Sooo, we met some boaters on our last night in Savusavu, three couples from New Zealand. Sat with them in the yacht club for a beer before dinner. They have traveled in Fiji for many seasons and provided us with a wealth of information regarding what to do and where to go. Sometimes it is interesting finding out what fellow boaters did for work in their "old life". We've come across many people who have been in the computer business - in one form or another, a financier, a dentist, a freighter captain, construction company owners (we fit in here), a pilot for Swiss Air (he was also an Italian Duke!) and now we've met a past dairy farmer. It is very interesting to discover other cruiser's reasons for being on the blue ocean, discovering new places and people.
From Savusavu we make our way to Viani Bay on the east side of Vanua Levu. We prefer to call it Jack's Bay as Jack Fisher is an old timer here who is re-known for showing off the best dive sites in his Fiji. We spend 5 days here and dive every day, sometimes twice a day. The "white wall" is surreal dive site at a depth of 100 feet. We drop into the clear blue water and swim down through a tunnel in the reef that opens from a sheer rock wall into the deep blue of the wide open ocean. We are suspended in blue. To our left on the face of the deep ocean wall is the most amazing display of perfectly set snow white soft coral. The ocean current gently nudges us along the wall so we can marvel at the breathtaking beauty of it all and then the current deposits us on top of the reef again where the multitudes of colorful fishes and other stunningly beautiful corals are found. This is a rather rough description of a fabulous dive experience. The diving here in Jack's Bay tops everything. I won't bore everyone with details, just let it be known that this spot is World Class Diving. On one of our evenings here, Jack's family puts on a dinner for all of the boats in the bay (oooh another social event) and we met several new groups of people. The dinner was a delicious mixture of Indian and Fijian foods with the best tortillas I have ever tasted - even better than Mexico.
Our next place of discovery is Albert Cove on Rabi Island, which is to the east of Vanua Levu. Rabi Island was purchased for the people of Ocean Island in 1945. They are from Banaba and are of Micronesian descent. So not really Fijians, though they are now citizens of Fiji. Very nice people. The families of the cove were happy to talk to us and arranged to get us some bananas and green coconuts. We keep asking the fishermen for lobster, but as yet none have had any luck finding some for us. We have seen the lobsters on our dives, but we keep their locations secret (we would really rather look at them underwater than eat them). Once again, the winds and weather are going to invade our beautiful anchorage so after only one night we have to move to a different bay on the island. But this is not a problem, as it is a new village and group of people for us to meet. There is a large Methodist church perched on the hill of the village, overlooking the bay. We visit this building during our walk on shore. A cyclone in April 2010 really did a lot of damage to it, but the villagers are slowly putting it back together. While we are walking, an engaging young woman invited us to a fund raiser for the church that they were putting on that evening. The ladies of the church do this - a traditional dance show with coconut refreshments (right out of the shell) - when ever they get a collection of boats in their bay. Today, there are five boats. What fun, they really put a lot of energy into the dancing.
Weather, weather, weather! We have to move again. The weather has been sunny and very warm, so no complaints there, it is just the wind that keeps switching around which makes certain anchorages not so comfortable to be in. We will head back to Jack's Bay. If we have to be stuck someplace, we may as well be stuck with awesome diving.
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