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.

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.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.