Week 3 - Palm Lea Resort

Week 3 was spent at the Palm Lea Farm resort on another island in Fiji. It was a lot less touristy. It was paradise in paradise. The owners were a retired couple from America and Australia named Joe and Julie and were so friendly it felt like we were just visiting friends. They had traveled to over 135 countries in their day and decided on this location to settle down in......I think that says a lot. We also had excellent weather the whole time.

This was our "bure". The resort was eco-friendly so we didn't have all of the luxuries we would normally have at a large resort. It was environmentally friendly though. We had most of our breakfasts and lunches on the front porch overlooking the ocean.

They only had 3 cottages, it was very small and we were also the only people staying there so it felt like we had the whole run of the place and it was very quiet and peaceful.

The food here was amazing and about half the price of the other resorts we were at. The cooks here put a lot into each meal and it was almost 100% organic, grown on the farm and from the surrounding farms. If we could eat all our meals there, we would die happy. Needless to say, we splurged a bit on dining here.

This was the jetty where we went for a few sunsets.

After the rain the previous week, we spent a lot of time by the pool working on our tans.

One day we went for a hike up one of the mountains that we could see. We ran into about 20 locals on our trip. They were all curious as to who we were and what we were doing (in an extremely friendly way). I don't think they see too many tourists there. Everyone we met introduced themselves and stopped to chat a bit.


Going up the mountain was a bit tougher than we'd expected. Two guys had to point out the path to us and assure us it was a path. That path later disappeared and we were trudging through grass over our heads. Luckily we were told there were no poisonous spiders or snakes to worry about.

The view from the top was beautiful in all directions.

When we got to the bottom again we ran into the two guys that helped us find the path. They were taking a break from collecting firewood and were nice enough to get us some fresh coconuts. I guess we looked thirsty.

Me, Malaki and Bosh

The inside of a green coconut is actually soft and jelly like, it tasted a lot better than I could ever have imagined.

We stopped to chat and rest for about 20 minutes and got a good sense of the friendliness of the locals. It was almost the highlight of the hike.

The jetty was a prime location for the sunset, we went there twice.

In this picture, you can see Venus in the top right. The mountain range is the peak we climbed.

Here you can see "Lion Head Rock". On our hike we climbed to the top of the ear. The mangroves in the foreground look like a crocodile too.

The grounds around the resort were also nice.

A mangrove tree at sunset.

We were both sad to leave this place. It was a great end to our trip and with the sunny days, friendly owners and the relaxing pace, we really felt like our trip was fulfilled.

When leaving, not only was it probably the smallest airport I've ever been in but also the smallest commercial airplane I've ever flown in. The benefit to this is that it couldn't fly very high and we got some nice pictures heading back to Nadi.

Bye bye Fiji - Vanaka