Something smells very fishy...

Alarm went off at 4:30am this morning. There should only be one 4:30 in the day and definitely not the am one. We then quickly finished packing, got dressed and went outside to wait for our taxi. We had booked it for 4:50am and by 5:10am it was clear that he was a no-show. What a bummer. No other taxi drivers were answering their phone so we had no choice but to power-walk it down to the bus stop. Well it started off as power walking but in the dark and with our bags I soon resulted to dawdling as that was the fastest speed I could muster up this early. Stupid taxis. We luckily arrived in time for the bus, which we were delighted to see was more than half empty, so picked our seats right at the front, got comfy and we set off.

Unfortunately as the bus didn’t have 20 or more people we had to get off at ‘The Junction’ and clamber onto a very full bus, with the only seats left for us at the back. Not ideal for a long trip, but no other choice. We then drove for another 4 hours before arriving and waiting for the ferry in Nabawalu, for an hour along bumpy muddy roads and I had the pleasure of sitting behind a man with hygiene issues for the way. Then, onto the ferry bound for Natovi Landing, which was a lot nicer than sitting on a bus as we had space to move around and lucky managed to grab a space on the comfy sofas in front of the T.V. to watch a couple of films along the way. Then after the approximately 4-hour journey we got back onto the bus for another long ride to Lautoka. The bus stank. Luckily the man mentioned earlier moved seats had his seat nicked by someone else so he found somewhere else to sit and a lady plonked herself down next to me who had obviously eaten something that didn’t agree with her so I had to open the window and close the window every few minutes. But the journey only got smellier.

About an hour in there was a very strong smell of rotten fish eggs, well that was the only thing I could compare the smell to having had the pleasure to smell them before when fishing off the wharf in Levuka and the smell just got more and more intense throughout the journey without a clue where it was coming from. After 3 hours I just couldn’t take it anymore and moved right up to the front with Chris when a couple of people got off for the last hour. At maybe 8:30pm we finally arrived at our destination, opened up the luggage department to collect our bags to be faced with the intense fish smell once again. So that was where it was coming from! So I prayed and prayed that it hadn’t seeped into our bags and we found Chris’ first which did have a hint of fish smell, but pushed right into the middle was my bag, and ironically sitting on top of my bag was the source of the smell. So, soaked through from the rain that had leaked in, the fish (which we discovered was dried fish) was now wet and all the smelly juices had soaked through to my bag. It was vile and I had no choice but to put it on to walk and find a mini bus to take us to Nadi airport, so I too stunk, as that is where Wailoaloa agreed to pick us up from. The ride to the airport didn’t take long, maybe 30 minutes and as expected, our transfer wasn’t waiting for us, even though we asked them to be there 15 minutes before we knew we would arrive as they are so slow at everything. So after calling them twice, they finally came at 9:45pm, so we hurried back to the resort in time to order some dinner as we were famished. Then, off to bed after washing my stinking bag.

Something smells very fishy...

Suva, Fiji