Wild Places and Open Spaces

For pictures click HERE

Our next destination was Taveuni, the third largest of 322 islands, nicknamed the ‘garden isle’ for its extensive rainforests and purported birdlife. In order to get there we needed to get to Suva, the capital, and board a ferry from there. We decided to take the bus first to a place called Pacific Harbour which was on the way, and see about a shark dive we had heard about.

The weather was bad in Nadi – raining and flooding. We got picked up on our bus in the morning, and once we reached town we were amazed at how high the water levels had become – many houses were under at least a foot of water. Our bus turned a corner and got on semi-dry ground, and we were all ordered off – we grabbed our luggage and were shuffled to a 4×4 pick up truck. Here, about 10 of us loaded all our gear into the back, sat on top of the luggage and hoped we wouldn’t fall out as the truck drove through the water which at this long dip in the road was over 2 feet high. Kids were swimming in it, people had their skirts hiked up nearly to their waist walking through it, dogs were doing the dog paddle through it, cows were wading through it, etc etc. It was like a lake had enveloped the area. It was quite amusing to watch, although not so amusing when you think of all the damage and disease it can create. However, the rainy season is a part of reality here, and most people just take it all in stride.

We arrived at the hostel in Pacific Harbour relatively dry, but with very muddy feet. We checked into a room that had 2 bunks instead of a double bed….we chose the cheap way, instead of the comfortable/more expensive and perhaps more romantic option. The hostel itself was nestled into an “arts village”, where there was a cultural centre and many touristy stores, which made it a very convenient place to stay as we could get food, money, internet access etc., all within steps of our room.

We looked into the shark dive, which was a bit of a mystery itself. Our travel guide said that there was only one company doing it, then we met other travellers who said a few do it, but only one is good, then when we talked to the booking agents for it, they said there were a couple companies. The problem arose because we wanted to book it for the next week on our way back through, but they weren’t sure if they could take us out because they didn’t have enough people going at that point. So, we basically left it, and hoped that when we returned somehow we’d be able to go. When you are in Fiji, you just learn to go with the flow….it’s Fiji Time. It will all work out, somehow.

Jim got a schedule for the boat service to Taveuni…it appeared as though it was going to work out perfect for us. We would take the bus to Suva the next day, then catch the overnight ferry to Taveuni that night. The boat returned Saturday, so we’d have 4 nights there before coming back to the mainland. Perfect. Maybe a bit too perfect.

Next morning we asked at the desk what time and where the bus would pick us up. We got a confident answer about both, so we set out to wait. Now, the fact that there was actually a bus schedule was promising, but we soon learned that the buses really have their own schedule, and only the bus drivers seem to know what it is. We waited on “the side of the road in front of the post office” for the bus, and not long after, one stopped for us. However, the driver told us since we were going all the way to the capital of Suva, we’d have to wait for the express bus, which should be along shortly. So, we waited again, and finally an express bus came. It was jam packed, just like all the buses, so we didn’t get to sit together as per usual for the hour or so drive. We like taking the buses, because they are a very cheap way to travel, and it is like your own little tour of their world through their eyes.

When we reached Suva, we found someone to direct us to the shipping liner office (the boat we were to take over), only to find out that we were not booked on the boat. Hmmmm…I had called just that morning and booked us on….. Even more strange, the prices were now completely different from what I had been quoted before – of course now they were higher. Anyways, they still had room, and even though the prices were higher, it was still cheap enough to get a cabin so we could sleep overnight. Luxury for us, as everywhere else we were in the world it was way too expensive to even consider getting a cabin! We didn’t hang around Suva, other than waiting at the wharf to get on the ferry. It does not look like a pretty town from what we could see, and we didn’t need any trouble. There are police/military standing at some intersections or places on the side of the roads ‘checking’ cars, but other than that, we did not see any evidence of the coup that is going on.

The boat is a shipping boat…needless to say it is not pretty. It does not look like it would pass North American standards for a passenger boat, but I am sure it would as a shipping vessel that being said…this boats advertisement brags about being the newest and cleanest boat in the entire Fijian fleet! It reeked of diesel of fuel. Every once in a while on most boats we’d been on in the past you’d get a whiff of fuel, or would if you were standing outside, but this boat smelled like the whole thing had been washed with fuel. The only place where it didn’t stink as much was in our cabin, so thank goodness for that. I don’t know how the people who work on the boat handle the smell; I wonder what it is doing to their health? Not to mention if it smells so bad it must be affecting the environment as well?? Leaking??

