Journey to Suva

On the morning of Friday, December 19th I jumped on a local bus for $.70 which took me down to the bus station where I purchased a bus ticket to take me from Nadi over to Suva, which is the capitol city of Fiji. I thought this big city would be an interesting place to spend the weekend. Nadi was an interesting spot as well but I found it to be quite dirty and there wasn’t a whole lot going on that I wanted to be a part of to be honest. The bus ticket for the four and a half hour bus ride only cost me $8 Fijian, which is around $5 Canadian. It was ridiculously cheap but also incredibly cramped. They sat three people to a seat that looked like it would be a squeeze to fit two people on. It was a sweaty, uncomfortable mess for the first couple of hours but I got talking to one of the locals sitting beside me on the bus. He was a nurse on his way home to visit his family. I was the only white guy on the bus so naturally everybody wanted to talk to me and find out my story. Most tourists traveling around Fiji ride on another bus called the Coral Sun but it was more expensive and I wanted a more authentic Fijian experience. I am glad I made the decision to ride the local bus. Halfway through we stopped in a small town ride at the market so I went in and bought half a pineapple from one of the vendors for $2. It was very delicious and refreshing. I felt reenergized and ready to ride out the rest of the journey to Suva. When I got back on the bus I realized that this was the final stop for a lot of people so there was much more room on the bus and it was down to just two people per seat, which made the trip much more enjoyable. The Fijian countryside was something like I had never seen before. Little villages seemed to pop out of nowhere. A decent amount of the people living in and around Suva are squatters, which means they just toss a tin roof over their heads and they live off the land for the most part. They were everywhere. At some point in the late afternoon we finally rolled into Suva.