Food Safari Fiji
“You can’t take kids there”
“They’re too young to remember anyway”
“Flying with kids that far must be torture”
These are just a few of the things we’ve heard around travelling with young kids. We love it though. My husband and I love to travel (we met travelling) and always said when we have kids we wouldn’t let that stop us. And even though they may not remember, I feel that every experience we have, no matter how young, shapes us into who we are.
*Flying long distance with young kids is like giving birth. It can be f*cking painful at times but you get through it and forget about the pain soon enough.
Food things and insights from this trip…
BEST THINGS WE ATE
Me: Prawn salad with chilli and coconut milk.
Husband: Mud crab curry.
Zaine: “Spicy chippies” salt and pepper dalo chips (dalo is a local root vegetable also known as taro).
Casper: I’m gonna say hot chips. And papaya.
‘Everywhere we go is a food safari’
It’s best to let go of usual “food rules”. It’s too hard to do gluten free, dairy free and refined sugar free the whole time when travelling, AND, it makes it fun free when you can’t try all the new things on offer; so for us (and when I say us I mean the kids and I as my husband is definitely not down for this way of eating) it goes somewhat out the window as it’s more a choice to eat this way and not a necessity.
It’s ok to turn a blind eye (*it was hard) when your 4.5 year old wants a chocolate chip muffin and a chocolate croissant most mornings for breakfast, because, holidays! And who am I to deprive her of life’s pleasures anyway.
Be armed with snacks everywhere you go. Like, everywhere. Whingy kids are easily remedied with snacks.
Hot chips are good no matter where you are in the world.
Nothing makes me happier than travelling to new places and experiencing their food culture, and there’s no greater feeling than when your kids experiment with new and different foods and love them.
Travelling frees your mind and makes room for more creativity. (I knew this already but love being reminded of it.)
And when your baby doesn’t want to nap, which means you don’t get to nap, but you’re so bloody tired because your family of four are sleeping in a one room bungalow, and you didn’t get much sleep the night before because of said baby, you just remember that, you’re on a tropical island, in the South Pacific with your beautiful family, staying in a bungalow, right on the beach, and life really couldn’t get much better.
