Yes, we had to navigate the three miles to the other end of the island, this time through the jungle to pick up our tapas.

It was an adventure.

Heading through the jungle.

Right from the beach we tried to find the path and…woah, it wasn’t where we thought it should be. Hmmm, maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as we thought it would be. We forged inward and…ran right into a lava rock wall. Can’t go that way. We spent about ten minutes just looking for a possible path. Finally we found something that looked promising. Given how it was looking though, we took another ten minutes while I used the machete to cut us two substantial walking sticks. Now we would have something to balance off of as well as to ward off wild boars…should one decide to attack us from his jungle lair.

The first half of the three miles into the village turned out to be all that. Most of the time you couldn’t really be sure there was a trail. It was only our feet that could feel the trail. You couldn’t see it, it was so overgrown. I whacked away with my machete at times, but mostly for show. The jungle is so thick, if there was not really a trail somewhere in the underbrush we wouldn’t have made it. Then about halfway, we came to a real trail. You could actually see it. Things got more comfortable after that.

About an hour in and we came suddenly into the village. And then it started raining. We ducked into the island nurse’s station – as likely a place as any and it had benches to sit on. We were on “Fiji time” so we weren’t worried about time and just sat picking burrs out of our clothes when all of a sudden George, our guide from Thursday showed up. You think that Fiji is pretty slow and easy but word actually travels very fast when people show up. We weren’t in the village five minutes before word had gotten to wherever George was – and they woke him (he had been fishing until 0400 and was sleeping) and he made his way down to where we were waiting out the rain.

OK, tour guide in hand, and rain dissipating, we made our way through the village to the tapa makers. Actually there are a number of folks who make the tapas, but I think we lucked into some of the better of the folks who do it. They were waiting for us. As we approached they invited us in and proudly unfolded not one, but two six foot by four foot tapas to show us. They had each been made on Friday by two sisters (or possibly sisters- in-law, we were not able to discern). They were gorgeous and we couldn’t make up our mind, so we made a great deal and bought both (all of our cash plus a bag of brown sugar and a beach ball for one of their children). Suffice to say they cost five or six or more times as much in Suva and we now have not only beautiful tapas, but pictures of the ladies that made them holding them up. These are real treasures. These will someday adorn the walls of our home ashore.

The first tapa we bought.

...and the artist.

The second tapa...

...and the artist.

All we had to do now was find our way back through the jungle to the boats. Turned out to not be so bad. We almost missed one fork in the road but as Bob walked to the right, Ann pointed on the ground to where we had scratched an arrow pointing down the other side. Oops. Oh well, as Ann said, “That’s why we’re both watching”.

On the way out, the machete again came in handy as we were able to knock down a green coconut (the ones good for drinking), cut it open, enjoy almost a liter of sweet coconut milk and then we chopped open the nut and scooped out the soft meat. A real picker-upper.

Score another one for the machete.

Back in our little anchorage Ann and Lisa went hunting on the beaches for sea shells (Bob napped and John was planning future voyages further west) and then Lisa made an awesome fish curry followed by music night. Last night was movie night – we watched “Astronaunt Farmer”. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. But tonight was uke night. Bob and Lisa played ukes, with John and the bongo and Ann providing harmony. A fun night.

Tomorrow we move a bit further north to Komo Island. Then we’re headed to Nairai where our bottle was found last year!

P.S. To my Mom, who has been managing stuff for us while we’ve been out of cell and internet range for 10 weeks – we should be at an island with cellular in a few days and able to call…

We left as planned this morning at 0730. It was not a perfect day – a bit more overcast than I like for going out the reef, but it looked promising later. It was either today or wait until next week as it looks like there’s a bit of a weather system that’s going to hold people down for a few days. Cowboy Joe and his boys were spear fishing at the pass and so one more hearty goodbye and lots of waving was had. We will miss Fulunga.

So…off we went with Orcinius behind us. We made the 20 mile passage to Numuka-i-Lau in three hours. We had 15 knots of wind on the beam and we carried a double reef main and yankee jib. The stays’l would have been nice, but the dinghy was on the foredeck for the short passage and in the way of the boom. Even so, we averaged 5 knots over the distance from anchor up to anchor down. Fortunately the sun came out as we approached because there are some bommies to be avoided on the entrance and you can’t see them in cloudy weather. We threaded our way in to a lovely little cove with two beaches.

