Suva Day two

Sunday 19th September 2010

MP3 track of the day: Suck my Kiss - Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Weather: It's snowed today … only joking, it's HOOOOOT!

Having an early night means getting up early, which isn't that bad considering I planned to do a three hour circular walk around Suva, as shown in my guidebook. Leaving at 7:30am the weather was quite cool for Fiji and so I headed to the start of the walk, the old parliament building. This building was pretty impressive and you could see western influence in it's design. Once passed here I followed the route into town stopping at McDonalds (which, if I'm honest, isn't the first time I've been there whilst I've been staying in Suva) for a pancake breakfast … yum!

I returned to the walk by going along the harbor front, which was beautiful as the water was quite clear and there were the Fijian mainland mountains in the background. After this I headed past the market (which was closed) and into town to complete the northern part of the walk before heading east climbing up Toorak Road. I then headed south along the residential outskirts of the city before taking a detour of the route to head to the laundrette's to see if they were open today (no such luck).

Getting back on track I headed out of the main city area and towards 'Suva point', the southern tip where the city meets the ocean. It was all very nice around here and so I had a brief stop for water and a re-apply of suncream (I'd been walking for 2hrs and 30 minutes by now). Eventually I made it to the end of the walk by reaching the new parliament building which is stunning; the main building as a massive high rise roof which is thatched to blend in with original Fijian house design. From here it was just a simple stroll through the botanical gardens back to my hotel (about three hours later).

Just as I was reaching my hotel my room mate (who had no checked out … probably because he thought I might start to stink from now on) was heading to the gym … in a heat of 35 degrees! I, on the other hand, was heading to the shower, where I took a long, refreshing and cooling shower.

Being the middle of the day I decided to chill (as there isn't anything left in Suva that I want to do) and I watched TV, mainly sports including a 20/20 cricket game which was actually pretty fun and really exciting (the winning team won by just six wickets). When I return to the UK I think I'll see if I can catch a game live to increase the number of different sports I've seen live (I have actually seen cricket live before; however it was a normal match and it was pretty boring … so my dad and I left after an hour and a half).

To finish of the day I headed to the 'bad dog' restaurant for the 'fish of the day' plus fries which was really nice and filling.

I am ready to move onto somewhere new tomorrow (Lautoka) as I've done everything in Suva I wanted to do. Well that's not true, I did want to take 'day trip' boat ride to the old capital Levuka on the island Ovalau which is about six hours away; however my guidebook states that most ferries leave from Natovi which is a good couple of hours ride away up north. There is a ferry that leaves Suva but its only three times a week and so you can't do a day trip, plus I couldn't find the offices in town for the ferry company. This is Fiji down to a tea; trying to organize, or do, anything is difficult and takes a lot of time (which I seem to be running out of); therefore in the end you just give up trying, like me on trying to get to Levuka. I just hope that tomorrow morning goes as I have planned, I just hope to be sitting on that bus at 8:15am in a new set of clothes and with all my laundry back … but then again this is Fiji and my hopes aren't that high.

Toodle Pip!

P.S. Hey did you know that a year ago I would have been on my European Tour. Yeah, 15 September 2009 I started all this traveling lark with my three week tour of Europe (The European tour is also on the blog, so if you have a spare hour or so go back through my blog and have a good read). Normally people would say how quick the year has gone but actually it seems ages since I went around Europe and a lot has changed since then.