Wednesday 11th to Friday 20th July

 

Kadavu & the Great Astrolabe Reef

Another overnight sail, leaving Matuku at 4pm to cover the 80 miles west, we arrived at the top of the island group soon after dawn and enter through the northernmost passage in the reef. We had arranged to meet up with friends on catamaran Jadean here and as we entered through the pass they were getting ready to snorkel and scuba dive. We were a bit sleep deprived so carried on to anchor by Dravuni island where we did sevusevu, the ceremony which would allow us to anchor, to wander around the village and to visit and dive nearby islands. The chief was away so we presented our bundle of kava to the village mayor, sitting cross legged in the shade of a tree.

We got chatting to the smiling Magdalena and I admired her large house with shady veranda. She told us that the TV series Survivor was filmed on the nearby uninhabited island. She hosted the ‘testers’ for the show (doubles for the actual contestants who test the challenges that they have to undergo on the show), giving them board and lodging for a month. She clearly found this arrangement very satisfactory and the whole thing highly amusing.

 

The village appeared more prosperous than most and we soon discovered why. As well as the income from the Survivor show they also had regular visits from cruise ships carrying 1200 passengers and would put on dancing displays, sell trinkets, offer massages and sell green coconuts.

The next day we walked around the village……

…. and met this woman was cutting the long leaves of the pandava plant which are dried then cut into long strips to weave mats:

We also met Saiasi who, when he heard we were English, invited us back to his house for tea and to see the framed photograph of when he met Prince Edward in 1983:

 

His grandson was rather taken with Hugh:

 

Friends on catamaran So What had also arrived and together with Jadean we spent a week anchored around the small islands inside the Great Astrolabe Reef which is renowned for its amazing scuba diving. (The reef gets its name from a French sailing ship which visited Fiji in the 1820s, an Astrolabe being an instrument once used to navigate, a precursor to the sextant).

We moved on to anchor by Namara island where the Survivors live when the show is being filmed. There were no Survivors there so we could explore – narrow paths led across the small island which appeared quite deserted apart from some fruit bats. Apparently all the coconuts and papaya growing there are picked to make survival even more difficult. At dusk two locals came to fish from the shore, casting their lines out by hand then pulling them in quickly… they didn’t appear to be very successful.

The next day we moved to anchor by Yaukuvelailai island, the main reason being there was a fancy resort on the next door island – sea planes arrived and took off regularly throughout the day – and they had a mobile phone mast, so good WiFi! We took the dinghy ashore and scrambled to the top of the island, uninhabited apart from a few goats.

Jadean and So What brought their bags of rubbish over to burn. I collected all the plastic lying around on the beach, mainly bottles and old flip-flops, and added them to the fire. I wasn’t sure whether it was environmentally harmful to burn plastic but it seemed better than having plastic waste floating around the oceans. I’ve since googled it and read that dangerous toxins are released into the atmosphere… so no more burning. It is hard when travelling around these islands to deal with plastic disposal. There are no recycling places and so presumably it all goes to landfill. By the end of a long voyage or trip round the islands we will have several bags in our lockers of plastic, tetra-paks and other non-biodegradable products which we save up until we get to one of the larger islands, just hoping that they will be dealt with properly there.

Moving on we anchored by Buliya island and were mobbed by children as we went ashore.

The chief was happy to do sevusevu and accept our bundles of kava and insisted we say for coffee and cakes.

The women who had been baking cakes were keen to have their photos taken…

Plenty of helpers to push the dinghy back out!

From Buliya it was a short dinghy ride over to Vurolevu island where there is a manta ray ‘cleaning station’ where they congregate, hovering whilst they have their bodies and gills cleaned by small fish and crustaceans.  The first time we snorkelled here we saw a couple of manta rays swimming slowly away, deep below us. The next morning at 7.30am Barry had his drone out flying over the reef… he radioed up… eight manta rays! We were quickly in our dinghies with snorkelling and diving gear and motored over to the island.

As we dropped over the side of the dinghy there just a few feet below us were three mantas, gliding slowly and gracefully in a line. It was a breathtaking experience to see, and be so close to, these wonderful creatures.

 

 

 

From here we headed south, weaving our way through the reefs to the east of Ono island and anchored for two nights in a bay by the Naigoro Pass, reputed to be one of the more spectacular places to scuba dive in Fiji. Just after low tide, when the current is minimal, we dived on the wall where it plunged steeply down from the exposed reef, a pretty dive with beautiful, colourful corals and fish. Then on to the west of Ono and a bay by Nabouwalu village where we met with the young and very cheery chief and handed over another bunch of kava from our dwindling supply to gain permission to stay here. The chief showed us around the village and cut the top off a green coconut with his machete for each of us to drink…

….. there were racks of kava drying in the sun…

… and with the price of kava at F$120 (about £40) a kilo it’s a good source of income for the village when sold in Suva, the capital. Bringing our gifts of kava felt like coals to Newcastle.

A mile from the bay was another popular dive site… the Alacrity Rocks. It was about a mile to motor over in dinghies, fortunately in a flat, calm sea – our small dinghy laden with us and all our dive equipment tends to wallow in choppy seas and soon fills with water. Here a dive which included a spectacular coral pinnacle and a cave to swim through. Underwater we could hear mournful whalesong and the higher pitched squeaking of a baby whale.

 

Leaving our friends on Jadean and So What we headed off early in the morning for the 40 mile passage north to Suva, the capital of Fiji,  to meet up with Ian and Steph on Nautilus who had just arrived from New Zealand.