Muddy the Waters

One of the other touristy things I enjoyed doing in Nadi was visiting the Sabeto Hot Springs and Mud Pools - better known as the "Mud Pools". For the price of $30 FJD per person, you get assigned a guide for your group (who will show you around and hold your camera to take photos, as it's really hard to take photos when you're covered in mid). The first thing you do is grab some mud from a bucket and starting coating yourself with it. It feels really weird, and a little gross, but it was a pretty hot day when we were there, so the mud was also nice and cool. Oh, you do this in your swimming gear, so don't worry about getting your clothes dirty.

The guide will take some photos of your group after you're covered in mud and they make some pretty funny photos, as depending on how much of your face you covered, you will look like Mr Popo when smiling.

After that, you climb down those stairs into the mud pool. It looks pretty unintimidating, but once you get off the stairs, your feet sink into mud that goes halfway up your calf and you're just walking in this slimey goop. I wasn't expecting it, so I nearly screamed when my foot sank into it. You get used to it after a while, and it also becomes something that's nice and refreshing once you get used to it. You're supposed to wash as much of the mud off as you can while in the mud pool - though it's pretty tough, since the water is also quite muddy.

Once you're somewhat clean, you move into a thermal pool, that felt a lot like the hot springs we went to while in Japan, though not as hot. Our guide told us that the water from the thermal pool is fed in from this pool, which is 73 degrees Celsius. I took his word for it and didn't feel compelled to find out for myself.

You're welcome to hang around in the thermal pool for as long as you like, but if you want, you can hop out and get a message, or look around at some stalls selling handcrafted jewellery. Overall, we probably spent about two hours there (mum and MrFodder got massages).

The locals claim that the pool will heal all kinds of things, from colds to skin problems. I can't speak to the latter, my eczema improved a lot a couple of days later - though it could just be a placebo thing, it's hard to say. The mud pools were about a $20 FJD taxi ride from our hotel in Nadi, and we were lucky that our driver was willing to wait around for us to finish, as there didn't seem to be a taxi rank or anything nearby.