Once here and anchored in a patch of sand next to Orcinius, both boats had “anchoring beers”, a little lunch and a short nap. Then around 1400 John and Lisa picked us up in their (larger than ours) dinghy and we went around the island to the village (also named Namuka-i-Lau) which is about three miles away, to do sevusevu with the village chief.

We had to go almost all the way to the other end of the island and it was low tide so when we got there we had to anchor the dinghy about 200 meters off the beach and squish squash in through the mud and eel grass. Yuck, not fun! Turned out that there is a rocky path another couple hundred meters up the beach that we didn’t see. Oh well. But one of the villagers got one of the boys to wade out and drag the dinghy up to the better spot. Nice. John gave him a dollar and a pocketknife that I had brought in for just this sort of favor.

A long walk through the muck at low tide.

We did sevusevu with Chief Jone and his right hand man, Kingsley. It was a pretty simple one. We took a few pictures and headed out for a tour of the village. This is a surprisingly large village. We think it has somewhere around 350 people including children. That’s quite large compared to any other village we’ve been to.

Chief Jone (on left).

Namuka has a different feel than Fulanga. For one, they have horses here!

Wish we could have spent more time here. The people were very nice.

Namuka-i-Lau and several other islands north of here specialize in the making of tapas which are paper made from wood bark, then painted with many intricate ornamentals designs usually in brown and black paint made from earthen dyes. The wood bark has to be stripped from the trees, soaked then pounded into paper squares which are in turn pounded some more to make larger sizes. We saw them some tapas to be used in a wedding in Suva that were eight feet long. The main one for the wedding was 15 feet square. Very impressive and needless to say incredibly labor intensive. I asked if they would make one for us and they asked, “How big?” After some back and forth we settled on 6 foot by 4 foot. I think. You’re never quite sure, but they said with happy smiles on their faces; “Come in on Saturday and pick it up”. So, we’ll find out on Saturday.

Huge wedding tapa. The cloth is made by pounding six inch wide strips together.

Stay tuned. We’ll be here probably through Monday to wait out the weather, then maybe one more island north in the Lau, then across to Nairai where the bottle we threw over at the equator was found last year (the story of meeting these folks and seeing our bottle is in the July archive for 2013 on this blog).

So we’ve torn ourselves away, now what? We wait. We can’t go out this pass nor get into another island without three things: favorable wind, good visibility and tidal timing.

We were going to leave today, but this morning was squally and cloudy. That means wind and poor visibility. You can’t see the coral reefs. Also since it’s a full moon, the tides are really strong. We have to time the pass to slack water and this morning it seemed high tide was much earlier than the tide predictions. So we wait. Maybe tomorrow morning. We have a better take on the tide. High tide will be around 0730, so we have an hour after to make our exit.

In the meantime, we did some beachcombing. Found some nice shells and while we were walking on the beach we saw a boat load of Fijians in a little 18 foot “fiber” slip up next to Charisma. They saw no one home, since we were on the beach. Then they saw us on the beach and made a bee-line over. There were about a dozen people on board about half were adults and half younger children. We wondered who it could be. When they got to the beach one of the adults got out with a big lobster in his hand and walked over and handed it to us. It was Johnny from Maunaira village! His boat was the first one I fixed several weeks ago (it had a big hole and he had no fiberglass resin to repair it) and he was finally able to get out fishing to this side of the lagoon with the newly repaired boat. The lobster was our gift for fixing his boat! Nice.

Beach delivery!

Even better was seeing that they had a boat load of fish. A couple dozen large parrot fish So, our dinner (fresh lobster) tonight was twice as sweet. Delicious and so good to know that in fixing his boat we were able to help them get out and catch good quality food.

PS – Happy, happy birthday to Ann’s son Andy! It is very frustrating to not have internet nor phone access to wish a special guy happy birthday! Love you lots!

