Thanks Hilton Honors, am very happily ensconced in a 1 bed suite at the Hilton Fiji – free courtesy of my Hilton points. This is real flashpacker stuff, a new, ultra modern resort, an upgrade to this amazing room overlooking acres of navy blue swimming pools with lots of infinity edges and then the sea. It’s a virtual home from home, a laundry (washer, dryer, iron etc all tastefully hidden behind clouded glass doors), an amazing bathroom with a huge freestanding bath (and a key measure for me is always “would I have a bath here?” – very few hotels in the world would I answer yes, this is one), a huge bedroom, a little fitted kitchen with all mod cons including a dishwasher in a drawer and a living area with big squashy sofas. 2 huge flatscreen tv’s, Bose sound system, the works. Think I will be quite the domestic goddess doing my washing and cooking a bit of tea! But of course there is always room service and a great restaurant if needed. On my terrace I even have a rather flash gas barbie – you can order a barbie pack from room service of steak and catch of the day and cook away – I may just have to do that one night! Good flight here with Air Pacific – seat 1A (always my favourite) on a jumbo, with a longer flight than usual to fly around the bad weather. Cyclone Funa is hitting Vanuatu and skirting Fiji….. When I arrived the winds were really strong – less apparently than the day before, but quite scary nonetheless. But as today has gone on they have got lighter and lighter and the sun has even been shining – long may it stay that way. The Hilton is on an island (well it is actually an island but the bridge from the mainland is so small you don’t even know you’ve crossed it) called Denarau. It’s a bit of a tourist enclave with five 5* hotels, golf course etc. The Bullah bus (a thatch top shuttle bus) does a free circuit into the port where I went today to do a bit of shopping – not good shopping but was able to stock up for my fridge. There’s also a great deli here that does good coffee and sadly rather gorgeous doughnuts…. So today has been settling in, getting my wifi up and running. The beach is not one of the best I’ve seen, in fact it’s not really very nice at all, but there were loads of people today clearing the rather grey looking seaweed, so perhaps that’s a result of the bad weather over the last 2 days. As is usual in resorts like this, there is a programme of “animation”, nothing too in your face though. At 6pm there is the torch lighting ceremony – two rather well muscled men with war paint in grass skirts banging drums and then lighting torches all around the resort, looks a bit dangerous to me, those grass skirts could catch fire any moment, but they could always fling themselves into the pool in an emergency. I think it’s not really local custom, more a way of waking everyone up from their afternoon naps to get the bar takings up! But quite a nice sight…. and it was rude not to go to the bar as they had made so much effort. It was a happy me that was lounging around on a 10ft square sofa drinking a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc as the sun went down. And tonight was the international frog race. Long story short, 9 frogs, each a different nationality race against one another. But to “own” a frog you have to place the highest bid. It’s really interesting watching the bidding – you can feel the testosterone as males from each nation seriously bid against one another. Sadly England was the lowest at $5, I think Australia was the most at $135. Ant, I did bid for the Welsh frog for you, but gave up at $12, the bidding was too rich for a poor pensioner like me…. India won by the way. And so far so good here on the South Pacific mozzie front – I’m obviously not such a culinary treat here as I was in the Cook Islands, or perhaps it’s more to do with flashpacking and a good shot of DDT every so often in the foliage!
