Ovalau (Levuka) - South Pacific Island 10
After an extended stay in Suva we finally started our 4 and a half hour bus/boat journey to a town called Levuka, on the island of Ovalau. The bus was jam packed with locals and extremely hot but we finally made it there and checked into our hotel, which happened to be the oldest hotel in Fiji and apparently the oldest hotel in the whole of the South Pacific!! We can't confirm that fact but the interior design certainly suggests that it might be true!!
History lesson start: Levuka is Fiji's old Capital city (before Suva) and home to where England handed independence back to Fiji in 18-something! In 1970 (we think) Prince Charles paid a visit to mark the 100th anniversary and stayed in the Bure pictured below (bottom right)! History lesson over!
Levuka is renowned for its wild-west appearance and also the smell of tuna!!! Sure enough it certainly looked like the wild-west and it most certainly smelt of tuna (due to a tuna factory being situated there!).
We were due to go on a tour into a local village but unfortunately due to a church meeting the village was closed to tourists and you could only walk on the outskirts, which didn't really warrant the 3-hour hike that was required to get there! Instead we took a splash in the hotel swimming pool... much more relaxing!!
On our last night we were challenged to a game of scrabble, believe it or not, by a ghecko of all things! He wasn't quite big enough to take his own letters but he did manage to spell one word before running off to catch some flies!!
On the way back from Levuka we got talking to some guy on the bus. He was telling us about the town and how he, although retired, was off to some government meeting in Suva. Within a few minutes we had discovered that he was in fact an ex-Mayor of Levuka and in fact still a government advisor today, who, in his earlier days, was the person who set up Fijis immigration department! Turns out he'd been all over the world on official government business! He also left us with a souvenir to take back, which was a Levuka publication, of which he was editor.
The wild-west town of Levuka
Another photo of Levuka town (left) and the bure where Prince Charles stayed (right)
A baby ghecko checking his scrabble letters (left) before deciding they weren't very good and that it was time to do a runner and hunt some flies (right)
History lesson start: Levuka is Fiji's old Capital city (before Suva) and home to where England handed independence back to Fiji in 18-something! In 1970 (we think) Prince Charles paid a visit to mark the 100th anniversary and stayed in the Bure pictured below (bottom right)! History lesson over!
Levuka is renowned for its wild-west appearance and also the smell of tuna!!! Sure enough it certainly looked like the wild-west and it most certainly smelt of tuna (due to a tuna factory being situated there!).
We were due to go on a tour into a local village but unfortunately due to a church meeting the village was closed to tourists and you could only walk on the outskirts, which didn't really warrant the 3-hour hike that was required to get there! Instead we took a splash in the hotel swimming pool... much more relaxing!!
On our last night we were challenged to a game of scrabble, believe it or not, by a ghecko of all things! He wasn't quite big enough to take his own letters but he did manage to spell one word before running off to catch some flies!!
On the way back from Levuka we got talking to some guy on the bus. He was telling us about the town and how he, although retired, was off to some government meeting in Suva. Within a few minutes we had discovered that he was in fact an ex-Mayor of Levuka and in fact still a government advisor today, who, in his earlier days, was the person who set up Fijis immigration department! Turns out he'd been all over the world on official government business! He also left us with a souvenir to take back, which was a Levuka publication, of which he was editor.
The wild-west town of Levuka
Another photo of Levuka town (left) and the bure where Prince Charles stayed (right)
A baby ghecko checking his scrabble letters (left) before deciding they weren't very good and that it was time to do a runner and hunt some flies (right)
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