Fji - day 1

Our Fiji trip has gotten off on a bit of the wrong foot.  It all started off with Todd forgetting his backpack and passport at the house. He realized the mistake when we pulled up at the airport and he went to grab it out of the backseat only to find that it wasn’t there. So, he hopped back in the car and flew home while Gordy and I held our spots in the slowest check-in line I’ve ever seen. An hour and fifteen minutes later, Todd made it back to the airport and Gordy I were finally at the front of the line (after letting 5-8 people go ahead of us).

Our flight was relatively smooth, but Gordy was the only one who got any sleep due to a crying kid two rows behind us, and a family behind us who were hell bent on testing out the thickness of our seats with their knees. 

When we finally arrived in Nadi at 4:30am and found our rental car company, we discovered that it was closed and wouldn’t open until 6am. So, we waited as patiently as possible only to find out that all the other car companies opened at 6am, but ours actually opened at 7am. Just to be clear here, the rental company sent Todd an email saying that they would see us at 5am, so we aren’t crazy.

At 6:45am, the representative at Hertz told us that he had found a car for us. He took us outside the airport and put us in a car explaining that the car was with another company that kept their cars in another location. And while we knew it sounded sketchy, we took the risk since we were tired, hungry, and feeling vindictive against our rental car company. The driver took us about 10mins south of the airport to a small car wash place that looked abandoned. As we all got out of the car, the driver’s uncle came over and pee’d on the fence next to us. We then went into the “office” and started the paperwork for a rental car. Things went south pretty quickly with this guy not giving us the rate we’d been promised and he ended up driving us back to the airport. 

By that time, our rental car company was open and we spent the next 30 mins sorting out the car and the paperwork because the car we’d reserved was not available. Side note - the car guy has never seen Seinfeld, and yes, Todd asked. By 8am we were all loaded up in our mini SUV and were headed to our hotel/apartment which was only about a 5 minute drive away.

Prior to coming here we had decided to pay up for a place with a kitchen because we have become quite particular with our diet. So we booked an apartment in a place that got great reviews. Sadly, the hotel is not all that it was made out to be. The room is dirty and even has a weird slimy film/coating over the entire floor, the kitchen utensils are VERY limited, the shower door only opens enough for one of us to slip inside because it opens into the toilet, the towels are a very weird fabric which doesn’t absorb water, the pillows are super lumpy, the bedsheets have stains on some of them, etc. And, while all of this is a bummer, we paid in full upon arrival, so we are stuck. The good news is that they let us check in super early without any additional charge which nearly made up for everything else because we were all so tired.

So, 4hrs after arriving in Fiji with not much to show for it, we all laid down and took a 2hr nap.