Musket Cove Fiji

Chantelle
Fri 4 Jul 2008 10:21
Hello All ...time has marched on, it is now 28th June and we're anchored off a beautiful bay called SomoSomo on Naviti, around the Yasawa Islands, Fiji!.....so going back in time....... (it's now actually 4th July and we're in Musket Cove Fiji).
 
Tuesday 17th June Goodmorning All...and what a good morning too. The sun is shining (you wouldn't believe how much rain we've had recently) and we have a fish (MahiMahi) on the line! We are currently on our way to Musket Cove in Fiji having left Vavau in Tonga on Monday 16th June. Prior to Tonga we visited an Island called Niue, part of the Cook Islands, where we had a tremendous welcome. Hats off to the Yacht Club and Keith the Commodore who put so much effort into making our stay a memorable one. We moored on a buoy out in Alofi Bay and a short hop in the dinghy got us ashore. The dinghy dock moorings were quite unusual as we were advised to lift the rubber duck out the water using an electric crane. It all looked a bit complicated and the first time we were slightly anxious (would the newly fixed bridle hold) but after a couple of lifts we were like "old pros!" The journey across to Nieu was uncomfortable to say the least. Heavy rain and average wind speed 27 knots. Unfortunately the rain didn't really let up during our stay on Niue so didn't appreciate her at her best but nevertheless didn't stop us enjoying ourselves.
A smidgen of history for you as I'm guessing many of you won't be familiar with the lesser known Island of Niue. It was visited by Cpt Cook in 1774 and became a part of New Zealand in 1901 when their boundaries were extended to include the Cook Islands. It is classified as the largest raised coral island in the world (a seamount rising from very deep water). This makes for spectacular and extensive cave systems, some of which we visited. Mistakenly Cook named the place the Savage Island which is understandably resented by the locals - the name Nieu translates as "Behold! The coconut!" It scored a big fat 10 with us for being one of the friendliest and most relaxed places we have visited. Customs and immigration was a breeze and when it came to hiring a car - just a signature on a scrap of paper was all that was required. Oh that everywhere was as easy! The Islands have a reputation for being the "safest" in the world. Crime, drugs and graffiti free. Sundays are very much a day of rest, with next to no acitivity, no shops open no boating etc.
 
Our first evening on Niue found us tromping along in the bush with the local walking/running group the Hash House Harriers. It was a great introduction to the countryside and nice to stretch the old legs and get some proper exercise. Needless to say we all congregated back at the Yacht Club for an evenings entertainment. A local family sang and strummed on a guitar some traditional music and then to make us feel more at home played a few recognisable tunes. At the official WARC welcoming ceremony the next evening, the Nieuan Premier presented the skippers with garlands and we were entertained by the youth of Hakupu Village performing the Takalo, a traditional war challenge. They were very convincing with screaming war cries and threatening postures all within a foot from your face. Scary - glad it was just a show! The Alofi South Village Council also arranged a Fiafia evening. This looked as if it involved the whole village and the most fantastic spread of traditional Niuean food was laid before us. The local staple/speciality was a root vegetable called Tarot which was in plentiful supply, not to our taste, also wild pig and thankfully for us vegetarians pasta! We discovered that the Niueans love their food. The group dancing team included the Niuean womens body builder champion. Size is not the issue it's how you move.
Although we didn't dive ourselves, friends told us about their dive with the sea snakes. The largest colony in the world. A heaving mass, all intertwined, occassionally breaking free to surface for air. Sounds a bit gruesome but wished we'd seen them.
 