(by Ann)

Thank goodness that Bob wrote the blog last night. I was exhausted. Emotionally and physically. The song that we sang for our goodbye with John and Lisa spoke of “unwinding, down in Fulunga…” Really? When did we have time for unwinding. The last week has been incredibly fun but non-stop fun. And we aren’t as young as we used to be! Of course I would not have missed a minute of it.

Before the tears started flowing we had an evening of fun and silliness. I found myself jumping from the “kava circle” to the women further in the back of the hut. I would choose one or two women and go sit next to them just absorbing the moment. I looked around the room and was thrilled that I could count these wonderful folks as my friends and honored that they returned the favor. I was also honored that Chief Taniele stayed the whole time, also not wanting to miss any of it.

And there was a lot of fun going on. After we showed the slide show, twice, and sang our song we joined the kava circle. Lisa and Bob let go of their ukuleles and our Fijian friends started showing their musical skills. The men who carved were particularly interested in Bob’s ukulele from the Cook Islands. It does not look like any of the ones they have seen. One of my favorite images of the night will always be Cowboy Joe (one of our nicknames for one of the “joes” on the island) making that ukulele sing! We had never even seen Joe join in with the musicians but boy could he play. And with his huge smile, it was a treat.

The musicians know quite a few English songs but of course our favorites are the Fijian songs. And the big hit this night was “Vula Toa”. The white rooster. The best part of this song is that it screams for dancing and we did. I never would have believed that my husband could imitate a rooster so well! Very impressive…even Chief Taniele thought so. And when the song segued into other animal imitations the room was in a constant uproar. I love being part of a group that can let go and play. Wish I had not been given a kangaroo to imitate though!

Throughout the evening my little friend, Seta (the darling 2-year old I wrote about in an earlier blog and claimed as mine when a new cruiser asked) was dancing around the room. Always coming back to “Pu Ann” for applause. The cutest part was when he would pronounce Bob’s name. In Fijian the letter B has an implied M before it. So Bob should actually be pronounced Mbomb. And Seta called him Tua Mbomb all night. Tua means grandfather.

Bob spoke of the incredibly moving “Fijian Goodbye Song”. Tau translated for us but it was such a blur. We were facing the men of Fulunga…you know, the guys that don’t cry, right? Wow. Not so. I will never forget our friend Saimone’s face. Imagine James Earl Jones, bigger and taller, with tears streaming down his face as he sang. I knew that Saimone was a softy but this was such raw emotion. He let the tears make their path down his cheeks for a few minutes and finally had to use his t-shirt to try to dry his face. Others could not look at him. I was awash in his friendship and love. The Fijian word is “veilomani”. Very powerful emotions washed over all of us.

Today Joe, Tau, Jasmine and Samu (our host family) brought the many gifts that were given to us and Orcinius to the shed at the anchorage. This of course meant another set of goodbyes. Tau refused to say the word. Joe was silent and very sad. Jasmine was crying and trying to smile through it. We were all trying to hold back the tears. Some were more successful than others. Fortunately there is a wonderful word in Fijian…Sota tale, which more or less means “until we meet again”. There were many “sota tales” given to ease the parting.

And just as we got ourselves back in the dinghy to return to the boats we heard my name being called. Mata, (who we joking call “Octopus Woman” – even to her face), was not letting us get away without another very long warm, sobbing hug. It is so very hard to leave these people. But we have moved to the sandspit anchorage and spent the day cleaning up Charisma, stowing gifts, clearing the decks, and preparing to exit the pass first thing tomorrow morning on the high tide – on to other islands.

Final, final, goodbye.

I do leave with one regret… I was not able to go octopus hunting with Mata. A reason to return?

Perhaps.

What else can I say? It was like the end of summer camp. The bus leaves and all the kids start crying, then the counselors start crying and pretty soon everyone has broken down in tears. That was the end of this evening. What a feeling to be so loved by such wonderful, beautiful people.

The day started out with Ann and Lisa going in to the village to say “personal” goodbyes, give a couple special gifts and then help Jasmine finish sewing a dress that she ended up wearing to the evening event.

Jasmine's new dress

Bob and John stayed on their respective boats prepping. John was finishing working on the village’s sewing machines he’s been fixing and Bob was putting the final touches on the slide show/movie that we’ve been working on showing the beauty that is Fuluga. It ended up at about 15 minutes of really wonderful, emotional, photos of the villagers from the three villages.