The boat ride was 18 hours, and uneventful. I slept the majority of it, while Jim slept some and explored the boat for the rest. Our room was equipped with a tiny closet with a sign on it stating there were 2 lifejackets inside. Wow, this was a first in Fiji. However, the door was jammed shut as someone had put something in the crack so that the door could not swing open. So, (me being paranoid) we eventually were able to jimmy (ha ha, jimmy, get it?) the door open, and we found 2 ancient lifejackets. Good. Never ended up needing them thank goodness. Getting off the boat was interesting…we had to wait for all the cars/trucks etc to disembark first, however, there was some sort of hold up and we ended up staying on the boat for more than an extra hour. Fiji time once again. We were getting used to it. Jim found an employee of the boat and asked when the boat would be leaving again for Suva (just to make sure) and she replied that because this weekend was Easter, it would be leaving in 2 days, or not until Monday. Well, that didn’t work at all for us – as we were told that it would be leaving on the weekend. Hmmmmm…..now what? You see, if we left in 2 days, we wouldn’t have enough time on the island, but if we left Monday, then we wouldn’t have time to do our shark dive, because we were to leave Fiji on Tuesday. (You aren’t supposed to fly right after you dive – you must wait a minimum of 18 hours…).

No one seemed to be able to tell us if the bus came to pick people up at the ferry or not (we found out later that it did, you just had to wait awhile), so we ended up taking a cab to the bus station in the little town. We waited for about an hour until a bus was leaving the station, and hopped on. The bus was just like all the others, open windowed, and crowded, but a fun way to travel. Our bus driver stopped right outside the place we were staying – “Bibi’s Hideaway”, a locally owned place. We walked up the long driveway and came to a house where we were introduced to “Jim” ( I was beginning to think every man in Fiji was named Jim…we had met so many). He showed us to a lovely ‘cottage’ that was to be our home for the next few nights. Our accomodation cost $60.00 Fijian a night, while the resorts just down the road cost $500.00 and up per night. Amazing that people would spend that much to sleep!!

We told Jim of our dilemma about the boat not leaving for Suva because it was Easter, and he replied, “no, Easter is next weekend”. Sure enough, he was right. Phew, the girl on the boat had mixed up her weekends. But, we figured we’d call the shipping company anyways just to make sure we could get on the boat….I didn’t want any more surprises. (we rarely ever book return passage for anything, because usually it entails keeping a stub to show proof of passage, and we would most likely lose it, and thus end up having to buy another ticket anyways!!)

So, later in the day, we called the shipping company (twice I might add to confirm what they were trying to tell us) only to find that the weekend coming was an Indian holiday, so the employee was partly right. We either had to leave much sooner than anticipated, or much later and miss our shark dive. We looked into our only other option, which was to fly out. The flight was a bit pricier, but still in our price range, although we’d have to pay for another night accommodation (because we had been counting on sleeping on the boat). We decided to take the flight, which ended up being a good decision. Now that we had that all settled, we were ready to explore Taveuni.

Taveuni is a very quiet place, very lush, and it was very warm while we were there. Somehow we had managed to get to the only place in Fiji where it was not pouring! There was not much around where we were staying – a restaurant about a km away, and a store about a km away in the other direction. Luckily, a dive company just happened to be just down the street, so we booked a couple of dives with them.

The diving off Taveuni is world renowned and we loved it. We dove with Swiss divers and they were thoroughly professional and as it turned out we each ended up with our own private underwater guides. That was perfect for us as Kris could take her time in her descent and let her ears adjust and do a shallowish dive and I got to go full monte and dove for just over an hour! The waters are remarkable with a zillion fish in every direction. We will be permanantly spoiled by those dives.

The only other attraction of the island and one of the reasons we visited was Bouma National Park for its supposed wonderful waterfalls and unique endemic birds.

The bus ride to the park was terrific and cheap. We really got the opportunity to see the ‘real’ Fiji. The roads the bus travelled on were questionable and partially dirt but it was fun. Fijians in the area of Bouma National Park lead a very basic lifestyle subsisting from the land and sea as they did previous to westernization.

As for Bouma National Park…it was fine but perhaps by this point we were getting a little waterfalled out and we never managed to see much in the way of wildlife other than a few interesting lizards. Unfortunately the park trails haven’t been kept up and to explore further up into the untouched rainforest appeared to be quite difficult – and bloody hot! We opted not to explore any further than the rest of the tourists. One thing which really upset us was when we returned to the lower waterfall there were all the rich people having a big luxury buffet and getting massages by the creek – who does that!!! Anyway it spoiled the connection with the environment for us so we wended our way back down the hill to catch the bus before it left ahead of time and without us!