John and Kim hired a car for a couple of days (virtually no formalities - no deposit just "go") and proceeded to get lost in the bush. Thankfully Niue is a small Island so we were never that far from home but when you're in rain forest and on a mud track trying to decide which way is north without a compass (it was cloudy), it's difficult. The following day we made our way to Togo Chasm. To reach it we walked through a track in the bush which gives way to a mass of jagged coral pinnacles. These lead to a ravine where fine golden sand and coconut trees await your visit. Fortunately there is a well constructed step ladder that enables you to climb down and then through a small cave system and you're into the sea. We sat on some boulders and watched the waves come crashing in, foaming all around us. Well worth the visit. We stopped off at the Washaway Cafe on our way home, closed but open! All the beer was locked away but we could walk around and look at the odd collection of memorabelia acquired over the years. On our way back we stopped at a sign saying "weaving this way". Intrigued we followed the sign which led to a rather delapidated looking building (you would have thought uninhabited) where a group of women - all generations - were busy weaving. We had a warm welcome and soon got talking, of all things about British comedies. They now have mostly Aussie TV but up to and for a while after independence watched British TV. So we chatted about Dads Army, It Aint Half Hot Mum and Coronation Street. Kim bought a hat which she'd watched one of the women weaving. Genuine article - unlike sarong bought in Bora Bora (made in Indonesia)!
The sad fact about Nieu is that they are facing a dramatic fall in population, people choosing to leave and live and work in New Zealand. This was punctuated by the amount of abandoned properties around the island. It appeared there were more unoccupied dwellings than inhabited. As the property and land are inherited by the next generation there is little or no intervention from the Niean Council. These were quite substantial buildings that had been laid to waste! We were driving through villages where we saw hardly a sole. Even in the smallest villages we saw large churches and halls, which judging by their size must have had a sizeable congregation at one time! Such a shame! The other very noticeable feature were the graves. Cemetries as we know them didn't appear to exist, instead there were memorials lovingly attended, dotted all over the island and seemingly in greater number than the present population. We hope Nieu is able to find some solution to it's diminshing numbers and would love to return someday to find the island thriving.
 
So Thursday 5th June and we were departing for Vavua in Tonga. We only had two nights at sea but they must have been the wettest yet. No moon and no stars and for a while an eletrical storm that thankfully kept its distance. The bizarre happening when travelling to Tonga is that you cross the International Date Line. Although physically not crossing the 180 degree meridien line Tonga keep the same time as Fiji. This results in losing a day on arrival in Tonga. So we arrived on Saturday morning but in fact it was Sunday morning. So this year we are reduced to only 364 days! Rather than being BEHIND UTC time we are now AHEAD by 13 hours (12 hrs BST). It all gets very confusing and you're never quite sure until you ask a local for the time! For people sailing into and then flying out from Tonga, forgetting the "lost day" may result in a lost flight home!
The other slightly unnerving incident when coming into Vava'u, our electronic charts proved to be inaccurate. Although we were definitely in the water inching forward, the chart plotter showed us over land. That was a first for us and we were extremely glad we came in by day light. Others arriving at night apparantely managed with their radar - but there's nothing like being able to "see" where you're going if not sure. We had come to rely very much on the chart plotter and it's odd when you're sitting at the navigation station watching the boat moving over ground thinking this can't be right and then poking your head up above, to see land either side of you and not underneath! 
The weather struggled to improve over the duration of our stay. We had one or two sunny days but for the most part, and unusually, it rained!  For our Tongan feast however the skies cleared and there was a brief respite as people tucked into their suckling pig and other such "delicacies". Thankfully Kim and John had decided to give the feast a miss and just enoy the show. Quite a few people were ill, to the extent where a doctor was needed. Lucky decision on our behalf. We did enjoy the entertainment though. Having come to expect the girating hips of French Polynesia it came as a bit of a shock to see the Tongan style of dancing. Much more sedate and conservative - lots of intricate hand movement and vey little hip wiggling. One dance was even performed sitting down in "plastic" chairs. Our host made much of the "plastic garden furniture" and also to our amazement proceeded to tell us that the girls were "untouched" and available!!!
The following evening Kim and John checked in to the Paradise Hotel.Bit shabby around the edges, in need of some TLC but A HUGE ROOM, with HOT RUNNING WATER and a BATH. Two king sized double beds - heaven! Our first evening in the hotel and the WARC had the official welcome party and the ususal presentations were made. The local school provided the entertainement and the dancers were so cute. Little girls (maybe 5-7 yrs) dressed in elaborate costumes performing the "coconut dance", all with impeccable timing - their coconuts not a missing a beat!  And young boys perfecting their haka, honing their intimidatory skills. To show your appreciation the custom is to place money on the dancer, tucking it into their costume. They all left handsomely rewarded!
We decided to hire a car, particularly as the weather was grim and  we would not be cruising around the other islands. Tonga relative to Polynesia and Niue is a much poorer island and their most prominent feature when driving through the towns, villages and countryside are the pigs. Everywhere! Accompanying them also lots of pitiful looking dogs! The pigs had it a lot better, until of course their time was up and they were staring back at you from a spit! We managed to avoid any collisions with the local wild life, but had to proceed with extreme caution. There were lots of shanty style villages and the shops although adequately stocked offered little choice. Tonga is the only remaining "Kingdom" in Polynesia and has retained the family-subsistence basis of its ancient culture. Tonga became a fully independent state in the mid 1970s losing its protectorate status from Britain. As a commoner you cannot own/buy land (this is the preserve of Royalty, Government and Nobles) but on reaching 16 yrs of age every Tongan male is entitled to rent 8 acres of bush land plus a village allotment. We heard that due to numbers of people this is becoming a problem - not enough land to go around....and as for the women? 
One of the highlights of the trip was the Sunday morning church services all over the islands accompanied by the most "uplifting" choirs heard in a long time. The complex harmonies soared above the church towers, your spirits soarng with them. Definite "tingle factor!" Everyone in the congregation were singing their hearts out, it was a very powerful and beautiful sound! We tried to buy a recording but alas none to be found anywhere, so we shall be left with just the memory. Just "remembering" their singing makes your hair stand on end.
If checking in and out of Nieu was a breeze then Tonga proved to be an exacting and tiresome affair. The goal posts kept shifting by the hour as to the correct procedure and even more so when it came to "fees" and overtime pay! Formalities were made unnecessarily complicated as extra money was to be made depending on when you wanted to check out. At one point we were told we would have to leave there and then. Fortunately Claire from WARC was at hand and helped as much as she was able. Messy and time consuming, but nevertheless we did manage to leave, eventually.
 
