Long time Fijiguide.com contributor Marilyn Marsh has just returned from her annual trip to Fiji. This year she focused on the Yasawa Group. Marilyn is an excellent writer and a photographer with a knack for underwater shots. Over the next ten days Fijiguide.com will present her travelogue both text and photos, in a four-part series. This first blog describes how to get there.
Travel to the Yasawas from Nadi is almost exclusively on the Yasawa Flyer – a three level catamaran, operated by the Awesome Adventures group. They have a bus service which picks up from Nadi hotels and delivers passengers to the marina at no extra cost. The Flyer leaves Denarau Marina every morning at 8.30am, and does a round trip, turning for the return leg at Nacula Island, which it reaches around 1.00pm, and it arrives back at Denarau approximately 6.00pm.
These travel times mean that, for most people, travelers will have to spend their first and last nights in Nadi. The website gives prices for packages and multi-day passes, but does not give any indication that they will issue tickets for single trips. An email to the company will get you a reply with a cost, and they require a credit card number to issue a booking reference.
You can pay at that point but we have found that paying in FJ$ on check-in is usually cheaper than paying in our own currency. I’ve often been asked whether booking is necessary – I would advise it, especially as the Flyer is occasionally replaced by a smaller vessel which can be fully booked. This happened to us on our recent trip and we were in the position of possibly not being able to transfer between two resorts (averted by a call to the captain who over-ruled the Nadi office!).
Photos courtesy of Marilyn Marsh
More advice from Marilyn on how to get to the Yasawas in the next blog.
