Our last small South Pacific island before Australia, no
inland tours or village life experiences today, instead we stayed in the
capital if the islands Suva, just window shopping, not doing too much walking,
nevertheless melting away quietly. First
impressions? Busy, noisy, friendly, welcoming, developed (in comparison to the
Samoas), with occasional signs of the ancient culture (grass skirts, and the
Fijian equivalent of the Lava Lava skirt that men wear, and look fabulous in).
If you are our friends on Facebook you’ll see we posted
about 50 island pictures to our profiles, mainly on “Khachik Asatourian” but some on mine “Barbara Anne
Hastings-Asatourian”
We never imagined we would find McDonalds to be such a
welcome sight, with their free hi-speed wi-fi, good coffee and delightful air
conditioning. I feel a bit ashamed
writing this, but I have to admit it’s true.
Khachik’s long awaited haircut was in a small room off a
flea market, and would you believe that while he was having his hair cut I browsed
the stalls like a natural discovering a hand carved wooden Buddha image and a
back pack, exceedingly happy with both.
Oh yes, the price? $10 USD bought
me both. Just need to add that I have been looking unsuccessfully for a comfy
back pack in every market we have browsed this trip. $25 dollars mainly, and that felt really
inexpensive, but until today I just couldn’t find something I really liked. So between
us the haircut and the purchases brought out our natural frugality ;)
So now we are back on board and heading for Sydney, Australia. Soooo looking forward to this too. We have never been this far. We have inside
info about the trips and are recommended to do our own thing rather than the
organised trips, so that’s our plan. More
about that later as we still have 4 sea days to get there. We have been joined in Fiji by Australian
Immigration officials and everyone has received an appointment over the next 2
days for the face to face interview and ID checks. This seems a much more comfortable and
civilised arrangement than the 5 hours we waited in our queues at the port in
San Francisco. USA immigration could
even watch and learn, if I might be so bold.
Our appointment is tomorrow 18th at 9:30 a.m.
OK, that’s us for Monday 16th. Back on tomorrow on second sea day to Oz. Bye
for now xx
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