We of course had to try Fiji’s national drink, Kava. Bottom line is, it’s pretty gross and for us was a waste of time apart from feeling slightly drowzy. Apparently if you can find a kava pounder to make you fresh stuff the effects are meant to be calming and purifying for your body… but we bought some from the markets and drank so much of the yucky liquid that we never want to try it again.
Our private beach at Salt Lake Lodge.
We decided to rent out the whole of Salt Lake Lodge so that we got all of the facilities and beach to ourselves. Once we got here we were so pleased we did! It was like having a whole resort to ourselves (although smaller!) and we could leave our stuff laying around anywhere on the property and do whatever we wanted without worrying about disturbing anyone else or anyone else disturbing us. We immediately fell in love with the place, the owners Andy and Sonja have really made the place amazing with hundreds of tropical plants, a huge outdoor cooking area and seating areas, our beautiful pontoon where we ended up spending most of our time, all leading down to the small beach and tidal river which was a 5-10 minute kayak to the only lake in Fiji, Salt Lake. And a 15 minute or so ride in the other direction to the lagoon and ocean.
On our first night we got a massive crab for dinner, of course cooked in coconut, it was sooo sweet and yummy. All of the food we ate while we were here was either caught by Andrew from the reef or river or ocean, or picked from their extensive tropical organic garden.
Crab for dinner and yummy organic fruit and coconut for breakfast.
One of the things we were looking forward to about flying to Vanua Levu, Fiji’s 2nd largest island, is the one hour flight over coral reef to get there. Technically it wasn’t the smallest plane we have been in (that was the Stewart Island plane), but we only had 3 passengers both of us and a local guy, and the other couple of seats were taken up by our luggage. The journey began in typical Fijian fashion, our connecting flight to Savusavu was meant to leave Nadi at 3pm, but we soon realised we were on Fiji time when it left at 4.30…. that wasn’t classed as a delay and the airport staff knew our names and were quite happy about the whole thing. And that’s pretty much how out trip would continue, very laid back, nothing is on time, but everyone is really happy and all of the waiting is done with a big Fijian smile.