Saying our goodbye’s started with the Eta Tau which is the formal goodbye to the village. It is our showing recognition that we have been well taken care of and releasing the village of responsibility for our welfare. We first did it with our host family and then walked over and did a second one with the chief.

At our host family there we needed a LOT of tissues. Very emotional. I can’t really convey the sense of how we (and Orcinius) have become attached to them and they to us except to offer two little vignettes of the ceremony. The first is that Ann and I were presented with a carved wooden plaque. It is about 12 inches by 16 inches. In the middle it says; “Charisma” and all around the outside is carved very intricate Fijian symbols. Joe made this for us since he is an excellent carver and of course was my mentor in the bowl carving we’ve talked about in past posts. On the back is a special message to us using our Fijian names. It’s still in the village so I’ll have to translate later. The second was a wonderful speech from Tau’s mother (who we now refer to as “Pu Ra”, meaning Grandma Ray). I her speech she mentioned her embarrassment that they still; “Walked on dirt” while we didn’t back in our home country. For us it was a heartfelt and humble way to say how she hoped that we enjoyed their hospitality even though we were used to much more grand surroundings. We assured her that who they are and how they live is what we find so delightful.

Ann gave Joe and Tau a special wall hanging/quilt called; “Home is where the heart is”. They were speechless and I thought they were going to have a breakdown on the spot. John and Lisa also gave some wonderful/thoughtful gifts that I’ll leave to the Orcinius blog to detail.

Then we moved to the Chief’s hut to do the Eta Tau with him. This was more formal. We presented the ceremonial kava offering and made some speeches about how wonderful our stay had been. This is where the village presented us (via the chief) with gifts. A “pile” of gifts were then placed on the mat in front of Orcinius and us. Carvings and weaved purses and the like piled a couple feet high were placed as gifts. There were so many we’re relying on someone to come down with a wheel-barrow tomorrow to bring them. It was really overwhelming.

Then the real event. We went to the “community center” which is a large corregated tin hut next to the chief’s residence. The recently got solar energy AND Orcinius bought and brought a computer projector to the village so we were able to show the slide show/movie in large format and living color. I’m happy to say that it brough the house down. Everyone was hooting and hollering at the pictures and loving seeing themselves on the “big screen”. One of the things we said (so very true) was that we stopped measuring our time at Fulunga by days and weeks and started measuring it by the friendships that we were making. The slide show carried this emotion.

After two showings of the slide show (they asked for an encore), John, Lisa, Ann and I sang a song we’ve been working on customized to Fulunga. Lisa and I played our Ukes, John drummed his bongo and Ann sang with us. Another big hit! They were howling at the lyrics Lisa customized to Fulunga.

I could go on and on but will instead use a quote from one of the other cruisers who were present to describe the emotion: “Wow, how will we ever top that!” How indeed.

At the end of the evening to signal that it was time to go I called out that we would like to hear a Fijian goodbye song. They were ready and very soon were singing a beautiful tune that halfway through had everyone (which at this point was most of the village) in tears. Well that started us as well and by the time the song was over everyone was crying. At the end of the song we got up and went round the room one by one giving a hug, handshake, kiss – sometimes all of the above – to each of our friends and a hearty: “Soto Tale” which means; “Until we meet again”. At that point the men continued to drink some final kava (tradition has it that they “drown out” our tracks out of town with kava, and the women literally followed us halfway back to the anchorage before one last set of goodbyes, hugs and kisses. There will be more tomorrow as they all know that there is stuff yet to be delivered down to the beach before we can leave. It’s the Fijian way.

Simoni playing Bob's Uke.

Joe on the Uke.

Some of the men at the party.

So, we’ve been here something like ten weeks. We’re moving on. We’ll leave this anchorage and move to the other side of the lagoon to prepare Charisma for sea and wait for a weather window. We may not actually leave for a few days, but we have definitely taken our leave from the village.

Summer camp is over. We’ve moving on to new adventures.

