And so to Suva
We had booked a coach trip to the capital city, Suva, as explained yesterday so we had to be up with the larks and ready in the foyer by 9.30. We took much I fan tile pleasure in baiting the lady in the travel office as we passed at nine twenty pointing out that we were ten minutes early and that it was Friday. She had the good grace to burst out laughing.
The journey to Suva was fairly interesting and about two hours long. The closer we go to the capital , the larger the houses became and we were shown the president's house, guarded with razor wire, the parliament building which has been closed since 2009, the Australian Embassy and several other important buildings.
We were dropped from the bus at a major department store, surprise, surprise, and then we had three hours free time. We decided to walk to the museum about a mile and a half, but after twenty minutes in searing heat, we gave that up as a bad idea and went and found some lunch.
We ended up in a food hall, which is pretty like the ones we had been in, in Perth , Sydney and Melbourne. Globalisation is ruining small businesses. The only Fijian food available didn't look all that appetising so we ended up joining a long queue for a noodle bar where we had the biggest portion of chicken chow mein for two pounds. There was so much food on our plates that we couldn't finish it all.
After luch we engaged in some contraband purchasing to the back to the hotel, some wine, beer, cheese, ham and crisps were all carefully packed in the two rucksacks we had taken with us.
On the journey home our guide serenaded us with some Fijian songs and the journey flew by.
Suva is like almost every other major city we have been too only on a much smaller scale, it has a population of about one hundred thousand.The shops and supermarkets could have been anywhere in the world, apart from the displays of highly coloured floral shirts and dresses which the Fijians specialise in.
On our return to the hotel we were so hot and sticky that we both wanted a shower, imagine our frustration and dismay when there was no hot water pressure. The expedition manager sprang into operation and telephoned reception, not such an easy task as might imagine as they had changed their number from the one printed in our visitors' book. Anger was clearly expressed and we were promised a plumber would be sent to investigate, nothing happened so after a while we walked to reception and made our points again, the plumber was again called for and we went off to the bar for a drink. When we returned to our room the cleaner was there and we asked her if the plumber had been and she said no, the plumber had not been on the floor at all.
The expedition manager had by now had enough and decided to go down to reception again, I stayed in the room, fifteen minutes later two engineers arrived and investigated our concern, and ended by saying there was nothing they could do and the hot water would be like that for some time.
Just after this Rosemarie returned to say that she had complained but that her complaint had been cut short by a telephone call from Emma. By this time it had gone ten o'clock.
The next thing we knew was that the phone rang, which is a bit strong, as to be more accurate it squeaked. The duty manager wished me good evening and then asked me if we had unpacked. I felt the sudden rise of anger in me and pointed out that we had been in the hotel a week. He explained to me, totally ignoring my cynicism, that the hot water problem could not be solved quickly and that he proposed moving us to the other wing of the hotel. He invited .us down to reception to look at the new room he proposed moving us to which he assured me was a much better room.
The expedition manager was not pleased, as the master packer was supposedly having a couple of days leave. There then followed a pantomime where the duty manager and the two engineers who had been in our room and condemned the shower took us round from room to room waiting for us to make up our minds. We were shown two very nice rooms to start with but both had showers in the bath, when we said we wanted a walk in shower we were shown three more rooms on a lower floor, none of which passed muster by the expedition manager. After much discussion we settled on the second room we had been shown, made noises about compensation which were treated with calm resignation and disdain and we then had to get the master packe rack off leave so that we could move. To be fir we were told that we could just take our essentials and move the rest in the morning but both us wanted to get it over with. Thirty minutes later we were packed up and with the assistance of a porter and his trolley we moved to our new abode, complete with dark mutterings from the expedition manager. Three hotel rooms in less than a week, who could ask for more?