Day 36 (allowing for that time-zone - the dateline stole 17th October) - Nadi to Suva, Viti Levu island, Fiji

Trips on local buses, we love 'em. 

F$32 (that's about £6 per person to you) for the 4 hours from Nadi airport to the main bus station in downtown Suva (from where Sheila's husband, Deddy, picked us up). The road around the southern hemisphere of the island (Nadi is at about 9 o'clock and Suva at 5 o'clock) is fairly good, sometimes a wee bit bumpy, and first impressions of Fiji are beautiful and very, very green (and it certainly had been raining before we landed).  

As the island interior is hilly (peaks rise to over 4000 feet and are heavily forested) and you can't easily drive straight from north to south, most of the traffic is coastal - the road hugs the ocean pretty much all the way round the main island where Sheila lives (Viti Levu), which is home (along with the other big island, Vanua Levu) to 87% of the population - everyone else lives on one of the other 104 inhabited islands which comprise the archipelago.  

While we're at it, a few more scene-setting Fiji stats : with all those islands comes a lot of water : the Republic covers a total area of 75k sq miles, of which only 10% is land; it lies midway between Vanuatu (which we'll be visiting in a week or so's time) to the west and Tonga to the east (and the north island of NZ is 1300 miles south); the dateline ought by rights to sever the islands but it's bent to give uniform time to all of the group; the climate is tropical - warm most of the year round with minimal extremes though the "warm season" is Nov to April and the cooler season (still +70°F) May to Oct;  rainfall is apparently variable (we haven't seen much yet though the warmer season experiences heavier rainfall, especially inland) ; similarly, winds are supposed to be moderate though it's been very windy since we arrived, and the once-a-year-or-so cyclone happened a short while ago so hopefully we won't get another! 

Anyway, our first day in Fiji ended with sundowners (absent the sunset, mostly, unfortunately, but very very nice indeed)...