The mere existence of a circular road around the island of Viti Levu was way too much of a temptation to me. No way am I going to stay 7 days on an island and not undertake this "circumnavgiation" by car. The people at the hotel tried to dissuade me, saying that the roads were terrible, and it would take 13 - 14 hours of merely just driving - that presented of course just more of a challenge to me.

So early in the morning on day 5 of our stay, we set out to do this "round trip" in clockwise direction. The roads overall were actually surprisingly good, though there were quite a few sections consisting more of pot holes than asphalt and, particularly in the section north of Suva, there was very heavy and quite lenghty road construction.

You basically follow the ring road around the island, not much chance to get lost, one would think. Nevertheless, we managed to get lost and gloriously stuck in the northern town Lautoka, because at the perimeter one of the roundabouts did not indicate which exit to take and we followed the wrong route into this town and got stuck in a massive traffic jam. Not exactly the thing you want to experience when you were supposed to drive for 13+ hours at a stretch.

Luckily, I eventually rolled my window down and asked the driver of an adjacent car whether this was the right track for the round island drive - he laughed, said "no way" and then offered to lead us out of the mess. So we followed him as well as we could in this heavily congested traffic and eventually saw the clear road again. Just goes to show that it pays to be friendly to the locals and that there will always be light at the end of the tunnel.

Other than this mishap, the drive was actually quite interesting, we encountered nice stretches of ocean shores, discovered a very basic saw mill in the middle of nowhere, drove through a bunch of cute, colorful villages on the eastern side ..... and happened into another traffic jam in the capital city Suva, again because the existing ring road around the city was not properly signalized. But overall it was a very good, adventuresome experience - and I returned to the hotel, telling the staff that I did the drive of 478 km in 8:30 and not 13+ hours, and only got lost once.

I hope you will enjoy the shots I present here from this adventurous day (and no, I did not have any shots from the traffic jam, I was way too busy just to get myself extracted).

Please view in Download.

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