Celebrity Solstice - day 7 - Lautoka, Fiji

Tuesday was our first Fiji stop --

A photo from our TV screen showing our route -- we were stopping twice on the island of Viti Levu or "Great Fiji" (evidently "Viti" means "Fiji" derived from the Tongan word "Fijian" meaning "islands"). The first stop was at Lautoka.

The weather was threatening to be very rainy, and the distance from the port to the shopping areas was long and without sidewalks, so the cruise ship arranged for busses to take us to the central shopping district.

I took a photo of the buildings across the street from where the busses let us off at the mall so we would be sure to come back to the same location to catch the bus back.

One of the stores in the mall was a grocery store -- we like to go in and see what is available for sale that we might not normally see in our US grocery stores...

On the right is corned beef, but on the left is corned mutton (we don't *think* this is available in US stores, at least we haven't seen it at Walmart or Kroger!).

Different brands of snacks

"Tired of hand scrapping the coconut? We can help with that... Coconut Scrapping Done Here 50₡ per coconut" (shouldn't that be "scraping" instead of "scrapping"? we saw it spelled this way in multiple places)

Texan Roast Chicken! How did that chicken get from Texas to here? Or... is it roasted as chickens are roasted in Texas? The additional text indicates "Smokey, Sweet, & Mildly Hot", so it must be the way it is roasted. $19.95 each for a 1.7kg (raw weight) (~3.75 pound) cooked chicken -- with the exchange rate being 1 FJD = 0.435148 USD, so that would be about US$8.68 -- not as good a price as a Costco or Sam's Club rotisserie chicken, but not horribly expensive either.

The mall had an appliance store -- how is it that Carl is always drawn to the big screen TVs? This one was almost 8000FJD -- so about $4000USD -- definitely higher than we've been seeing at Walmart or Costco in Arizona!

We walked across the street to the individual shops along the street -- we got a couple of shirts at Jacks, and continued walking. We saw a lot of small shops. We walked down one street...

... and came to the fresh food market -- rows and rows of booths of people all seeming to sell about the same product. We were there at about 11:30am, and it seemed that they had a lot of inventory remaining.

Taro roots for sale

Between the mall and the street shops, there was a green area with a narrow gauge track running through it -- we think it would be used for sugar cane to be transported to the processing plant.

It was starting to sprinkle, and we'd done all the shopping we were interested in doing, so we caught the shuttle bus back to the port...

After we got off the bus, we could see that our ship was being re-provisioned -- there were a number of containers which were being unloaded by the forklifts and put onto the Solstice.

This was one of the shuttle busses -- note that when on the bus, the driver is sitting on the right side of the bus, and the entry to the bus is on the left side -- we had to again pay close attention when crossing streets in town to be sure that we wouldn't be run over by vehicles coming from an unexpected direction. Note also that the bus has a grid screen at the lower part of the windshield - we asked the purpose of this and the fellow we asked said that it was a rock guard to keep the windshield from being hit by stones -- wish we had had this on our trip to/from Alaska last summer!

Back on ship -- a view out toward the middle part of the island...

and toward the town where we had gone on the bus.

Note that each port we could have booked excursions instead of exploring on our own -- either through the cruise ship, or independently. Each location has had vendors as we exit the ship offering to take us on excursions (for much better rates than what the cruise ship offers, but, if you don't make it back on time, if you are on a cruise ship excursion, the ship will wait for you -- if you are on an independent excursion, the ship will leave, and it will be up to you to figure out how to re-join your cruise). We went on couple of ship arranged excursions a couple of years ago when we were in Europe, and we found that we did not enjoy them as much as going on our own. So, this trip, we're just wandering around near the port on our own.

In the evening, Stephen Barry was doing another show...

... such a great singer!

He had two aerialists perform during one of his songs (I'm guessing that they may be performing in a show of their own later in the cruise).

He shared information about himself...

... including that he had been a busker in London for a while, and about his encounter with the woman who was playing Christine in "Phantom of the Opera" -- see the performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxm5pJsgKVo

Text from person who posted the video on YouTube: 

I stopped in Covent Garden to watch a young busker @stephensings1 performing songs from stage musicals. He has the most incredible voice. He had just sung a song from Phantom of the Opera, and then something incredible happened.... ......a young woman stepped forward and asked him to sing 'All I Ask Of You'. Stephen replied 'I can't do two Phantom songs in a row'. The young woman said 'if you do, I'll sing it with you'. Stephen looked skeptical and asked 'are you any good?' The young woman replied 'I'm currently Christine in Phantom of the Opera'. What followed was absolutely amazing and I'm very glad I got my phone out quick enough to record it!! I feel very privileged to have witnessed such a special moment in person. This video is also on Stephen's YouTube channel - Stephen Sings (plus more songs too)

After the performance in the theater, we stopped in the Atrium to see the ship's performers doing a 60s pop-up show called "Groove"...

... high energy and very enjoyable!

 What a great day!