Christmas & New Year in Fiji

Planning an overseas holiday over the festive season can be a bit tricky, involving hours of google research and sometimes the information is just not there.  I am a planner and need to know what is on offer prior to leaving for the holiday. Mid-year I started reaching out to the known hotel chains, restaurants and tour operators to try gather some information. It was a bit frustrating as I seem to always ask too early.  For Fiji, late October or even November is the best time to request information for the Christmas holiday season.

I can share with you that each hotel has an activities calendar for the month of December and January.  It is worth requesting these as there is so much going on during this time. Keeping in mind that you can explore each hotel as a day visitor, it is well worth getting all the calendars. I discovered a few “nice to knows” along the way. Raddison Blu had a Santa photo session and a gift-wrapping station which was super handy. 

The Hilton hosted several great events such as a cooking class (for a very reasonable price $45/person), a sunset champagne and canapé night which was superb. The Sofitel had a Silent Disco which was super fun.  Santa arrived by jet ski on Christmas morning to give the kids a treat, and our resort had live music and games poolside throughout the day.  We would not have known any of this if we did not ask for each hotels list of activities, this gave us the opportunity to plan our weeks.

We were not entirely sure what we were going to do on Christmas Day.  Every resort had several dining options but, as you can imagine, they were priced accordingly for one of the biggest family feasts of the year.  Each hotel’s restaurant offers a variety of options including adults only or children friendly, from fine dining to buffet, you are again spoilt for choice on Denarau. My only advice would be to book in early to ensure you get your required seating time, so you don’t miss out.

It was a tough decision which saw me read nearly every menu available, but since it was just Tony and I we decided we would prefer cooking together.  As we were spending so long in Fiji we could dine out on any other night for a standard rate, and we had the luxury of an apartment with a full kitchen which gave us the choice to cook, which is a huge benefit of timeshare accommodation.

Our traditional breakfast is a champagne breakfast with fresh croissants, which we ordered specially from the French patisserie located at the Sofitel.  We also remembered to include a nice bottle of champagne on our way through Duty Free. For our Christmas lunch I pre-ordered our ham from South Pacific butchery which is near Nadi town, and our accompanied vegetables came fresh from the Nadi market.  

The same goes for planning your New Years Eve. Many of the restaurants offer similar experiences for dinner with an array of evening activities until the countdown.  It would pay to check out all the options so you can decide what is best for you.

As I love dancing, we went with the obvious choice which was dinner followed by a DJ.  We started at Cantina, a lovely Mexican restaurant located at the Denarau Marina, where we enjoyed an amazing meal and a few drinks.  To see in the New Year, we boarded the boat Maximus, which is hosted by Cloud 9 and was docked at the marina for the evening which included a DJ that had been flown in from Sydney to ensure there was a great atmosphere and plenty of dancing. Fireworks were let off at midnight and we had great views from the boat.

Both days were unique experiences that we’ll remember for a lifetime and now that we have the recipe, we’ll definitely be planning another destination festive season in the future.  Any suggestions?