The entrance to the Pearl is a long driveway with many oil burners on either side, looking very tribally.. The building is before a grand fountain and the reception and lobby are vast and stylish. We checked in and were shown to our room. They clearly thought that as we were a young couple, our standards of excellence might now be as high as some of their more senior residents and so tried to palm us off with a slightly shabby room overlooking some building work. They'd messed with the wrong duo-in a moment we were onto reception demanding a room change which they quickly arranged. Our new room was far better. Chinese in style (though thankfully not in hygiene), the room had a huge balcony, luxurious marble bathroom and sky TV-all the mod cons you'd expect from this kind of joint.
The hotel is huge, and all open plan. It has 3 restaurants and 4 bars, a gym, tennis courts and its own golf and county club nearby. The pool is incredible and has a bar attached-you can sit on stools in the water and enjoy a drink!
We made a pact to try and keep it healthy for our 2 weeks at the Pearl-the fantastic kitchen facility at Fiji Palms had lead to some fairly extravagant cooking-not all of which had been double healthy. We ended up going to the gym everyday for 2 weeks and on a diet which consisted mainly of tuna! Luckily the gym was brilliant-it was like a huge glass box right on the beachfront overlooking the sea.
Halfway through our stay we went to Suva, the capital of Fiji. The Pearl offered a tourist bus there for $16 but we decided to go hardcore and get the local bus which was only $3. This involved sitting on a rammed sweaty bus full of huge Fijian women for an hour an a half!
Contrary to what we thought it would be like, Suva was RUBBISH, absolutely RUBBISH, the worst city either of us have or ever will go to!!
It's dirty, rammed, expensive, and every shops sells the same useless stocking fillers. There's one small shopping center with a few brands you might recognize but thats about it.. It's not particularly big and has nothing to offer except a government building and a museum. Well, we went to the 'national museum', and left after about a minute having seen everything and read everything there was to read. After that we just couldn't be bothered with the Government House so we just went to the supermarket at got a few bits, then got the bus back. Being back at Pacific Harbour was such a relief
It was such a harrowing experience that we didn't even get any photo's which we were annoyed about. Call it madness but we did go back one last time-mainly to use the supermarket there which was better than our local one. We ended up jumping in a taxi which was already heading there, he only wanted $8 for the ride which was a bargain. We took our pictures which was a struggle as there was just so little to take a picture of and then searched for somewhere to eat. We found a curry house which looked pretty swish so we decided to treat ourselves-we'd been eating healthy and in our room for our entire stay at the hotel. It wasn't a bad curry but it definitely made us miss 'The Balti King' and 'The Spice' of Chelmsford!
The journey back was a nightmare, far worse than before. The bus was disgusting and every available inch of space was filled with bodies. We couldn't sit together, both of us having to share seats clearly made for two, with about three other fat Fijians! The journey took forever as that poor old bus sweated and gasped it's way home.
The rest of our stay we just chilled out. We had a bit of a quarrel with the Pearl when some builders started drilling and hammering in the room next door for 2 days so we wrote a letter and sent it to management-am still waiting on a response from that one, surely a free meal and free drinks at the bar for an evening would be the only logical compensation?!
We fly to Hawaii on the 16th at 22:50pm-we've already booked up the coach to the airport.
To summarize it has to be said that Fiji has been a disappointment.. Had we not had 3 weeks of timeshares it could have been a disaster! It's rained for about half of our stay here which is a major bummer about this country. When it starts to rain heavily you can pretty much rule out the next 3 days! As already mentioned Suva and Nadi were pretty naff cities. We were so livid at how expensive everything is here too. Supermarkets are a joke. You pay about 4 times more for everything than in NZ and Aussie. So you might think this is an expensive country with rich people-not so! 99% of the Fijian people have nothing and can only survive from local market produce. First world prices in a third world country was the motto of our stay. We were also really disappointed by how little culture there is to enjoy here. Absolutely no unique Fijian cuisine or anything like that. Half of the population here are Indians and most of the curry houses are naff and have such a plain menu-you get about 3 options-fish curry, meat curry and veg curry. They never elaborate on the content of this curry, it's just 'curry'!
The Fijian people however were fantastic, all very friendly and smiley.
Were both really excited about the next stop on the ride..
Bring on Hawaii!!
Fiji Islands
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