Ending up at the wrong hotel

After our tropical Christmas break it came the time for us to pack up our stuff and leave the little bure behind us. Despite being quite remote we had a great time on the island even with the constant mosquito attacks. At least with sandflies in New Zealand you felt them biting you but with mosquitos you could have one on you for 10 minutes before you even notice, if you even notice, at all. The hotel dropped us to the airport where we sat in the tiny waiting area before having to physically stand with our hand luggage once again on the scales. We gave our big backpacks to the assistant to load onto the little trolley and soon enough our plane landed with the next set of island seeking tourists and locals. The flight over to Nadi was a different route to our first flight from Suva so we could to see so much more of the mainland and its surrounding coast line. The reefs are beyond stunning from the air and you hope the country can maintain their tourism and preserve such an amazing ecosystem forever. We saw so many new types of coral and fish here that it truly feels unique from other reefs so I hope nothing ever changes to alter that. After flying in over lushious green hills we were back at Nadi Airport arriving at the domestic terminal. We had a transfer arranged to our hotel but we soon realised they wouldn't be picking us up from here, despite us asking for it. Instead we chose to leave after 20 minutes of waiting and walk around to the international arrivals where we were picked up last time we were here. Now here is where I made a huge error. It turns out that two hotels decided to put the word "Capricorn" in their name. So there is a Hotel of Capricorn and a Tropic of Capricorn. I mean what are the chances? The hotel we stayed at last time was attached to two other hotels on the same street including the Tropic of Capricorn one and I just always believed this was the one I had booked. We found the shuttle lady and she said we weren't on the list but by this point we didn't know there were two similar named hotels so we insisted we were and she said she had space to take us. We got to the hotel and they couldn't find us on the system, even giving our booking reference didn't help. Eventually the receptionist looked at our booking on our phone and she was the one who spotted that I'd actually booked us into the Hotel of Capricorn, the completely wrong hotel. Feeling very embarrassed we left the reception and flagged down a taxi. The receptionist had told us where it was and 5 minutes later we were at the right hotel. They were rather annoyed at us for not meeting the person at the airport as planned and when I explained what happened trying to lighten the mood she simply replied in a very sarcastic voice "how can anyone mix up Tropic and Hotel". It was rather tense and uncomfortable. She then said our room wasn't ready so we put our stuff into a locked storage room and went to Burger King nextdoor for lunch. I'm surprised Nick even entered such a place but we were both so hungry that we didn't care what we ate. Our room still wasn't ready when we came back, there was a slight feeling this was payback by making us wait, but eventually we got the key. We then discovered WiFi isn't included, I'm surprised busy large hotels even do that anymore, especially when our very budget hotel we had last time here did offer WiFi. So we dumped our bags and left straight away on a taxi back to our first hotel where we sat by the pool on the WiFi wishing I'd booked the right hotel! We managed to book so much of our remaining trip however that it ended up being a very productive afternoon and not such a bad day after all. We even took the plunge and booked our journey home! Home, I can't quite believe we will be going there. Having an end date makes everything seem so limited and we really need to make the most of our remaining time away.Les mer