't that what you are supposed to do?  Okay, we did a bit more than that.  We went to an animal park (the fauna in Fiji reflect the island itself: relatively small). 

We spent a day at Natadola Beach which was described as the best beach in Fiji.  I might be included to agree.  It was a lovely white sand beach, when the tide was out you could walk over to another beach on the flip side that had some interesting limestone formations.  And best of all, the resort (The Intercontinental Fiji) on the beach had excellent food!

The next day we took a Sailing Boat to Mystery Island!  Now, you'll notice I say took a Sailing Boat rather than saying sailed.  It turns out, if you want to sail, you should ask if the boat will actually be sailing rather than the boat just happens to have sails on it :)  Mystery Island was TINY.  You can walk around the whole island in 6 minutes.  Some folks snorkeled, some folks read, some folks got their hair braided.  Ya know, Fiji.

Where to Stay

Now that I've been to Fiji I have more opinions about where to stay.  There are a few things to consider:

• Proximity to towns
• Most boats to islands leave from towns, you can spend lots of time on buses if you are staying too far away
• Price
• There is a wide variety of prices to the places to stay, we went on the high side and enjoyed it
• You're stuck there
• Getting around is slow and expensive (although you can rent cars).  This means you'll be spending lots of time where you are, make sure the place you're staying has good food a good beach (checking it out on the sattellite view of Google Maps can often help), etc.
  

Based on our experience, the Outrigger is very nice if you are looking for a hut in the middle of palm tree feel.  The Intercontinental is the same price, but (IMHO) more modern.  The real question is how modern do you want to get in Fiji?  Hope that helps!

Fabio took some excellent picture of Fiji.  Seeing these sort of pictures makes me feel like someone should confiscate my camera and never give it back.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/flopiano/Fiji