Our adventures with the hermit, Paolias, continued today. Of course, you may recall that due to the calm weather we have been experiencing recently Paoliasi had other guests too. His nephew and family spent the night and were up fishing very early this morning. They had spent the night on the beach, sleeping under the stars in the warm air. It reminded me of the summer nights as I grew up when a bunch of the neighborhood kids would sleep outside.

As promised Paoliasi and family took us clamming at low tide. Low tide was around 10:30. Life on Charisma and Orcinius was going early this morning too. By the time we went clamming not only had Bob and John gone across to an empty beach and burned the garbage but Lisa and I had gone for an hour long paddleboard/kayak trip circumnavigating “Bere’s Island” and wandering through the nearby motus. No turtle were seen but the lagoon was in its glory.

Ann shows her form digging clams on the beach.

The clamming expedition was quite successful. Bob, Lisa and John took to the water and looked for the “smile” that would indicate a clam. It is tougher than it sounds and takes a lot of practice to be able to identify and grab the clams before they bury themselves. Their harvest was greatly helped by both Paoliasi and Jimi. Meanwhile I was sitting on the sand digging at the “clam line” finding the small sightly green clams, with the help of Nailume, the 12-year old son. And we found plenty to add to the collection.

After harvest we took all of the clams back to the boats and Bob made his clam linguine which we brought back ashore for a lunchtime picnic. Ima added baked bread fruit and sliced coconut to the feast and a party was had! Using the fork proved too time-consuming for Paoliasi but the others worked through it and enjoyed a meal prepared for them.

Linguine and clams on a woven mat on the beach.

Testing our ukulele skills.

Ima was raised on Veti Levu, the main island, and has very good English so I was enjoying asking lots of questions about life in Fulunga. And of course she was teaching us new words. I was sharing my summer sleep out story with her when Paoliasi, from across the mat, announced, “Turn the TV off.” And then added hand motions to illustrate the request. You can imagine our laughter when we realized that he meant it was time for ME to stop talking and take a breath! Ouch. I guess when you are used to no voices you can get overwhelmed pretty easily. I told him that I was sure he would miss my voice when we left and he laughed and agreed, but did not rescind the request.

Lucky for me the attention of the guys quickly shifted to the sinking outrigger that Jimi, Ima and Nailumi had come to the island on. (Even though I am somewhat an expert in sinking outriggers I felt I should keep my mouth shut for a while so I offered no advice.) Bob offered some special adhesive (5200) in an attempt to seal the leak. More discussions ensued and John came up with some ideas and back and forth it went until suddenly John was headed back to Orcinius for supplies and Bob and the boys were working on getting the hole exposed by getting the outrigger further up the beach and emptied of water. Much easier said than done. But where there is a will there’s a way and these guys found it. By the time we left the island the outrigger had been flipped over, emptied, the first phase of the repair made and flipped back upright again. AND lifted out of the water and up onto supports to allow everything to dry out.

John and Bob spent quite a bit of time explaining the next steps necessary to complete the repair. (If only they had gotten Ima to translate we might be sure they were understood, but Ima was busy cleaning up the camp and the Fijians were indicating that they understood.) Quite an accomplishment given the 6 x 2″ gouge out of the bottom that was causing the problem. I am not sure how the family even got over to the island yesterday without sinking.

Fixing the canoe - first we have to refloat it.

Squaring the hole and shaping a plug.

With the repairs completed as much as possible and the family delivered by John, in his dinghy, back to the mainland we weighed anchor and returned to Maunicake – the main village.

Goodbye Pauliasi. We'll miss you!

Our presence at a Thank-you Event had been relayed to us via shortwave radio and we were asked to be there at 4:30. Wow, where does the time go! It was a rush back to the village anchorage and without time to shower, we all went ashore and were only 10 minutes late. Thank goodness for Fiji-time because our hosts were another 15 minutes later!

It felt like we had been gone for months, not just four days. We were happily greeted by everyone as we headed to the event at the far end of the village. And you guessed it, it was a kava party! This party was hosted by the teachers of the school to thank Orcinius for the donation of some computers and us for the encyclopedias. Actually the teachers were very appreciative of the encyclopedias that we brought from New Zealand and lots of people have been using them for reference. Lots of fun and beautiful carved thank you gifts were included. Oh, and yes, food.

