After 7 days on Beachcomber Island, we decided to have a change of scenery and head to the capital city, Suva.

We didn't fancy the 4 hour journey from Nadi to Suva, so we decided to get a domestic flight down to Suva with Sun Air. 10 of us on a tiny Cessna Twin Otter plane! The flight was excellent and we flew over some amazing scenery - rugged hills, patchwork fields and lush green covered mountains.
We were staying just outside of the Suva at Raintree Lodge.



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On a 3 acre site on the edge of Colo-I-Suva rainforest, Raintree Lodge and its surroundings are gorgeous.
It's located 10Km from Suva city, so it made a nice retreat from the hustle and bustle. The restaurant there was excellent, you dine in a covered verandah amidst the trees overlooking the lake. The food was excellent - I had Chicken Fettucine and Joo had Chicken Bala-Bala (Chicken breat stuffed with banana in a cheese sauce).
The name is very apt for it, as it rained pretty much all the time we were there! As it's in the rainforest, the mosquitos and bugs were rife.

We'd booked a private room, but actually got our own little house as no-one else was in there.

We ventured into Suva city the next day on the local bus. Suva has a very tropical feel to it and has a number of old colonial buildings. We had a wander down to the Government buildings and the now dilapidated Grand Pacific hotel. Twice whilst we were walking round, we were shown a few sites by a local. It was a tad uncomfortable and were 'offered' local crafts as gifts, which we politley declined. They were obviously trying to sell them to us. As we were with the second guy, a local Fijian women who passed us, whispered to me to 'be careful'. At this point I felt a little unsafe and decided to call the 'tour' to an end. They were both extremely friendly and calmly accepted our polite refusals and left us alone.

The evening was spent in the bar at Raintree Lodge, chatting to Kelly and Drew who we met the previous evening. We also watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Not the most relaxing movie to watch in such calm surroundings!

We woke on Friday (13th August) morning and it was a glorious day. A real shame we had to leave, but we had our return flight back to Nadi to catch.

Raintree Lodge was a great place to stay and we enjoyed seeing the capital city.

Our little plane to Suva - Cessna Twin Otter



An aerial view of Nadi and the surrounding area. It just looks like home!



Our fellow passengers - all 12 of them.



Plane and pilot



Our little 'apartment' at Raintree Lodge. (I like the effect from the ceiling fan)



Joo



The lake by the restaurant. It's an old flooded quarry, complete with diggers and dumper trucks on the bottom of it that they didn't manage to rescue when it flooded years ago.



Lee in deep thought - a rare occasion!



A few arty shots. Turned out quite good, don't you think?







Us 2 scoffing our faces. Umm, the food was delicious...







Government Buildings, Suva







Suva's main street.



A localk bus. The green tarpaulins come down over the sides when it rains - which is quite frequent in Suva!



Statues in the grounds at Raintree Lodge



Raintree Lodge