Our hosts in Nadi, Paul and Diana told us that Paul’s cousin will meet us in the airport. As soon as we exit the baggage area we saw a guy holding a paper with “Mr. Julian and Eleana” :-DD
Noah, Paul’s cousin, with completely red eyes and talking very slow with a big smile, a bit scared us from the first sight. I started to think: “What is this? He looks like a drug addict, where he is takings us? – panicking a bit”.
We stopped on the way at a small shop (since big supermarkets were closed that hour) to buy some beers for the evening, but frankly I had a weird feeling that people around – Noah, taxi driver, a guy in the shop – where the ones who use to cheat tourists. May be it was just my impression, but I just felt it in the air.
Anyway, beers were cheap (finally , after Japan and Australia) and it was great! :-D (12 bottles of beer 750 ml cost us around 15 Euro, which was not bad at all!)
We arrived to Diana’s and Paul’s house with no problem, dropped the bags in the room and went out to the terrace to have a beer with our hosts, Noah and a couple of German couchsurfers, who were also staying in the house.
We were chatting outside with Diana, Noah and a German couple and driking some beers.
Later German girl came out of the house and accused Noah of stealing 100 USD from their room. Then later Diana told us that Noah also has stolen 400 US dollars from her room when she was out of the house. “Nice welcome to Fiji, “ I thought and asked Diana to give me a key and immediately locked our room.
Strange feeling wouldn’t leave me alone, was really strange situation and Noah didn’t inspire me much confidence. Juli didn’t have any problem though, drinking beer with him outside and discussing where we could go tomorrow, what island is better to chose since we have only 2 days in Fiji before we fly to Auckland.
Noah already had a proposal for us, since he was working also as tourist agent (of course, in Nadi everybody is a tourist agent) and he promised us big discounts and great time on one of the islands, called Mana.
Then German girl told me that they have took one of the tours with Noah help and in the end didn’t get promised by him conditions and have lost part of the money. Well, I was not sure about Noah at all!
Then Diana had a talk with us and promised to keep an eye on Noah and control him not to cheat us. She called herself touristic agency and agreed that tomorrow they will pick us up from the house at 9 am and we go to Mana for 1 night, 2 days and then will get back to Nadi.
Ok, first lessons learnt in Nadi:
–keep an eye and check everything by yourself
–don’t trust too much local people since they think you are white tourist with pots of money (which is probably true if your compare your money with what they can earn in Fiji)
–don’t forget to say Bula (hello) when you see local people (you are going to say it 1000 times every day actually)
–remember about Fiji time – which means don’t rush, relax, take it easy and get used that things here are done slowly….
In the end we have decided to take a tour to Mana, departing tomorrow, staying 1 night in a double room with private bathroom, 3 meals and then returning to Nadi. The price, including boat transfer to Mana and back for both of us was 390 Fiji dollars (about 150 euro). Noah commission as an agent was 30 euro, included in this amount.
I believe it is possible to get much cheaper deal, but you need to stay more days in the same place (this way you don’t pay every day for boat transfer) and probably has sense to go to the further islands, which are more natural and cheaper then Mamanuca islands.
In our case, we had only 2 days to go to the islands, so it was no time to bargain more – we took the deal!
No comments:
Post a Comment