The walk back to the boats in the dark was not so dark tonight. The new solar lights had been hooked up while we were gone and lights could be seen throughout the village. Folks were gathered on their porches enjoying conversation and kava, the kids were running around from house to house and of course escorting us through the village. Yep, reminded me of those warm summer nights that led to sleeping out under the stars.

These are the poetic words of Pauliasi Volau, the single inhabitant of the island called Yanuyanu Kalou. Directly translated the island name is “Island of the God” and we would have to agree.

Pauliasi has a poetic soul.

We kind of lucked into this spot. We saw it from our anchorage at Naividamu. It’s a little island about a mile from Naividamu with an inviting beach, so we decided we would anchor here. Imagine our surprise to find someone living here. You might call him a hermit, but that would diminish who he is. We have found Pauliasi to be a man of wisdom and inner strength. He is 72 years young. He has two dogs and a rooster.

Pauliasi's small hut...

...complete with newly made fishing spear (the last big fish swam away with his old spear)

He’s working on keeping hens but the rats on the island keep eating them. However, with fish (that he spears and/or nets) clams, coconuts, papaya, bananas and some gardening that produces cassava and eggplant he is not wanting except for water. That’s where we came in. There is a bit of a drought right now down here and Pauliasi, as with the other villagers on Fulanga, are short on water. Enter our buddies on Orcinius who are anchored with us in this lovely spot. They have a huge watermaker and they made a couple hundred gallons for Pauliasi today. As he put it, he now has water for daily use and more water “for Christmas”. Orcinius ran their watermaker and I ferried the water it produced into the island in 5 gallon jugs. Took a while but it was worth it to see his face knowing he had water to spare.

Once we met him we immediately took a liking to him and set up a sundowner session on his beach. We told him to meet us on the beach “when the sun is almost down”. The only worry was that just before sunset an outrigger canoe showed up with a women, man and young boy. Our first though was, “Darn, this is going to spoil our time with Pauliasi”. It turned out it that they were his nephew with his wife and son who had come out to bring him some food and company. They were delightful and we had quite a party on the beach.

Pauliasi's nephew and family.

Sundowners on the beach.

Ann and Lisa had gone out earlier and foraged for clams which John cooked and we brought to the beach. We had a hard time getting the clams away from Pauliasi who really liked them. In Fiji the elders have the respect and if they don’t share the food, the younger folks can’t ask them to share. We finally pulled “the Palangi card” and said he had to pass the clams. We gave him a big plate and then passed the rest on to the other family members. All the while sitting on one of the most beautiful beaches you’ll ever see in your life, looking out at our two boats with the sun setting behind them.

Sun setting over the canoe.

As Pauliasi said, “The sun sets and we rise and watch the night”. I couldn’t say it better. Magic.

Sniff, sniff…

We left Naividamu this afternoon and even though we’ve only spent a few days anchored there, it was tough. We’ve been there three times over the last couple months and made some solid friendships so it was really tough saying “moce” (pronounced “mothay” and means goodbye).

We had a lazy morning drinking coffee in the cockpit and watching some of the ladies out on the reef – not very far from Charisma since we were just off the reef – collecting mussels for dinner. We were waiting for the tide to come in to make it easier to get ashore in the dinghy and we were lingering, knowing that leaving would not be easy.

We also watched Chief Moses navigate an outrigger with a 50 gallon drum on it out across the reef to Orcinius, who was anchored right next to us in the tiny anchorage. He was getting water that Orcinius very kindly offered to the village. There is a bit of a drought here and they are very low on water. Orcinius has a high volume water maker and was able to transfer about 150 gallons that Moses rowed back and forth to the beach, about 30 gallons at a time, for his village. When we wandered through the village saying our goodbyes we could see that each house now had a fresh bucket of drinking water right outside its door.

Finally a little after lunch we went in and said our goodbyes. Lisa brought a Barrel Full of Monkeys game and jump rope in for the kids and John and I got roped into one last kava ceremony. So they taught the kids to play and we played with the guys. All in all it was a good leaving even though it lasted two hours instead of the planned ½ hour.