The night before we left we ate dinner at a cute little restaurant which made remarkably good food considering it was pretty much the only option within a walking distance of our accommodations. The evenings cooled down just slightly and were for me the most magical part of the day…A big dinner followed by a couple 750ml Fijian Bitters -aaaah now that’s Fiji Time!

In the morning we went to the airport early to make sure we’d catch our flight. I know it’s not necessary to say our flight was about an hour late…You guessed it – Fiji Time once again. Our plane was quite small and Kristin was a little anxious about it where as I feel much safer in a propeller plane because they rely on thrust AND lift…anyway it was a remarkable flight; the sky was clear and we got an excellent view of some of Fiji’s famous emerald reefs.

We landed in Suva airport and caught a taxi to the city, immediately hopped on a bus – a very clean, new one with a Television playing some movie. We were amazed at how fast a plane got us back compared to the boat! We were back at Tsulus hostel in Pacific Harbour by dark and dining at our favourite gourmet pizza shop practically right away!

We wanted to do a shark dive right away but we’d have to wait a day and decided we’d try some soft coral diving and Kristin would snorkel with some people we met so as not to jeopardize her shark dive by compromising her eardrums by diving.

We set out in a slow old wooden boat with a very friendly crew of Fijians. On our first dive site we dove some spectacular soft corals and a wreck. Fortunately for me I was the only advanced diver so again ended up with my own private dive guide. We ended up diving for over an hour on our first dive…great stuff. The snorkellers weren’t disappointed either.

Upon resurfacing we were informed about a minor problem with the boat…It wasn’t working. They assured us there was no problem and this was just – you guessed it – Fiji Time, no worries. We manged to semi repair the boat and limped to a beautiful sandy beach where we would have our lunch and do some fine snorkelling. In fact the snorkelling was so good the snorkellers opted to just stay there while we went and completed our second dive on some terrific soft corals. It was a great day in paradise and we had a blast. albeit a couple hours longer than first anticipated.

The next morning we were pretty keen to organize our shark dive. We crossed our fingers that things would work out and as usual they DID! They were going out the next morning and there was room for us. We were pretty excited about our anticipated exciting dive for the rest of the day.

We were waiting out front of or hotel to catch the bus first thing after breakfast and due to extenuating Fiji Time circumstances our ride was late. A van from a different dive company showed up and told us he’d give us a ride and everything – somehow as usual – worked out.

Now if it isn’t nerve wracking enough diving with huge Bull Sharks which will be within arms length of us yummy scuba divers we get told that the dive was going to be at a depth of about 30 meters – which Kristin has not done, nor is technically allowed to do. But we’re in Fiji and they told her they would privately escort her down to whatever depth she felt comfortable at. Without any pressure being put on her (no pun intended) she ended up doing the dive without any trouble and got to watch the crazy hand feeding spectacle. It was amazing as Giant Tevalle were swirling around, Sergeant Majors nipping our hands and feet, and dozens of massive sharks fading in and out of the depths to gobble down giant tuna fish heads in a single gulp. Just to spice things up a bit the shark feeders would tease and entice the massive 5 meter Bull Sharks to come towards us – you know just to get a better view of the denture work! It was utter chaos and amongst this chaos I even reached down and petted a very large moray eel which seemed very safe relative to the rest of the scene.

So needless to say we highly recommend Pacific Harbour to all divers or snorkellers who are looking for some terrific water to investigate and with any luck at all we’ll be back again to do some more exploring. Bula!!

For pictures click HERE

Our much anticipated Yasawa Islands trip began with a bus which picked us up in front of our hotel under early morning sunny skies. The bus meandered around the hotels in Nadi, to finally arrive at the very posh Denerau Resort where our catamaran would depart.

We squared up our bill and hoped that somehow the Fiji logistics would eventually sort itself out and leave us with no surprises on our nine day excursion. Everything was pre-booked through “Tomu the travel agent” at the airport, and everything (much to our utter amazement) went very smoothly.

Now that we sort of understand how some things work, we would book everything on our own as we go along, but when you are new to Fiji, and world travel, things can be very cryptic and and little daunting when trying to aquire information. Believe us when we say; ask a Fijian a question, you will almost surely get some strange answer. Generally one needs to ask the same question from several different angles to acquire a semi-thorough answer. Fiji is a very mysterious place to be in that regard.

