At the beginning of our trip to Fiji we saw ads for swimming with the manta rays. The ad showed these huge rays that were like the size of a small whale or something so we really wanted to do that. Apparently the only way to do that is to fly to an island up north and stay a night on a resort out there. Sadly Manta Rays were not in the vacation budget…

So we had two other things on our list of things we definitely wanted to do… 1) Snorkeling and 2) Surfing. We kind of wandered around talking to different people that arrange trips from Port Denarau and Nadi and it was looking like we would need to rent a car or take a taxi to go surfing. Since we didn’t feel really 100% safe when we were in Nadi we decided that renting a car and venturing out on our own would be a bad idea.

So this left us with just snorkeling…while walking around Ndi there were tons of people that arrange touristy trips from the resorts and they all say a different trip is the best trip and come off as complete snake oil salesmen. I can only imagine this is how Merf comes off when he is selling urinal pucks and garbage bags. “My urinal pucks are carcinogenic free…blah blah blah”. All the pamphlets for the day trips sound the same too….so we decided to just pick one and go with it since there was no way to know what was garbage and what was good.

We went with Robinson Crusoe Island…I think what got us was that it had snorkeling and there was a full day with 2 meals. The lady that sold it to us was adamant that this was by far the best deal and the best trip and that she did not receive any commissions and was completely unbiased.

They picked us up at the resort and we were greeted by a dude in a grass skirt and guitar named Tequila. Kind of an unoriginal name but other than that Tequila kept the mood pretty high on the bus and said some really stereotypical stuff about Fijian people. The day was looking up…it was before noon and we were drinking beer and singing along to Tequila’s Fiji-accent rendition of The Gambler.

Fun Fiji Fact: They love Ann Murray, Kenny Rogers and Elvis….if you go up to someone playing a guitar in Fiji and request anything by those three they would know it. I am convinced The Gambler is their national anthem.

Boat going to Robinson Crusoe Island

So after a hour bus ride or so we arrived at the wharf and got on a boat that went through a mangrove type river thing and out into the ocean.  First activity we did was snorkeling…it sucked…it was too choppy and they kept us close to the shore so all we saw was sea grass and a few fish here and there. Was really unimpressive and a huge disappointment…

A fish (Snorkling at Robinson Crusoe Island)

Next activity was sea turtle viewing…they gathered everyone around a pile of sticks and told some story about how the turtles come up to the shore and dig holes and lay eggs. Then the pulled the sticks off a turtle shell and they brought everyone in closer. Then a dude jumped up with the turtle shell on his back…so turtle viewing was actually a dude with a turtle shell on his back. I don’t think we were the only ones that felt a little ripped off after that.

Sea Turtle Viewing at Robinson Crusoe Island

Next activity was a group conga line thing…basically everyone got in a conga line I had Sheila behind me and a girl in front of me and this dude asked if he could get between me and the girl in front of me because it was his fiance. Makes sense whatever… so now I am behind this dude in the conga line. The guy that was organizing the dance pulled me and a goofy awkward kid out of the line and made fun of us for being behind guys in the line and basically called us flamers in front of the whole group. Awesome… so I move in behind a girl that is like probably 12. Me being behind a dude made me gay so I guess by the same logic me being behind a 12 year old girl makes me a pedophile….which apparently they are completely fine with on Robinson Crusoe Island.

Fire Walking at Robinson Crusoe Island

The next disappointment… fire walking. Fire walking to me means a long fire pit with red hot coals and some dude walking the length of it. Fire walking to the Robinson Crusoe people was a lame fire pit like 2 feet in diameter with nothing red hot and a dude walking on the non-red hot rocks. The looks on the peoples faces standing around the fire pit said it all..boredom.

Fire Show at Robinson Crusoe Island

As much as I hated Robinson Crusoe Island I must say their fire show was pretty legit. They twirled fire and did all kinds of cheerleader type pyramid things….was kind of cool.

In addition to the day trips Robinson Crusoe also offers multi-night stays where you can stay in their huts. I can’t imagine how much fun that would be!

We have been back from Fiji a month and change and I am just now getting to posting pictures…you would never know I am on vacation…

I decided to split the Fiji trip into a few different posts…mostly so I can write about how crappy Robinson Crusoe Island is…

We have been to Mexico a couple times and stayed on all inclusive resorts so we knew that going to Fiji and staying in a pay per meal/pay per drink resort would be a little different. Aside from having to pay for everything the biggest difference was just the mood on the resort…it was super calm and chill…a lot of families and older couples.

Not really knowing how much stuff cost we swam up to the swim up bar on Day 1 and looked at the menu. Beer were like $10 and mixed drinks were like $23…boo!  All the restaurants on the resort were pretty expensive as well. We quickly realized that the litre of gin we bought at the duty free was a good decision and would be our savior at least for a few days.

Drinking Gin in the Pool

The resort was really nice…beautiful pools with sand right up to the edge of the water so it seemed like a real beach. Later in the week we walked to a few of the different resorts on Denarau Island and some of them looked a bit nicer but ours had the best pools without a doubt.  It was nice to have a no-kids pool too so you didn’t have bastard kids splashing around and stuff…actually we were pretty much the only ones in the no-kids pool most of the time.

Pool at Radisson Fiji

The island that we stayed on (Denarau Island) is basically 5 resorts side by side and you can go from resort to resort and eat at different restaurants or sneak into their pools. There is a bus that takes you around the resort loop and takes you into the port which we used a ton. The port was super touristy kind of like a fancy strip mall with a bunch of separate restaurants…absolutely no locals that were not working. Most of the stuff in the port was pretty reasonably priced…we had dinners there and they were around $50/person. So we ate there a lot and also killed a lot of pizza on the resort.

Back to the drinks situation…the first day we had a bottle of gin but we had no mix and nothing that we could drink it out of in the pool. Also we didn’t really know if you were allowed to mix your own drinks and take them down to the pool…nobody else seemed to be doing it. We chanced it and picked up some insulated travel mugs and some mix at the port and tried to be pretty stealth about it (Some people later told us that it was pretty obvious what we were doing)…none of the workers said anything about it all week. While we were picking up the mix I took a picture of the same bottle of gin that I paid $70 for in New Zealand the day before that was selling for $140 in Fiji. Crazynesss…

We had planned on doing a bunch of day trips (surfing, snorkling, swimming with manta rays) but it was all pretty expensive so we decided to just chill in the pool for most of the week and only really left the resort to go to the port for dinner, one trip into the neighboring town Nadi and a day trip “cruise” package called Robinson Crusoe. More on Robinson Crusoe later…

Nadi was pretty poor…before we went into Nadi we kind of thought it might be a good idea to rent a car tour around for a day but after walking through the town we kind of realized that it might not be that hard to find trouble in Fiji. Some people looked pretty desperate and it was really run down and dirty.

All in all we had a great trip though…weather was almost perfect (a couple days were overcast but still warm) and we had a lot of fun.