Fiji Day 4: Natadola Bay

Natadola Bay

Natadola Bay

Natadola Bay

Hortheth

Margaux and I went to bed early again last night. There isn’t really any night life here. The place we are staying, “Arts Village,” is basically a shopping mall with a few hostels and apartments all within one long building. That’s the entire place and whatever is included in the mall is all there is to do. There’s nowhere really to walk to except the beach. Not complaining, that’s just why we are going to bed so early. That, and that we are very tired!

The last two nights we have been abruptly awoken by the screams of playing children and a screaming mother in our hostel lobby at about 11:30. Since our hostel is so empty, we have figured that these people don’t even know we are there so they don’t care about the volume. But it is definitely terrifying when you’re in a foreign country, at a place with no people, and randomly are awoken from your deep slumber to the sound of at least 7 loud people. Last night I got up and politely nodded at them while I turned the lights all off when they were there. The oldest girl cupped her mouth in surprise that we were there and then ran to tell her mom. Then they were much quieter after that. Hoping there will be no more issues tonight!

We woke up today and took a 3 hour bus to “one of Fiji’s best beaches” in Natadola Bay. We got there and spent the day on a very sunny beach, with palm trees and other Fijian foliage along the coast, and incredibly hot sun. We were definitely happy to see some sun since it has been overcast and rainy every day we’ve been here.

Margaux and I have noticed that we are one of very few white tourists on the entire island. Even the buses we’ve been taking have had between 0-2 white people on it at a time. It’s been interesting being the only tourists on our beach here at Pacific Harbour, and then again at Natadola Bay. After about an hour of laying out the tourists started to come out. But even so, the beach was never crowded. We were probably two of maybe five people we saw laying on the beach at all.

We had a really nice lunch at the resort. Sorry to the “food enthusiasts” who I am disappointing when I say I didn’t take a photo of my food! It was really good. Fijian foods are very Indian influenced, so my food was a vegetable curry (potatoes and some sort of asparagus/green bean like thing) with noodles. Best food I’ve eaten on this island by FAR.

When we first arrived at the beach, we were approached by a Fijian man who offered us $20 Fijian dollars/person to horseback ride on the beach. That’s about $12 USD/person for a horseback ride on a beautiful, empty beach on an amazing day in Fiji. So of course we did it. We asked if we could ride the horses ourselves without him leading us, and he said we could. He let us ride the horses pretty far down the beach by ourselves. The horse I was riding had a cute baby that was following her. Then after about a half a mile down the beach, we decided to not go the entire way and instead turn around because our horses seemed very hot and tired. As we started to walk back, the crazy Fijian guy jumped out of the bushes and said “You can go farther! All the way down that way past those people!” We declined to go any farther because the horses were so hot, but we were also pretty surprised (and mildly creeped out) that the dude had basically stalked us the entire time we were riding. Oh, Fiji! You so cray.

We got back after another long bus ride and spent about an hour laying on the beach here in Pacific Harbour again. The sun’s been out today, luckily. Tomorrow we scuba dive! Looking forward to it.