Pacific Harbour Feels Like Home

On the afternoon of Monday, December 22nd my bus arrived in Pacific Harbour. It was only four dollars for the hour and a half bus ride and there was a decent amount of room on the bus as far as Fijian public transport goes. The bus dropped me off in what looked like the middle of nowhere but after a half hour walk down the road with my pack I eventually found Uprising Resort where I would be staying for the next week or so. It was only $30 a night and was one of the nicest places I have stayed while traveling. It was located right on the beach and had a free breakfast every morning, $2.50 pints of Fiji Gold Draft at happy hour, extremely friendly staff, and cheap Hawaiian pizzas. I was in heaven.

My first night there was one of the best. I was hanging out at the bar with this African guy from Zambia when I noticed the abundance of females in the bar. I decided to go over to one of the tables and have a chat. I ended up meeting a great group of girls who informed me that it was actually ladies night, which would explain the abundance of females. I guess I missed the signs everywhere including the one at the door. I told these girls that I had no plans for Christmas and they were nice enough to invite me over to their place for Christmas dinner. I said I would be in for sure but didn’t really take it seriously at the time because of the state everybody was in. Sure enough though on Christmas morning I was hanging out with some Irish friends that I met at the resort when Alfie, the manager at Uprising, came up and informed me that the girls had called and I was to be at their place for three o’clock that afternoon. They ended up picking me up and brought me over to their parent’s place, which was a beautiful home right on the river. I met the whole gang and one of the girls showed me their dad’s giant collection of palms. They had a four-acre property with a botanical garden on it containing one of the largest collections of palms in the pacific. Apparently they had well over 400 species of palms on the property. It was awesome. The meal was amazing too. They had cooked three stuffed chickens, a big ham, mashed potatoes, and all kinds of other things were going around as well. It was a great time and I got to meet a lot of the locals that night too. There must have been about twenty people there at one point. It was one of the highlights of my Fiji experience.

I also got to know one of their friends, Talei, quite well. A few of us went over to her place for dinner one night and I helped her make us all some classic spaghetti. The next day the same crew all took a trip to one of the villages nearby where we got to go out in a boat with the chief of the village and go for a swim on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean. We stayed out there for hours playing around and talking. We even brought a lunch. Then after we went back to the village to drink some karva that we had brought from the store in town. We also brought some sweets for the children. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out on the porch with the chief and a bunch of the other villagers drinking karva. It was a beauty of a day and another one of my most memorable days in Fiji.

Pacific Harbour was by far my favorite place that I stayed in Fiji. Mainly because of the way the locals embraced me and brought me into their circle of friends right away. It was really nice to know and be able to hang out with the locals like that. It really made Pacific Harbour feel like home for me. I hope to go back there as soon as possible and maybe even buy a piece of land there someday if I can find the spare cash haha. I have to go back either way to do my shark dive and experience one of the great rafting trips through the forest. On Monday, December 29th I headed back to Nadi on the bus to stay one more night at Nadi Bay Backpackers before heading down to Sydney to bring in the New Year.