The Yasawa Flyer
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Wed 1 Aug 2012 08:30
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It's a big fast
catamaran, similar to those that go across to the Isle of Wight. It
travels from Port Denarau to the main island resorts in the Yasawas,
calling at all the resorts on the way up the islands and again on it's
way back. It leaves at 08.30 and returns at 18.00 and is the main means of
travel for tourists going to the resorts and going from resort to resort. It
appears people spend a few days at several of the resorts so there's always a
lot of people on the move. We thought it would be a good day out to see
what the islands are like and many of them do have the palm fringed sand beaches
with lovely blue or turquoise sea, just like you see in the brochures. It helped
that it was a lovely sunny day. The resorts are quite a mix and many
appear to have limited facilities and are for backpackers, so not as
expensive as you might think. The Flyer is just like a train in that it drops
people off and moves on to the next station, it's not a day cruise as
such, but you can, as we did, buy a ticket to go for the ride and stay on the
whole day. So it's a full day onboard the whole time and a bit of a busman's
holiday for us! On the way up we stopped about 15 times at 12 islands, dropping
people off at 26 different resorts, and the same on the way back. The furthest
island we stopped at is about 60 miles to the northwest of Port
Denarau. Needless to say we took lots of photos on the day - just over
300!
 The Yasawas are the
string of islands to the left, going up to Yasawa Island itself. (The
yellow
and pink markers around
the main island are my waypoints used
when going from the
eastern
side of
Fiji.)
 Day cruise boats and mini cruise
ships leave Port Denarau daily.
 The Yasawa
Flyer
   Two people in a kayak made it to this
island.
  The Flyer never docks, it just stops
and boats like this one converge on it from the
resorts
in the area full of people. This
looked like a local band coming from one of the
resorts
to get on board
........
 ....... and then they leave a few
islands up the chain on another local boat.
 There were very few yachts in the
islands - we only counted 10 all day.
    A post marking a reef. You see these
very rarely. The charts have them on and the pilot
book we have refers to them, but that
was last updated in 1992 and they've virtually all gone
now.
 This area is referred to as the Blue
Lagoon as it's where the film of that name was shot.
 Wow! - 2 posts in one
picture!
  One of the higher
islands.
    The sun goes down as we arrive back
at Port Denarau.
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