The South Pacific month-long trip is over
The final blog post of a month-long trip! Hope you enjoy reading the same way I enjoyed the journey!
This blog will be about three brief stays in Fiji as well as the night stay in Auckland as well as a lunchtime lay-over in Sydney as well as some notes on the trip!
It’s my third visit to Nadi, Fiji. I first visited the city at the time of Christmas 2011. I realized one thing: when you’re short on time, then the area of Nadi isn’t my kind of place to visit, and yet that’s the nature of it. The less remote area of diving of Taveuni is fantastic, however you shouldn’t be thinking about it in the event that you only have a 2 or 3 night on the road in Fiji. The ideal scenario would have been for me to go to Tarawa, Kiribati direct to Honiara, Solomons…but Air Solomons haven’t yet re-opened those routes.
Then, Honiara to Port Vila has direct flights, however I believe they fly only once every week and not on my schedule for the day! So yes, Tarawa-Honiara-Port Vila-Nadi would have been way better, instead I did Tarawa-Nadi-Honiara-Nadi-Port Vila-Nadi-Auckland-Sydney-Bali! The good thing is that immigration on Nadi only stamps the passport at the time of the arrival!
The trip is now over, and it’s been a truly amazing adventure! Thank you to my wonderful wife for letting me get away from Bali for many hours!
The biggest challenge was to identify the flights. There were 20 flights on ten different airlines! The cost was pretty reasonable, and a great bargain at just over 2,000USD plus the 80,000 miles! After Covid flight options, the flights are slowly returning; however, I’m not certain if I would have the same amount of value in the event that I had made the trip back in 2024!
After all those flights, the longest delay was only 2hrs from Majuro as well as Tarawa. I can assure you that when you travel on this route, I consider myself extremely fortunate. My bag did not get to me on time. Green lips and mussels from Auckland…with Belgium beer…
Air Vanuatu from Santo to Port Vila. I had to complete my homework by impressive smiles while in Port Vila, and the bag was returned to me nearly 28 after the time in Fiji!
Next, accommodation! My average night cost me 100usd. It’s not too bad when you consider the distance some locations are. To locate beds within Pohnpei (Micronesia), Majuro (Marshalls) and Tarawa (Kiribati) There isn’t a bed online…you need to contact them and then send an email hoping they’ll take your request! Everything else was easy. The intention was not to look for the most expensive things, but instead for value…and availability!
I was aware that it was easy playing golf in Fiji, Solomons, and Vanuatu. However, diving was an entirely different story. I booked ahead to book Palau and Vanuatu diving! However, there was no dive center operating in the months of August/September during the months of Majuro, Tarawa and Honiara. Despite this, I was able to dive in all three locations and was satisfied!
To close, the humorous note. I enjoy marking the map supplied by Tripadvisor with places I’ve been. Prior to this trip, I had, in accordance with their algorithm, The ending of another day in Fiji…
visited over 93% of the globe. This is the most ridiculous thing ever! I was hoping to increase my percentage during the course of this trip! The result was a jump of 96% and I still haven’t been to 41 countries! Do we believe that based on the TripAdvisor algorithm ,these 41 countries will be worth just 4% of travelers?? Absolutely insane! !