Fiji-Viti Levu

With Virgin Australia to Fiji! You hear "Bula" all the time here, which simply means "Hello". "Bula" is constantly greeted in Fiji, even on the street just like that. At first, of course, we thought they wanted to sell us something or beg. But no, the people here are just incredibly friendly!

For a week, we explored the main island from Nadi in the west to Suva, the capital of Fiji in the east, with a rental car. Then a week of relaxation in a resort on the mini island of Qabea.

Arriving in pouring rain was not supposed to be the last downpour. We had imagined South Seas weather differently. It was more cloudy than sunny and it rained quite a bit at times. But the great thing is that it is always warm. 25 degrees is Fiji temperature, a little more during the day, hardly less at night, always in the water ... mostly quite muggy and then really hot in the sun. Accordingly, the Fijians take it easy ... everything is done in "Fiji Time", as they say here so nicely. But we had the impression that they regularly do their work, keep their things in order and organize everything well, at least everything worked on our tour.

If you look at the landscape like this, then we probably had normal weather. It must rain a lot here, everything is green and plants grow everywhere. The beaches are rather small, behind them is the "jungle". The people here live very strongly from agriculture in addition to tourism. Sugarcane is grown in large quantities, but you can also see a lot of livestock, rice cultivation, sweet potatoes and much more.

Lautoka and Suva are the most important cities on the main island. While Lautoka is more of a functional supply town, there is more urban life in Suva with restaurants and bars and plenty to see, for example a small museum, a botanical garden and the old Grand Pacific Hotel, a recently wonderfully stylishly renovated 5-star hotel.

We spent 2 days in the mountain village of Abaca, 30 km from the coast, to get an insight into rural village life. This was so impressive that we created a separate chapter for it here.