Day 3 was by far the most adventurous of our holiday.
At 0830 as promised Budget arrived at the resort to collect me to hire our car. 30 minutes later I was driving back to the resort to collect Crystal and begin our adventure.
The car was a tiny Suzuki Alto which has a tiny 1 litre engine. It was a struggle to get it moving with us inside but it turned out to be OK.
Not really having any idea where I was going I headed west towards Suva. There is only one major road that goes there which is Queens Road.
It doesn’t take long to get past Nadi and out into the country.
It has to be said that Fijian’s are not the best drivers and the roads are not the best roads. People drive more or less how they feel so sometimes you will be doing the speed limit and other times people drive along at half the speed limit.
The roads are incredibly rough and can be quite dangerous if you don’t pay attention all the time.
About 30 minutes out of Nadi we spotted a bunch of people on the side of the road with fruit stalls so we stopped so Crystal could stock up on fruit.
Back on the road the road changes a lot from open country to mountainous terrain.
There are people walking along the road everywhere. Some of them will try to wave you down for a lift, sometimes they don’t even get out of your way.
About every 10-15 minutes there is a village and the speed drops down to 50km/h and even slower because most of the villages have huge speed humps.
The villages range from a few houses to some having shops and amenities.
Not long into the drive you start to drive along the coastline and the views here are amazing.
There aren’t always places to stop to take photos so you have to be super careful otherwise you’ll have a car run into you just cause you’re in the way.
A little over half way I found a souvenir shop on the side of the road and we stopped to buy some Fijian trinkets to take back home.
A lot of the products are made out of wood but I managed to get some fridge magnets too which is kind of a tradition for our holidays.
The drive from Nadi to Suva is only about 180km but it takes between 3 and 4 hours just because the road isn’t that great, the maximum speed limit is 80km/h and on occasion you’ll get stuck behind really slow moving traffic.
Once we arrived in Suva things were a little different. There are traffic lights and roundabouts and more cars and people.
Driving into Suva we made our way through the CBD to the western end along Queen Elizabeth Drive we turned around and headed back to the CBD to find some lunch.
Not being able to resist myself I stopped at McDonalds quickly for a snack just to see what was different in Fiji. The food doesn’t taste quite the same as Australia but was otherwise pretty much the same.
Following this we headed to a Chinese restaurant next door to try what they had on offer.
Crystal again had seafood and not sure what I would eat or not I opted for a hotpot dish with eggplant and pork. Got to say was pretty good.
After lunch we decided to explore a little more before heading back. I didn’t want to drive back in the dark and the day was fast running out of daylight.
We headed north into Suva and ended up on Kings Road which goes up to the mountains so we cut across back to Princes Road and eventually back on to Queens Road to head back to Nadi.
Somewhere on Princes Road we found some more stalls and stopped so Crystal could get a coconut.
I ended up stopping just out of Suva and beating the coconut on the edge of a bridge to open it up so she could eat the coconut meat out of the inside.
The drive back seemed a bit quicker than the drive there and we stopped a few times along the way to take some photos.
About half way there was a car accident that took a while to get past and despite being a fairly small accident there were people everywhere trying to help.
As we got closer to Nadi there were more and more people walking along the road towards town.
Eventually we arrived back at the resort a little bit after dark and not really wanting to do more driving to find a restaurant we opted to go to the Brasserie at Radisson Blu which is located right at the beach.
They were serving up a Roast Buffet or you could pick from the menu so I had the buffet but Crystal opted for a crab.
After a very filling dinner and a lot of driving we retired back to our room and fell asleep.
Read on to day 4, road trip from Nadi to Lautoka