Anyway, we wended our way through the beautiful islands for four hours under blue skies and calm seas to our destination on Nacula Island. Our big catamaran comes to a drifting stop all the little boats from the ‘resorts’ in the area to come out to drop off and pick up their guests. The boats are not that large, and at times of heavy seas they could, and did get a little over exciting! For our first stop though everything was rather idyllic and the whole area (including the Blue Lagoon film location) was just stunning.

Nabua Lodge was a simple, quiet place in tranquil waters which had excellent snorkelling right out front of the basic bures (little straw huts with thatched roofs) where we would live for the next three days.

The food was rather basic, but at least we didn’t have to wander around the supermarket to look for food and best of all we didn’t have to cook it. The staff pretty much kept to themselves, which was okay since we met some POMS (British people….the Aussie’s call them POMS as a friendly jab at them) we really got on well with, but if there weren’t guests to get along with, one may feel a touch alienated.

Fijians are generally friendly, quiet people with poor math skills – which tend to work in their favour normally?! The way things work at Nabua were at times a little curious. No one ever has any change so when buying drinks we sign our names and how much we owe in a ledger book, and square up whenever we want basically. I noticed when I got around to paying my bill, I was the only one to look at the ledger. The girl who handled the money remained completely detached from the accounting end. She told me to tell her how much I owed and to write ‘paid’ beside all my names. I literally could have written paid beside everyone’s name and she wouldn’t have said boo! Unfortunately, looking through the book I found so many unpaid bills throughout. Just goes to show if you’re trusting people will take advantage of you – too bad.

All in all, Nabua was an enjoyable time – pretty good food, new friends, great water, lots of fish, and lots of coral, which is what we came for.

Our next stop was David’s Place. We don’t have a lot of great things to say about it. We found the people at this place unfriendly. Basically they would only speak to their guests when it involved collecting or making money. There was a nice beach/snorkelling area which would take us 10 minutes to get to if we walked along the shore, but we could only access it at low tide. The rest of the time we were stuck at the lodge. There was no fan in the bure so it was hot at night for sleeping. The mozzies were very bad in the evening and despite a sign which read, ‘bar stays open until last guest goes to bed’ the bar would close without warning; usually very early. We have learned signs and prices on signs mean very little in Fiji. Kris met a girl (another POM) she enjoyed talking to and we met an older British couple we got along with so that helped pass the time.

I suppose that is the positive side of a three night stay – it goes by rather quickly I’d just like to add that the ladies in the kitchen were very nice and worked very hard. What it boils down to basically is, Peter who ran the place was a dick, and really created the bad Karma we felt from this place – bottom line though is, it beats the hell out of being at work and winter!

Our last stop was Wayalailai, and despite some questionable weather and stomach disruption, this place was grand and we felt extremely welcome the minute we got on their shuttle boat. Arriving on their main beach we were welcomed/seranaded by their staff playing guitars and singing.

Wayalailai Island is very picturesque and has some terrific snorkelling with crystal clear waters right out front. Their generator would only run in the evening for 5-6 hours, which never bothered us. Meals were a bit of an adventure, but generally decent and plentiful. Strangely, the bar would call out last call and close very early even though people were still drinking?! We did manage to drink a fair amount of Kava though, and the taste actually started to grow on us….

We did some snorkelling on a terrific reef (which we got to by a boat that had absolutely no safety equipment on board….although by this time we were quite used to this) and were fortunate enough to see a couple white tip reef sharks up close. We also saw a sleeping leopard shark on another snorkel adventure. We went out fishing in some pretty rough seas without much luck, but have to say being out in an open, leaky boat in rain and rough seas with an engine that keeps cutting out (and no safety equipment, remember) conjured up some visions of floating off into oblivion!

We had a terrific time at Wayalailai in every aspect, and would certainly be happy to return, and of course we were sad to leave.

The day we left to catch the big catamaran was a rough one. We loaded 10 guests, 2 crew and all our gear into the rather small boat and crossed our fingers as we crossed the rough wind lashed strait separating us from our destination. We made it….barely, and our journey back to Nadi was the antithesis of the calm sunny ride we took coming out to the islands. However, we met up again with some of the friends we had made and swapped stories of our adventures in the Yasawas, which made time fly by on the boat. So sad it’s over…

Here’s looking forward to sunnier skies and calmer seas for our journey to the island of Taveuni.

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