The day after Dravuni Island was immediately followed by a port day in Fiji’s capital, Suva. From the ship, the city looked a bit more run down than what we saw in Noumea, but had a certain buzz about, offering some promise. After breakfast we made our way down to the gangway to leave the ship and begin our wondering around the nation’s capitol. Our first encounters with the Suva locals were not great as there were a lot of Fijian Indians around the ship trying to get us to go with them in their taxis’ or require their services to guide us around the city. We tried avoiding them, and I just plain ignored them (a skill which I acquired last time we went to India).
There was a couple of interesting sights, but nothing really appealing until we arrived outside the doorstep of a department store called Prouds. Now this is a store that is owned by the same company we know as Prouds, ‘The Jewellers’ but this store was beyond just selling jewellery with merchandise from perfumes, clothing, luggage, electronics, confectionary and even Wedgwood. The prices were definitely cheaper than what we had seen in Noumea, but still not exactly cheap when comparing with prices from home or on the ship.
We continued down along the main road just wandering into pharmacies (we all have our little battle wounds with the sun or bush tracks lol), souvenir stores etc until we arrived at a big shopping centre, called MHCC. In there, it was part Kmart, part Myer and they even sold things like Burwood BBQs and Coleman camping stuff as well as Bonds Underwear and other stuff. Nothing really tickled our fancy, even in the supermarket (it was pretty pricey in there I think because it was a bit higher end). Tori and Rob called it a day, but Andrew and I were intent on finding an Internet café (well I was more eager to check my Facebook and emails hahaha). The first one we found was interesting to say the least – porn movie covers lined the walls with other mainstream movies and there was some sort of insect flying around (I think it was a wasp, but it looked so big it could have been a dragon fly). Staying a couple of mins waiting to be served, we decided to leave and were confronted with the sight of a homeless man peeing in the side alley… charming.
We continued walking along towards the busier part of town where we had come from and passed a Dick Smith store but it was incredibly disappointing as it was the size of a small bedroom and didn't really sell anything worth buying (Arlec seemed to be a popular brand…). We finally found a decent Internet café and caught up at home for about an hour before getting hungry and returning to the ship for lunch. Cooled down and bellies full, Andrew and I came back ashore to head to a supermarket we had seen from the ship that was behind what appeared to be Suva’s main bus terminal. The layout of the terminal, or lack thereof, coupled with the atmosphere and really old world sense brought back memories of some places we visited while in Mumbai, only much less dirtier and more pleasant smelling.
We finally found the supermarket and wandered down the aisles marvelling at the local products and unique items they stocked in this much more traditional supermarket than the one we had visited earlier. The highlights included a 900g metre long bar of Colgate/Palmolive soap that came in a range of colours including fluoro pink, green and yellow. Pepsi Café Chino (a video which I will upload to show you the taste test of), and a range of Tim Tams that came in Choco Vanilla, wafer flavours and others I don't quite remember. This supermarket was also much cheaper and was more of what we expected, and liked, about Fiji. Back on board for the afternoon, we bummed around the cabin until dinnertime and then went to the multi media trivia, which was a lot of fun, and we ended up winning! Overall, a great end to a fantastic day in Fiji’s capitol.
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