9.4. – 12.4.2023
Our flight to Fiji was scheduled to leave at one o’clock in the afternoon, so we went downstairs to order a taxi before ten. The man at the reception called us a taxi, and we were told that it would take half an hour for the car to arrive. After half an hour of waiting, the taxi wasn’t there. The guy at the reception called the taxi company again to ask what the hold up was. The woman on the other end of the line claimed the taxi was already waiting for us. Well, it wasn’t. Another call later it turned out that the driver was waiting for us in front of the wrong hostel. The taxi had been booked for the YHA hostel, but the driver was waiting for us in front of the YMCA hostel. Eventually the driver found us and we made it to the airport. There we were told that our plane was about half an hour late, so there was no rush, although we had arrived a little later than we had initially thought.
Check-in and security checks at the airport went quickly, and we were waiting to board the plane well in advance. While we were sitting there, the plane was delayed a couple more times, and eventually we took off 2.5 hours late. The reason for the delay was a “minor technical problem”, which had been fixed. That technical problem was apparently in one of the turbines, as the sides of the turbine were lifted up, and a couple of men were working on it for a good while. Apparently they managed to fix the problem, because we stayed in the air and made it to our destination.
We arrived in Nadi at sunset. As it was still a two-hour drive from the airport to the Warwick Hotel, it was pitch dark when we arrived. For some reason, our hotel room had only one double bed and a single bed. We went to the reception to ask about the possibility of changing to a room with two double beds. Such rooms were not available at that moment so housekeeping fixed the situation by bringing us an extra bed to the room. The room change was arranged for the next day, but we spent the first night in this smaller room clearly meant for three people only.
The price of our hotel room included breakfast, which we went to try out first thing in the morning. The views from the restaurant were spectacular, and the breakfast was great as well. After breakfast, the kids went to the Kids Club for a while. After that we were supposed to go snorkelling together. When we went to get our snorkelling gear, we were told that it was already low tide and we couldn’t go to the reef anymore. So we left snorkelling until the next day, and went to the pool instead. There were no more sun beds available, but we spread our towels on the grass and went for a swim.
We spent the whole day in the pool, then changed rooms and went to the hotel restaurant for a buffet dinner. Today we had an international buffet, which was delicious. Dinner for adults cost 80FJD/person (34€), and to our surprise there was a separate buffet for children in a separate room, which was free of charge.
Warwick hotel has put a lot of effort into giving the adults some of that famous “alone time”. The Kids Club runs three times a day for two hours at a time, where you can drop off your kids. There was also nanny services for younger children for 10FJD per hour. That’s very cheap, even if you leave your child with a nanny for several hours. Many parents seemed to use this service, particularly at dinner time. In addition to these services, there is also an adults-only restaurant in the area. You can go there if you want to be sure not to bump into your child, even by accident.
The next day we were wiser and went snorkelling right after breakfast. The reef had a very strong current in places. It can quickly carry you far away if you’re not careful. Fortunately, however, this current does not go out to sea, but sideways along the beach. We snorkelled together for an hour. We saw lots of different colourful (and not so colourful) fish. Many were quite small, but there were a few larger fish too. The corals, on the other hand, were not very colourful here, but mostly brownish. We were told that the reason for this is the strong tides, which almost always expose the corals when the tide is at its lowest. Then you can even walk to the outer edge of the reef with almost dry feet if you wish.
After snorkelling we went to the pool again. The children also had their hair braided. Ronja got a head full of braids, Risto only a few. Braiding Ronja’s long hair cost 95FJD (approx. 40€), Risto’s braids cost 5FJD per braid (approx. 2€ each). Also Jaana had her hair braided. She got a free facelift for the same price, as the braids were pulled so tight that every wrinkle on her face was guaranteed to disappear for at least a few days.
On the last morning in Warwick, we took a glass-bottom boat ride to the outer part of the coral reef. There was a 50m wide and also 50m deep opening in the reef, which is the only safe way to take a boat to shore and out to sea. When we were on the reef, sometimes there was less than a metre of water between the bottom of the boat and the coral, but the next moment there was a sudden drop in the reef to a depth of tens of metres. The corals were huge, but unfortunately rather colourless. We saw some blue and purple corals, but for the most part the corals were yellow and brown. Apparently these corals, like corals in many other places, suffer from too warm waters.
