The last couple of days have been interesting, to say the least, in the land of Fiji…where a resort is out to take your last penny and the locals have the gift of the gab…..Almost sucking us in!
The girls stand united at our first dinner at one of the resort restaurants!
A walk into the port, found some of us at a hole in the wall travel agent…promising us (Daniel in the lead) a super deal for the 10 of us…half day boat cruise, lunch, drinks, snorkelling all included for a mere $25 FJD per (7) adults, kids free! Instead of $235 each, if we did a small promotional tour of a resort further down the island. 90 minutes they said!
Easy…morning entertainment the next day! However the 90 minutes turned into 3 hours…the free shuttle bus collecting us half an hour early! And here we were at the WYNDHAM…
Waiting patiently for the “little” seminar to begin….
Next minute…a choir of floral Fijians burst into song and banging etc….
At this point we were still unsure of the journey we were about to take…herded into a conference room separated into couples, and it began… a barrage of information and sales pitch lasting 2 hours, with a push to buy into a timeshare! For thousands!!! A walk around the “Resort” cemented our decision to never return….old and tired, state housing like apartments, no beach, and a bunch of miserable holiday makers jammed in a dirty pool!!!
Another hard sell on return until we all said no…but having done the time we deserved the reward! We had to get the kids out of there so we left Dan and George pushing for our Island tour tickets! (Which took another hour!)
Funnily enough our free return shuttle never turned up…and we walked the 2 kms back to our lovely Hilton rooms and pools!
A cool off and nap for the babies was long overdue!! Oh well…we had our cruise booked at the said price!
Or so we thought! Upon Daniel and George’s return they hadn’t included the pick up and drop offs from our hotel for today’s excursion!
So yesterday, after a swim
Jax, the kids and I ventured back to the original travel agent…which turned out to be a front for the WYNDHAM timeshare…not a travel agent at all and they directed me to the tour operator…legitimate one this time!
The very nice receptionist took about an hour to find all our names as the WYNDAM booking people had booked everyone separately and not as a group! She added on the shuttles and grouped us all together… thank goodness we went through this process yesterday as today we would surely have missed the boat!
This further effort deserved a cool drink and a snack at one of the port cafes!
And a return (by taxi) for another cool off!
We all decided on an early night, restaurant takeaways for the baby families and Gran’ma and George and Jess an early dinner at the Asian restaurant, as we have a big excursion today to the much anticipated island!
The takeaway dining experience all round was not flash…and nothing like we ate at the venue (but for the same price) … small example … no chicken on my chicken Caesar salad! Daniel went to battle with the restaurant manager who reluctantly agreed to a refund… but this was not the end of the Bonnici dinner fiasco…George’s and Jess’s early dinner turned into a late one as they had to wait two hours for food! So second Bonnici was off to complain! They will think we are all just trying to get free food…but that is not the case, we are happy to pay if we get what we order!
So a day of challenges ended with a hot bath and book reading for yours truly…until a knock on the door…
Produced a complimentary fruit platter for our dissatisfaction and half an hour later George and Jess received the same! It will remain to be seen if the promised credits come through at checkout!
Oh well ….
Today is another day…sunrise looks promising, breakfast is good and we have an adventure this afternoon (courtesy of the WYNDHAM team) we are all positive!
All who wander are not Lost girls 