Trip to Qamea, Fiji: January 16-28, 2012
We left RIC early on Monday, January 16. We flew through PHL to LAX with no problems, arriving at LAX about 11 a.m. I had gotten us a room for that night at the LAX Radisson, using Priceline – and we got the rental car from Avis with Priceline. We saw the exhibits and visited with a friend who works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (very nice art museum) and had dinner at the restaurant there. On the 17th, we drove to the Getty Museum- which is very impressive and very much worth seeing.
In the afternoon we stopped by the Farmer’s Market which I have visited for decades and which has really changed in past 25 years – I miss the long gone tacky consignment stores.
Our LAX to Nadi flight on Air Pacific left about 10 p.m. We arrived in Nadi, Fiji, about 5 a.m. on the 19th, having crossed the international dateline. I tried to figure out exactly how long the flight took – but the calculation gave me a headache and I gave up – it was about 11 hours. The flight was not bad. Compared to domestic travel, Air Pacific was great, although the equipment (747-400) seemed rather old – as later proved to be the case.
We arrived in Nadi, Fiji, about 5 a.m. Our next flight on Pacific Sun to Taveuni did not leave until 2:15 p.m., at least that was the scheduled time – although Pacific Sun treated us very well throughout and I have no complaints whatever – I have to say that they seemed to view the posted schedule as a suggestion at best. The travel company in Nadi that was involved in our travel arrangements was Rosie’s Holidays and we arranged to take a half day tour with them. The women who worked in the Rosie’s office were great – extremely helpful and friendly. We enjoyed the tour but the guide was not too good with commentary. Our flight to Taveuni left quite late, because of some rain around Nadi. Note that you can carry liquids of any quantity – e.g., bottles of booze – in your carry-ons to Taveuni. The flight to Taveuni was in a Twin Otter, 20 seats, and the views were great because we never got above 8,000 feet at the highest. As we approached Matei, the airport on Taveuni, a rain squall hit and visibility was zero. Matei is basically an asphalt landing strip and there was no way to land in such conditions. I assume without confirmation that they were under VFR. The pilot climbed out of his seat (there was a co-pilot!) and came back to the cabin to talk to the seven pax, of which we were two. He explained that we could not land and that they could not hang around any amount of time because they only had enough fuel to get back to Nadi if they turned around then. No one questioned his logic. Pacific Sun (technically, they could have just cut us loose) put us up at the Raffles Gateway Hotel across the street from the airport and they gave us vouchers for all our meals – the Pacific Sun people could not have been nicer – we really were very impressed. The Qamea Resort (our destination) called us at Raffles and said that they would fight to get us on the morning flight – we appreciated the showing of interest and concern, and the confirmation that they knew of our problem in getting there - but we were unable to get on the morning flight and were rescheduled for the same afternoon flight the next day. Raffles was fine – the people working there were great. In fact, everyone in Fiji that we met in our time there was very friendly and hospitable.
The next morning, with time to kill until the afternoon flight, we took the public bus ($1.15 F per person one way) to Nadi Town (Nadi is pronounced Nandi) and walked around the town. The bus ride to Nadi took about 20 minutes – a little longer coming back. We went to the market (mostly vegetables and other food) and then to a Hindu temple. It is not a real touristy place – very different from the tourist towns that have developed in the ports of call in the Caribbean. Fiji is about 53% Native Fijian, 37% Indian, the rest being a mix of all other nationalities.
Our plane from Nadi to Matei left more than an hour late, but we finally made it to Taveuni. A taxi driver for the Resort met us, gave us bottles of cold water (Fiji water of course!), and got the bags into the taxi. We had about a twenty minute drive to a beach on which we boarded a boat from the resort to take us across the channel (about 5 miles, I think) to Qamea (pronounced Gamea). There was not a dock at either place and you get on and off the boat on the beach in the water.
We were met at Qamea and escorted to our beach bure (pronounced buray). The resort has a website that explains the basics about the resort if you are interested. The grounds are beautiful and the bures are quite nice. The reason we chose Qamea was the fact that I had read that it has some of the best off-beach snorkeling in Fiji (and thus in the world). We were not disappointed. The snorkeling was fantastic. In particular, the corals just 50 feet from the beach were incredible – putting to shame anything in the Caribbean. The snorkeling (again, particularly the reefs) was much better than anything we have seen in the Caribbean, including Belize – there just is little comparison. On a few days, they took us by boat to a different area where the snorkeling was excellent – it was hard to be much better than what was right off the beach, however. We took an excursion to Bouma National Heritage Park, hiked around and swam at the lower falls – very enjoyable. We had wanted to attend a church service on Taveuni on Sunday but could not go because of the bad weather on Sunday. The weather did limit the choices of what to do on many days. The resort arranged for music from the “Band Boys” almost every night and a Meke singing thing and a Kava ceremony.
The resort has new managers – they had been there about 6 weeks when we arrived – a nice young couple from Mexico. I think that they have their work cut out for them – I think that they need to deal with the dive manager, who seemed to rub everyone the wrong way, even though I think he was trying to be friendly and hospitable – it just did not seem to work. He was extremely knowledgeable and technically proficient. With regard to managing such a place, one of the things that we quickly came to realize, partly because of the weather, was just how isolated the resort is. Particularly in the rainy season, you cannot take for granted any ability to get to or get off Qamea. They were concerned about delay in getting the fuel necessary to run their generators – but it worked out fine.
