Almost everything they say about Suva is true…….

Its hot, its sticky, its dirty, the streets and buses are teaming and there is a hustler on every corner – but we’ve had a great time!

After spending a couple of days with number 1 top crew Murray before he flew back to NZ, we’ve been loving the markets where we gorge ourselves daily on pineapples, paw paws and use fresh coriander, ginger and spinach in whatever we can.  Based at the Royal Suva Yacht Club, it’s an easy cheap taxi to where ever we want to go and there’s a handle of ice-cold Fiji Bitter waiting when you return to the club for less than $2 kiwi.

The real highlight however is the people – the Indian’s less so, but the Fijians in particular are the most lovely lovely friendly people.  They are absolutely ENORMOUS (men commonly 6 1/2 feet we reckon with size 15 feet), very softly spoken, polite and always finding something to have a laugh and a joke about.  They are TOTALLY Rugby mad – and are currently EXTREMELY excited about the All Blacks coming to play in Suva in June – sorry we’re going to miss that one.  Summary highlights and low lights are as follows:

Highlights

·         Fijian / Indian food mix and Bollywood style (mucho bling for less ka-ching )

·         Singh’s Curry House Goat Curry and roti

·         Windowless Buses playing either loud reggae or Bollywood tunes

·         Cheap cotton shirts and shorts

·         Endless showers at Suva Yacht Club – even if it does rotate from scolding hot to cold

·         Cassava Chips

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lowlights

·         Constant 29 deg day and night and humidity between 75- 85 % resulting in constant dripping from the chin!

·         Alex hustling Murray in the alley to buy worst carved mask ever

·         Harbour pollution – diesel spills / numerous wrecks / plastic and the odd floating pig!

·         Huge Asian Fishing Fleet in port (60 plus) just waiting to rape ‘n’ pillage.  Mysteriously - they all seem to list heavily to port for some unknown reason???

 

 

 

 

We’re sailing to Kadavu tomorrow (island 50 nm south) and are not too sure what the cell coverage will be like there - so you may not hear a lot except the odd position report from us for a while.  Kadavu is home to the Great Astrolabe Reef – a top dive spot – and allegedly a hot spot manta rays.  Having never seen these before, were hoping to track them down.  Kadavu is mountainous with good rainforest type hiking to waterfalls etc and mercifully is cooler than Suva – Yay – were really looking forward to that J

All well aboard the good ship Navara – hope you are all surviving the winter Ok cosy by the fire.

Lots of luv

The Navara’s