Day 106 - The Other Side of the Coin

We got up and had breakfast and then it was time to say our goodbyes, though this wasn’t really necessary as we knew we’d venture back here before we left the island. A couple of the staff carried our big backpacks the short walk to the resort’s entrance where we were then handed over to Mana Resort staff.

The resort is massive and we had a 5 minute walk just to get to reception. From here we were passed to a Japanese lady (the resort is owned by Japanese) who then passed us on to an English speaking Fijian who gave us an introduction to the resort and also got us both a welcome drink. The difference between the two styles of accommodation is basically like comparing an old used car to a brand new model from a dealership – crazy. Obviously the resort had all the essentials: pools, spa, laundry service, a chapel, an a la carte restaurant, a buffet restaurant, sports centre, coms centre, etc etc! Our room was on another level also; we opened the door to a huge air conditioned room complete with: our big comfy beds, furniture including sofas and tables etc, tea and coffee making facilities, ironing facilities, a fridge, the ever essential emergency torch, and a fancy bathroom with a very impressive private outdoor shower (yes, private and outdoors!) It was bizarre stepping into this place after where we’d been the past 2 nights, and again it made us think about how lucky and how different our lives are in contrast to lots of Fijians’ lives. We dumped our things and checked out the rest of our bure.

At the pool and on the sun loungers is where we then spent the rest of the day, basking in the glorious heat of the Fijian weather. Danny also had a stroll to one of the beaches by the resort to check it out and was delighted to see the, picture perfect, tropical island vista of a clean and sandy beach with the clear blue waters lapping gently against the shore and the palm trees lining the coast line.

Needless to say, everything is very expensive here in comparison to the rest of Fiji and we were not up for entertaining their wallets so we kept it as cheap as we could here. For our tea we ordered room service and got 2 pizzas along with a can of coke with this coming in at a fraction of the price of if we’d eaten at either of their restaurants. After this rather nice tea we spent the remainder of the evening reading and chilling out in the room. We also realised that we miss the company of the Mana Lagoon accommodation; both their entertainment and talkative staff.