A day trip

Although our resort is lovely there is absolutely nothing outside it , no shops or restaurants so you are in fact a captive tourist. Drinks are relatively cheap compared to England but if you want a bottle of water a litre costs 10 Fijian dollars or three pounds sixty pence, which is pushing the boat out just a little too far.
There is also no snack bar so you can't just go for a sandwich at lunchtime, you have to go for the full restaurant experience. This is fine but does work out rather expensive.
As a result we booked up for 10 dollars each to go on a shopping expedition to the nearest town. The nearest town is Sigatoka and is a bout forty five minutes away by coach.
We were picked up at 9.30 and taken very slowly in an ancient bus to go shopping. This is the same road as we have travelled before and once again there is not a great deal between here and there.
We were dropped off at a the market which was in fact quite a posh shop, the expedition manager and I made our way to a supermarket where illicit supplies were purchased. Several litres of water, eight cans of beer some cheese, ham and crackers, there appeared to be no bread. We also bought some sweet biscuits.we had hoped to purchase some salad items but the only lettuce we found was marked at 14.95 Fijian Dollars a kilo, roughly £5. Obviously one lettuce would have been less than this but it did seem a little exorbitant.
We trawled the fresh vegetable market as well but there was nothing. There was plenty of Okra, Aubergine, and chillies along with carrots and cassava but no tomatoes and no cucumber or lettuce.
This seems odd to us the climate here would seem to suit all of these things and yet obviously they are not grown. On the way home were taken to the obligatory craft shop where the expedition manager made a couple of purchases, one being a pice of art work for us to put on the wall.
So lunch for us will be cheese and ham on crackers with an apple as sweet. By the way we also bought eight cans of beer so the weight of rucksacks on the return journey was somewhat heavier than they have been.
In the afternoon, we sat by the pool and both of us had a swim, before we took a kayak out at low tide, we were very fortunate to see several exotic fish. In the evening we watched a Polynesian
dance troupe and had a cheap meal in the restaurant, both of us finishing the day in at state of happy tiredness,