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Friday 20th February - Fiji - Suva/Nadi
We then drove back to Nadi, stopping at just the Warwick for a drink on our way back. Fiji has adopted the practice of placing crosses on the road side to mark where people have died in traffic accidents. We lost track of the number of crosses on the road from Suva to Nadi. In the evenikng we went to the Sheraton and ate at their buffet. There was an impressive range of food, but the speciality was seafood. |
In the morning we went into central Suva
where we targeted by more wood carving Fijians. They approach you and start chatting, and
provide you with little snippets of information but part way through the conversation they
ask what your names are. You will then see them reaching into plastic bags. It is at this
point that they will start carving your names into a piece of wood they have painted
black. When finished they will ask you for 30 or 40 dollars. The best way around the
problem is to tell them that you already have a carving. We wandered on to the market,
which is the largest that we encountered on our trip and contains a very wide variety of
fruit and vegetables. Everywhere we went, we visited the local markets, it is an easy way
to become immersed in place, you are surrounded by locals, there is produce that you have
never seen before, and there are all sorts of smells both pleasant and unpleasant. They
are also usually fairly busy, so it is quite easy to just stand back and watch people as
they go about their business. 
We we then took a
leisurely stroll through the centre of town and headed towards to the Thurston Gardens,
where we found the National Museum. Although it is not very large it has many items that
predate the arrival of the missionaries. Furthermore it provides information on the origin
of Fijians, and debunks the myth that Fijians come from somewhere along the Nile. This
story arose from a news paper article in the 1920’s that commented upon the
similarity between place names in Africa to those in Fiji. Modern scientific techniques
have demonstrated that Fiji was colonized by different waves of people moving down through
the indo-malaysian peninsular.