Playing "Barrel of Monkeys" on the beach.

We are now anchored about a mile or so NE of Naividamu on the south side of a little island in the middle of the lagoon that is Fulunga.

Anchored at "Bere's Island".

A hermit lives here named Bere. He came out to the beach to wave when we got here and we said we would come in tomorrow. As he walked back off the beach he wasn’t more than a step into the jungle before he completely disappeared from view. Tomorrow will no doubt be interesting.

Anyway, we’re anchored in about 18 feet over sand. Turquoise water right off a white sand beach that’s about 150 meters long. On either side of the beach are vertical basalt cliffs formed from volcanic action millennia ago. Each rises vertically 100 meters or so from the water and makes a dramatic end cap to the beach. The island itself is only about 300 hundred meters long and maybe 150 meters wide. We have a half moon lighting the white sand making for a stunning evening anchored here in our own little paradise.

Oh and did I mention the lobster dinner? The Naividamu fishing fiber came in where we were anchored late morning with fresh lobsters. Orcinius ponied up – $50 Fijian, or about $25 US for two of the biggest lobsters we have ever seen. John and Lisa had to use the pressure cooker and the BBQ to cook them both. Once cooked, they gave the heads of the lobsters to Chief Moses who was very appreciative. The four of us did our best this evening to consume them but our strongest effort could only account for about 3/4’s of the beasts. John was talking about either lobster omelets or lobster cheese spread for tomorrow night.

Lobster anyone? (Photo courtesy of Orcinius).

Oh yes, this is paradise.

It’s 0500, I’m somewhere between a dream and awake. I really don’t know where I am, but I hear angels. Huh?!

I shake my head and try to gather my wits. I realize I’m on my boat and then remember that yesterday we went a couple miles across the lagoon and are anchored at Naividamu – sometimes known as “The Third Village”. OK, but where are the angels? I get out of bed and head toward the sound – somewhere outside. Listening closely I hear it coming over the water from shore. Ahh, the church is lit (they have a generator) and the children’s choir is singing. Angelic. Beautiful. But 0500 in the morning!! Turns out this week is Fijian Father’s Day and all week the kids sing in the early morning hours. Wow.

Kids heading off to school over at the other village.

Anchored behind the Motu at Navidamu.

Navidamu from our anchorage.

This gives an indication of why we don't want to be here in rough/windy weather. The boats are very exposed to the reef

So…we’re here in Naividamu. We didn’t make it last year – the lagoon was too intimidating to cross – but we now are better and more comfortable at reading the color of the water to judge depth and see reefs so we came over. It’s a pretty cool anchorage. Only good in settled weather. You come over and there’s a big reef about 300 meters out from the village with a small motu (about 30 meters wide) that has a single coconut tree on it. You go toward the motu, but as you get to it, you go starboard (that would be to the right for you land-lubbers) about 80 meters around the reef and tuck in behind it. There’s a relatively small space over sand between this reef and the inner reef where you can drop anchor and be a little sheltered from the wind and waves. Orcinius (John and Lisa) came over too and dropped anchor right beside us. This spot is small and they are so close we can talk to each other without raising our voices.

As we got to the beach the ladies of the village were cleaning the day's catch.

The boys were helping too (sort of).

Yesterday Ann and Lisa kept the kids entertained with games, games, games while John and I did some village maintenance. John has been fixing the sewing machines in the villages here and Naividamu has been no exception. There are three here (they are all hand crank – two Indian brands and a Singer). He fixed two in the village and had to bring the third back to Orcinius for more serious work, but all are now fixed. I was tapped to fix one of the boats. I’m now three for three. Once boat repair in each village. Today’s repair was more fiberglassing of holes – this boat had two – and I screwed a long three inch wide board by ten foot long onto the outside bottom of the boat to protect it. They drag them up on the beach and it wears the bottom off. This should fix it for a while. I’m now completely done with fixing boats because this morning I used the last of the epoxy I was carrying.

