Got up and ran again with Rae. There were little fishes on the beach and a group of Fijians had stopped a ways down the beach to net fish for bait. Rae stopped to watch and talked with another guest while I did the rest of my run. We came back and had a late breakfast and then set out for the 'Garden of the Sleeping Giant' .
"We've escaped the jaws of luxury!"
-Chris B on leaving Denarau Island
After finding that the taxis lingering by the resort wanted to charge us $80 roundtrip to get to the garden, we took the Bula bus to the front gate and then got lucky and caught a resort shuttle that was running to the airport. the driver charged us $1 each, it was spacious and had air-conditioning. Then we caught a taxi to the garden. As soon as we got into the taxi Rae realised she had left the camera in the resort shuttle so we had a 'Follow that car' moment and rushed to the airport. We found the resort shuttle with no problem and recovered the camera. Good thing that Rae had chatted with the driver. So, then we really headed to the garden.
We passed from the semi-arid landscape of the coast into a pocket of rainforest in a canyon and found the garden. The first part of the walk was through a display of potted orchids. It was a quarter of a mile long and was amazing! I can't remember for sure if we came here with Mom on the last trip but she would have loved it.
The second part of the walk entered the rainforest. There was a wooden walkway that lead across a pond to a trail we wandered up a bit splitting up taking photos and exploring. Eventually we met up at the top of the valley where we found a trail leading up to the ridge above the rainforest. The view was spectacular, though the last few hundred yards were extremely steep. We saw a herd of goats clinging to the cliff face. The top of the ridge had a fence and the grass on the top was indeed greener. It was blazing hot in the sun and we enjoyed sitting at the top for a bit of a rest enjoying what slight breeze there was, watching storm clouds roll in from a distance.
"...that's a bad place to sit licking your balls!"
-Chris B on seeing a puppy sitting in the middle of the road doing his business
We climbed back down and enjoyed our complimentary juice...real juice this time, and on ice even! We caught a ride down to the main road in the back of the caretakers' truck, they were just closing up and were heading down anyway. We caught our cab that we had arranged to come back for us at the entrance and headed back to Denarau.
We planned on going out dancing but were all kind of beat. Meadow turned in early and the rest of us made Bounty-heavy Pina coladas and poured them into water bottles and went into the ocean to drink them. We stopped by the spa for a bit before turning in.
LINKS:
Garden of the Sleeping Giant Info
More Garden of the sleeping giant photos (not ours)
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