Fiji – September 2012
T-5 – Preparations
Tuesday 25th September
7 years ago, when we were travelling around the world, we got as far as Australia and then conceived Joey. To say the least, this had quite an impact on our travel plans at the time. One significant impact was the decision we made at the time to cut out any further travel to regions that were in malaria zones. This, unfortunately, meant that we had to cash in our round-trip flights to Vanuatu, the Cook Islands and Fiji. We had planned on spending a couple of weeks in Fiji but, alas, it was simply not to be. I had always wondered what it would be like to sun myself on a remote South Pacific Island. 7 years on, it seems that we are now, finally, going to get the chance to visit Fiji to see just what it was that we missed all those years ago.
Well, I’ve done what I can to prepare for this year’s holiday and we’re now just a few days away from departure. It was a rather sudden decision on my part to go, having conceived the very idea not 3 weeks ago. I’ve arranged for us to do some SCUBA diving whilst we’re there and this will be the first time in over 7 years that we’ve dived so that’ll be an adventure. We don’t have the same underwater photography equipment that we had previously (and besides, it’s all obsolete technology now anyway) but I do still have my external strobe and arm assembly and we do now have a new underwater camera, the Canon Powershot D10 so I’m hoping that this combination will do us well for the trip and we’ll come home with some beautiful photos to show for our troubles. The temperature in Fiji at this time of year is just about perfect – in the upper twenties – not too hot and not too cold, according to the dive master that I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with.
We’ve booked ourselves into a resort called The Outrigger On The Lagoon, which is supposed to be one of Fiji’s finest resorts that caters particularly well for families. It is supposed to have a fantastic kids club and I’m hoping that Sandy will be able to relax enough to allow the kids to spend time there so that the two of us can have some down time. We’ll be at the resort for 7 days/nights all told.
As coincidence would have it, and unbeknownst to me at the time we booked, a colleague of mine has also booked the exact same holiday. She and he husband and 3-year-old Daughter will be on the same flights as us and staying in the same resort for the same duration. It’ll be interesting to see if we have similar tastes and whether we end up spending much time with each other whilst there.
It has to be said that this holiday was really my impulse. Sandy was more than happy to go camping or to do something local. Of course, this means that if the holiday doesn’t work out well … well, I’ll probably never hear the last of it. Here’s hoping things DO go well.
In preparation for the trip, I’ve tried to think of everything. I’ve dug out all our old diving equipment and replaced the batteries in our dive computers. I’ve bought our Fijian Dollars already and I’ve booked the car parking facility. The flights and accommodation are all booked and paid for and I’m now typing this on the recently purchased Macbook Air that we got for Joey for school next year, having installed the necessary software and confirmed that everything is working. As we’ll be on the plane for around 4 hours, I’ve loaded the iPads with new content for the kids to keep them entertained for the journey. Haven’t yet started to think about packing but there’s still a few days left for that. No doubt Sandy will be buying a few bits and bobs for her and the kids to take with us. Each of the 4 of us has a single baggage allowance of 23Kg so we should be fine there.
Well, I think that just about covers it. Let the clock continue to count down and, then, let the holiday begin 🙂