The Newstalk ZB host tries a new family travel trend. Here’s why you should, too.
I have wonderful childhood memories of Fiji. I went there more than 50 years ago on a family holiday when I was 7 and I loved it so much I took my daughter there at the same age to replicate the magical experience. However, it’s been years since I’ve been to the islands.
Not having done my OE as a young adult, I spent my 30s and 40s exploring Europe as a middle-aged adult. I kind of forgot about the paradise next door until my grandchildren put Fiji back on my radar.
Apparently, Fiji is the holiday destination of choice for 5-7-year-olds living in Auckland’s North Shore. For the past two years, we’ve been hearing Bart, and now Dora, extol the virtues of Fijian holidays. They have told us stories, in tones of awe and wonder, about their various classmates who’ve had the great good fortune to spend a week in paradise while the rest of New Zealand sulks through a wet winter. So when the opportunity came up to take the children to Fiji as part of the skip gen travel trend, I couldn’t wait to see whether Fiji, long a favourite destination of New Zealanders, still had the power to enchant.
Spoiler alert: it does.
What is skip-gen travel?
Skip-gen, or gramping, is a trend where active, fit grandparents take their grandchildren away on holiday, leaving the parents at home. It’s a win-win-win: grandparents get to enjoy fun experiences with their grandchildren, giving them precious memories. Parents get a break from 24/7 parenting, and the children get a holiday their parents might not have been able to give them.
There is no way I could have imagined travelling with my grandmother. She was a lot of fun, but she wasn’t a traveller, nor would she have been up for snorkelling and adventure parks. Today’s grandparents are different. They are more athletic; they are accustomed to travel; they have more money and they have fewer grandchildren.
I cheated on this trip to Fiji. My daughter, too, came for much of the week, but I travelled there and back with the children and we did have a night on our own. I could easily have holidayed with the children by myself, however, because the resort we were at was so family-friendly.
Tip one: Choose the right resort
Fiji has a resort for every traveller. On Malolo Lailai Island for example, there are three resorts to choose from. There is adults-only Lomani; there’s Plantation Island, which is focused on families; and then there’s the resort we stayed at, Musket Cove.
At Musket Cove, we met honeymooners, retirees escaping the cold and the rain, parents holidaying with adult children and families who lived on boats who had moored at the Musket Cove marina for a few nights. And then there were families like us from Australia and New Zealand — grandparents holidaying with children and grandchildren. I liked the broader age and stage range of the guests at Musket Cove.
Plantation Island, which we visited on a couple of occasions to try out the water park and to go snorkelling, does what it does well, but it’s big and it’s all about the kids.
Musket Cove has a more cruisy, relaxed vibe and is a perfect skip-gen retreat. The place was full, but you would never have known it because so many of the guests were out and about — watching the World Surfing Champs from Cloud Nine, the floating bar on Roro Reef; sailing; kayaking; taking day trips into Denarau.
You don’t have to go off the island, though, to find things to do — there are plenty of activities put on by Musket Cove, but no kids club as such and that suited me fine. I want to spend as much time as I can with the kids while they still want to spend time with me.
People of all ages participated in the group activities: we visited the Shell Village; tried our hands at coconut boat racing, and Bart attended a Fijian-language lesson with his Australian friend, Lola. There are movies for the kids at 6.30pm and babysitters available if you want to kick on — either at Dick’s Place, which is the main restaurant, or at the Island Bar, which is a really fun, casual bar popular with the yachties. There’s a great live band there on the weekends and you can get pizza or self-cook barbecue packs delivered from the nearby Trader Cafe.
Tip two: If you’re the grandparent, give it a go
I had seen Plantation Island’s Inflatable Water Park when we dropped into the resort on the way to Musket Cove and I was dead keen to try it. Plantation Island is a 15-minute walk from Musket and you are welcome to visit, but I was bitterly disappointed to discover the inflatable park is only for children aged 5-16 — boo! — and can be used at only high tide and we had schlepped over at low tide.
Because we were there, Kate and I persuaded the children to try the Jungle Water Park, which is out in deeper water and is a more advanced playground, with trampolines to somersault into the water, high diving boards, a Tarzan rope on a very high platform and a water slide. The water slide was closed on the day we visited, but it was enormous fun jumping off the trampolines and the diving boards into the water. None of us attempted the somersault.
It was probably a bit too advanced for the 7 and 5-year-old, and a wee bit too scary for my daughter and me who hate heights, but we were all extremely proud of ourselves for giving it a go and enjoyed sharing our tales of derring-do over lunch back at Dick’s Place.
It was great fun snorkelling with the kids and riding round the island on the Musket Cove bikes with Bart. When you’re on holiday with children, it’s permission to do all the fun things you might not have done in years and it’s far more fun for everyone to have grandparents participating rather than cheering from the sidelines.
Tip three: Book early
Fiji might not have been on my radar until the grandchildren put it there, but it’s on everyone else’s! So many people we spoke to had to divvy up their trip to Fiji between resorts because many didn’t have vacancies for the full week, even though our trip was outside of New Zealand school holidays (sorry not sorry, David Seymour). If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘hmmm, Fiji’, book now to get the best deals and to ensure you get the length of stay you want at the resort you want. (We’ve rebooked for a week next year).
I couldn’t believe how easy that holiday was. So many times I’ve come back from France or Italy or England exhausted from the long flight and the time difference and the connections and weighed down by the credit card bill. Fiji is two and a half hours’ flying time away and on the same time zone. Our Fijian hosts were as fabulous as I remembered and the children experienced the same magic as I had done and their mother had enjoyed. They were barefoot, swimming every day, making new friends and roaming round the island, just like we used to roam around the neighbourhood when we were kids.
There were so many precious moments that I was privileged to experience with the children and that’s why we’ve booked another family holiday at Musket Cove for next year. Yes, there are many other things to spend any disposable income on, but I’m prioritising making enduring memories with the grandchildren. And you couldn’t find an easier place to do that than Fiji.
Checklist
Fiji
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand and Fiji Airways fly direct from Auckland to Nadi. Return catamaran transfers to Musket Cove are available through Malolo Cat, with 4 scheduled services daily.
DETAILS
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