By Andy
THE final stop during our tour of Fiji was a new resort on the south coast of the largest island, Viti Levu.
Called Taunovo Bay, the resort was made up of a series of villas strung out across more than a thousand acres of beachfront, with views to Beqa Island in front and the Namosi Highlands behind.
We had a three-bedroom villa with pool in a modern Balinese style, and very luxurious.
As it was not yet open, and our building was one of the few which was finished, we had our own chef – a chap called Ben from Byron Bay – who came in to cook our meals.
We even had waitresses serving our meals to us and looking after the rest of the cleaning etc!
So for breakfast we were offered lobster omelettes and other culinary delights. Unfortunately we had indulged ourselves so much by this time that we ended up sheepishly asking for cereals.
Our time at Taunovo Bay was not just spent at the villa though, as we had a day-trip to the capital Suva the next day, where we had a visit to the excellent Fiji Museum which told of how Fijians had been cannibals until just a century ago, and had special forks for eating human flesh. Then it was time for lunch…
The last day, before leaving for Australia again, was a trip up to the highlands, and back down by kayak.
A 4WD took us up the bumpy, unsealed road and past small villages.
We finally got out at a village high up in the mountains, and walked through to meet the chief.
It is traditional to drink kava (a slightly narcotic drink made with the root of a native plant) with the chief if you enter a village, and we all sat in his hut and introduced ourselves as part of the ceremony. He turned out to be the father of the tour guide, so it was all set up nicely for us.
But the chief, a tiny man called Leo, thanked us for going all that way to see him and wished us a safe journey back.
Then it was time to hit the river, and we were put in inflatable kayaks for a journey down the rocky rapids of a river which would lead us back towards the coast.
I got dumped out of my kayak on the first bend, but Gemma managed to stay upright throughout, possibly more due to luck than expert skill.
We stopped a couple of times, once to trek to a tall waterfall and swim beneath the gushing torrent, and once for lunch, on the pebbly shore of a bend in the river, opposite another smaller waterfall.
By the time we got back to the resort there were three Fijian ladies ready to massage us, and they had cooked us lobster for dinner.
On top of the chef and the waitresses, there was also a groundsman and three musicians who had been brought in to sing for us -- we counted nine members of staff looking after us on the last night!!
….
Getting home to our apartment in Australia felt like a bit of a shock.
Not just because no one was waiting to greet us with a special cocktail or a song, but also as we had a number of disasters.
We found that someone had turned our fridge off (it had prawns in the freezer) which you can imagine in tropical heat made a bit of a smell - so bad in fact that we had to go out and buy a new fridge the next day. Also a stray dog - a little shih tzu - wandered into our garden covered in ticks and fleas and the dog pound was going to put it down so we ended up getting rid of the ticks and taking it to the vet for a check-up.
We got it home again, tied it up in the garden for the night and by the next morning it had run away. Doh!
Finally, my fish had died, the car went wrong, the house agents had mistakenly taken double the amount of cash out to fix something, and our garden fence blew down at home. Double Doh!
After that catalogue of disasters we felt like going away again.
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