Monday, January 28….It was a little bit bumpy all the way from Los Angeles, and the flight took longer than usual, but early Monday morning when we dropped below the clouds for our arrival into Nadi, Fiji, the sight was amazing! Flat, calm blue water….well, aqua, turquoise, all shades of blue imaginable greeted us, with dots of islands poking up from the bottom of the ocean, bits of sand with just a palm tree, reefs just barely submerged under the clear ocean surface….glorious to say the least!

It was an uneventful arrival into the Nadi Airport and the lines snaked around and around to clear Immigration. The one thing the Nadi Airport could use in their receiving area is fans! 6:30 a.m., hot and humid with over 400 people clearing Immigration, moving ventilation would be most helpful!

Baggage claimed and dollars exchanged into Fijian dollars, our car rental already pulled up to the curb awaiting our luggage….once loaded, we were off to Pacific Harbour!

The road from the Nadi Airport along the southeast coast of Viti Levu is two lanes and winding. Local transport buses pick up passengers every few miles, traffic slows around winding curves. Dotted along the road are many, many Fijian villages, all of which greet you with a “hump” in the road so you slow down! Hearty BULAS are heard all along the road, from the bus stops to the folks walking along the side of the roadway.

It was sunny, mild & breezy for our three-hour drive along the Coral Coast. Everything from backpacker hotels to Five Star hotel/resort properties are tucked into the flower-filled, tree lined driveways. Always in our vision were a couple of 3,000’ high mountains that were becoming increasingly cloud-covered.

The closer we got to our destination, Pacific Harbour, the cloudier it got. Just as we pulled under the veranda of the Pearl South Pacific Resort the heavens opened! After unloading our car and checking into the hotel we headed towards the ocean…..what a sight greeted us! Crashing waves and half bent over palm trees! The gigantic pool in the center of the gardens was developing whitecaps! The hotel was in the process of putting up hurricane shutters and “battening down the hatches”! Guess what…..a tropical low had almost instantly developed into a cyclone and was bearing down on Viti Levu! WHERE WERE THE CALM SEAS AND BLUE SKIES OF THIS MORNING???

I know we’ve heard this before, but all the guests were saying “It’s been glorious right up until a couple of hours ago!”

By the time dinnertime arrived, it had become increasingly apparent that something major was going to happen! We ate our dinner with other guests from the U.S. and Australia out on a covered patio on the hotel’s lower level watching the huge waves roll in and palm branches come crashing down. Local TV news forecast Tropical Cyclone Gene was expected to make landfall near Nadi around 4:00 a.m. local time.

Our room faced the gardens and our sliding glass doors had inside wooden shutters as well. Since we were still reeling from our overnight flight, we barely made it until 7:30 p.m. when we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer! We closed our shutters, shut our eyes and prayed that no one would awaken us during the night with evacuation plans……………..