Castaways

Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Wed 20 Jun 2007 05:00
17:27.565S 177:02.697E
 
Well, Fiji continues to amaze us with its beauty and variety, with everything from luxury beach resorts through to small and very traditional villages where the chief still hold sway and life continues much as it has always done (minus the cannibalism and with the benefit of the ubiquitous Yamaha outboard engine).  After a great couple of weeks we dropped our friend, Mark, off on a small dusty island strip for him to literally fly off into the sunset and back to the real world. It was fun for us to share some of our cruising experiences with him and he soon adapted to our leisurely pace of life regulated by the rising and setting of the sun and limited only by the weather forecast which was identical for each and every one of the 12 days he spent with us. "Today: Fine. Wind: South-Easterly 10-15 knots, Cool at night. Outlook: Fine".  The good news was that they were right.
 
Since then we spent four days diving around Malolo Lailai with an extraordinary French underwater film-maker who only stopped talking when you got him below the surface! There are miles and miles of fabulous and unspoilt reefs and we had our first sighting of a beautiful leopard shark who seemed completely relaxed with the attention and hung around for us to admire him before gliding off across the sand.. 
 
We are now anchored in a stunning bay further up the chain. We are actually in the V between two uninhabited islands and for the last couple of days we have had the place completely to ourselves. The attached picture does not begin to do justice to the place although I hope if you zoom in on our position using the Google earth link on the website you might get some idea of the colours. A few miles away to the south of us is Monuriki which was used to film the movie "Castaway" starring Tom Hanks. Imagine how much more fun he would have had stuck on the island if he (like us) had taken a fridge, a simple but well stocked kitchen, a comfy double bed and a supply of cold beer with him!    

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