The food was excellent at Qamea – plenty of choice – and I think the chef/cooks would have met any individual desires. We are not that interested in food; it was excellent and more than enough for us. There were not many quests at Qamea during our time there. It was the rainy season – the low season in Fiji. Much of the time we were at Qamea, there were only 7 guests, although there were more our last couple days. The resort can only hold 40 or so max, but 7 is kind of sparse. We very much enjoyed the other guests who were there, all of whom were very nice. The weather got worse after we arrived. A family of 3 had to stay an extra three nights because of an inability to get out. Another couple had to stay one extra night. No one could complain too much because Nadi was suffering from very serious flooding – the town in which we had walked around on the 20th had several feet of water covering the streets of the town within a few days. Although we missed a day at the resort because of weather, we actually were lucky with the timing, being able to leave Qamea on the day we were scheduled to leave.
While still in Nadi after our arrival, I learned that I had to be able to do a conference call the next Tuesday, which was going to be Monday back home. I talked to a guy at a phone store in the airport and he told me that the reception in Qamea would be fine with one of their phones. Well, no. The folks at the resort shook their hands sadly when I told them what the phone guy had said. Turned out that if you stood on one part of the beach holding the phone up you could get two bars for a time. During the call, I got cut off and ran to office and they let me use their phone which may have been a satellite thing – in any event, it worked. Rather stressful, but it worked out. They had internet available for reasonable price – which I had known in planning – but this conference call just popped up.
We left Qamea as planned on the 27th – we took the boat to Taveuni and then Pacific Sun to Nadi. We arrived in Nadi in the morning and were not scheduled to leave until 10:20 p.m. We had checked the Pacific Air flight the day before and knew of no problem with the flight. We went to talk to the folks at Rosie’s to see about an afternoon tour and they told us the flight that night was cancelled and that the flight would leave the next day (the 28th) at 7 p.m. A woman from Rosie’s volunteered to go with me to the Pacific Air office to assist me in seeing what was going on and to see about getting vouchers for accommodations and meals. She was very helpful in dealing with Pacific Air, which gave us vouchers for a night’s stay at a nice resort and all the meals. She also stayed with me while I called and dealt with USAir about the fact that we would not make it to LAX in time for our scheduled flight and had to change flights. I do not think she could have done anything to help me with USAir but I was extremely impressed with her desire to support us in doing whatever we needed to do to get squared away. We had been planning to leave the same day as we arrived in LA, but we could not get on a flight until the next morning – we had first class tickets and that complicated things a little because I wanted to keep in first class – they were not going to refund anything if we changed to coach to get an earlier flight. I may be able to get the change fees (total of $300) paid for with our travel insurance on the main trip – our LAX-RIC flights were separate from the vacation package from LA and I did not get insurance on the LAX-RIC USAir part, but have insurance on the vacation package. We’ll see. After the flights were arranged, I called our daughter who jumped online to priceline and got us a room and a rental car for Friday, when we would have a good part of the day in LA.
With an afternoon now in Nadi, we took the same tour again because it was the only one that really fit the time. Kind of crazy, but it actually was in many respects like a different tour because we had a great guide who put the first to shame – the good one was Goundar who was great – and we were completely conscious for this one, whereas we were exhausted on that first day in Fiji. Plus, the tour was different in some particulars. The resort that Air Pacific put us up at was the Tanoa Resort and it was very nice – a little further from the airport than Raffles (which is right across the road from the airport) but nicer. The internet charges at Tanoa were $8F for an hour which was fine. Even though we wound up staying another night in Fiji, it worked out great. The next day we just lounged around the resort and did not leave until it was time to get to the airport for the 7 p.m. flight. After we got home, I even sent an email to the Tanoa manager complimenting him on a great operation, even though I very rarely take the time to do something like that. We really cannot say enough about how impressed we were with the friendliness and hospitality of the Fijian people.
The reason our Nadi-LAX flight was canceled was not weather – it was because the Air Pacific 747-400 was in LA and needed another day or so for further maintenance before it could continue flying. Air Pacific does have some older planes and some of us joked about getting use of a plane at the end of its life – perhaps we get extra credit for REALLY using these planes. Air Pacific chartered an Atlas 747-400 (you may recognize the Atlas name as a company that does a lot of military charters) which was in better shape than the one we had flown to Nadi on. The Atlas plane had a nose camera which was pretty interesting on takeoff and at LAX.
We got our priceline rental car from Hertz this time and visited two museums during the day – the Hammer (which is being renovated and has many galleries closed) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History which is an excellent museum – it also is where the “Jeffersonian” façade is shot for the TV show Bones, which we enjoy. We took the car back Friday night and a Hertz guy asked us if we were in a hotel – he figured it out because we had no luggage – and drove us to the hotel (The Renaissance) very quickly. We were very pleased as we thought we might have to walk. Apparently, they do this as a matter of course, but we were very impressed and I gave the guy a nice tip!
Being able to bypass long security line with First Class tickets is really nice in LAX and everything went well on trip home.
We really enjoyed Fiji and thought it very worthwhile, but we are not sure we will be making it back to Fiji any time soon. Our next time may be when we have enough time to go on to New Zealand and/or Australia after Fiji.