Yesterday was also a great day because the Chief of the village, Moses, had finished the war club he was carving for us. It is beautiful. A real work of art; it is an exact replica of the ones they used 100 years ago. Turns out that he learned this from a master carver who used to make them and that master carver is the father of Tau, our host!. Moses has been making them for 35 years. He told fascinating stories about how he learned from the master carver and also talked of how after the warriors used the clubs they would come back and show their chief how the blood, tissue, hair etc. was embedded in the ornamental carving. This of course meant they had vanquished an enemy. An interesting bit of history.

The finished war club Moses carved for us.

Today we met Moses on the beach and he guided us on a tour across this part of the island to the west side and a beautiful white sand beach . Ann and Lisa decided it was the best beach we have seen all the way across the Pacific. Just stunning. It was so white it hurt our eyes to look, but when you did you could see fish swimming in the turquoise lagoon inside the barrier reef. A bonus on the trip was an encounter with a bright green iguana. This was the first we’ve seen in this area. As we came down the path, he scampered across it, jumped a rock and headed up a tree where he posed for some pictures. Then the strangest thing – as he climbed the tree a bit further there was a sudden tussle and the iguana fell 15 feet out of the tree and hit the ground, almost dropping on top of Ann. Turns out a bird swooped in and attacked him. Anyway quick as lightning the chief swung his machete and I expected to see two halves of an iguana, but what instead the chief had the iguana pinned against a rock with the machete. Unharmed. We got some close up photos and Moses released him to scamper off. You just don’t see stuff like this every day.

Mr Iguana just before the bird attacked him.

Path through the jungle to the beach.

Beach on the other side of the island.

If all that weren’t enough, Moses invited us to come back in as the special guests for a (what else!) kava party on the beach. He said to go back to our boats for the afternoon and rest, then come back around 1700 and we would party “until the grog runs out”. We thought we’d surprise them and we brought in our ukuleles and John’s bongo drum. We’re been practicing a song to sing for our leaving party from the island next week and this was a great way to test it out. They heard us last night practicing anyway and depending on who you talked to, it was either beautiful or noise. Anyway we broke out the ukes (Lisa in lead and Bob trying to keep up), Ann singing with us and John on the bongo. I have to say we were a big hit! They went nuts laughing (with us, not at us!) and everyone was pleased that we would sing for them. We did an encore as well, then handed over the ukes to real players. These guys are good! Our ukes never sounded as good and as a bonus John was invited to sit with the players (two guitars and our two ukes) and play his bongo. Priceless!

Quite a day.

…and jump rope.

Today was another “fix it” day. Joe, of Tara and Joe, has a hole in his fiber (that’s what they call the long boats here). Like the one I fixed the other day in Muanaira (the second village), Joe’s boat had a hole right in the bottom about 8 inches long and 1 ½ inches wide. He’s had some foam and other stuff stuck in the hole, but they need to bail continuously to keep it from sinking. I found out and asked him if he had any glass fiber mat and he said, “Yes”. I said I had the epoxy and there you go – a partnership is once again formed.

Yep, that's a hole all right...

I had him pull it up on the beach on Saturday, turn it over and we let it dry all through Sunday. This morning I met him at 0930 and we went to work. I mixed a couple batches of epoxy and we put three or four layers of mat on. When I was finished I asked him if he would like to use the left over resin before it “kicked” on any other sections of the boat and he showed me three other small holes that were plugged with a combination of what looked like chewing gum and closed cell foam. OK, we slapped some more mat on before the resin dried and called it a day. I came back to the beach around 1600 with my battery-powered angle grinder to smooth the patches.

He was back down on the beach half an hour later (how do they know??) and launched the boat to go set a net for the night. He came past and said thanks and headed off. Orcinius called on the radio and was kind enough to let us know that through their binoculars they could see Joe and the other two guys launch the boat with “the biggest smiles imaginable!” Nice. And I forgot to say Joe gave us four lovely papayas for the effort!!

Now they can fish without having to bail constantly.

Ann’s day was supposed to be weaving with the ladies, but they were busy gathering the raw materials to do the weaving so…jump rope with the kids. And some adults. Orcinius brought in a couple jump ropes that John made and they have been quite a hit. Ann and Lisa have been showing all the kids and many of the young adults lots of different ways to jump and the songs that go with them. Much silliness was had.

Jumprope anyone?

Paradise and jumprope…not a bad combination!.