So Monday June 16th and we departed Vava'u for Fiji arriving Friday 20th June at Laotuko Fiji. (At last catching up)!
Despite being very rolly we had a full moon to illuminate our way NO RAIN! Steady 20 knots - good sailing! John tried out his new lure on hand line (rod now broken) and caught a MahiMahi - very chuffed. Victor (our new crew mate) and John set about the slaughter, with a certain amount of relish, and Kim with another source (sauce) of relish made a marinade!
We passed an Island called Toyota the first night, no signs of life and at about this time also crossed the Meridien 180 degree. So now physically across the Dateline. So heading for Fiji we are now due to lose an hour, by general consent we chose Thursday!
As our experience coming into Tonga taught us you can't rely on charts, we sort advice on the best route to get us safely through the reefs around Fiji, especially as the Lau Group have been know to "sink" a few boats. Our routing took us down south and around the bottom entering through Navula Pass and onto Viti Levu the southern of the two main islands in Fiji. We arrived in Laotoka Harbour our first view being the Sugar and Wood Chip factories belching out smoke! Mmmm - not the most glamorous of settings but good enough! As usual our first task when arriving anywhere is to pump up the dinghy. It's not exactly a quick getaway as this can take anything up to an hour. This done we ventured forth to customs. We had been warned that we would be boarded and inspected and that is exactly what happened. Before they came back to the boat, we had mountains of paperwork to fill out! On board they did a very thorough job, poking everywhere, into all the nooks and crannies. Lucky for us a few places went unnoticed!  Aside from drugs their main concern is bringing in "pests/disease" to the country, via food, rubbish, insects and animals etc! With our papers stamped and "legal" we proceeded to head into town.
As this was our first land fall in Fiji we were amazed to find ourselves in what seemed like India. The main town Lautoka was full of sari shops and curry houses (much to our delight)! It's a thriving place, cheap and the market is just wonderful, stocked with so many different herbs and spices, in much contrast to Tonga. There was also a noticeable presence of Chinese. Unusually restaurants would serve both Indian curries and Chinese style cooking. There has been some political unrest here, resulting from immigration, as on a couple of occasions the native Fijians were overwhelmed in national elections, the last time resulting in an Indian prime minster. A few months later a coup occurred and the government was taken over by the indigenous Fijians. In 2001 elections were held and a Fijian dominated government came to power. Apparantely political matters are far from settled but at least for the time being stable. As we had read much about visiting the villages and familiarised ourselves with various customs (one of which is not to step over a baby!) we were quite surprised to walk through a cosmopolitan town with such an ethnic mix. People were very friendly often shouting Bula Bula (hello) from the otherside of the street. The other main attration here is it's affordable! A cab from the harbour into town is about 65p! The sugar cane factory seemed to dominate the skyline, you could see the smoke for miles but also the lorries laden with the days harvest were everywhere! Unfortunately due the factory's proximity to the harbour our boat was covered in soot most mornings.
We searched in vain for a tourist info place (we found it by accident on our last day), none of the locals seemd to know it existed, so had a quick look on line to find places of interest. Decided to hire a car and drove to Suva (capital) and from there to a rain forest. It was a long journey for not much time spent in the forest but it was nice to be back on terra firma for a while and though we saw nothing in the way of wild life could hear lots of noises. We could "feel" several pairs of eyes looking down on us from the canopy. Apparantely the film Anaconda 2 was filmed here. Glad to report we saw none! The car hire was a good deal but not the best model to cope with road conditions. Even the main routes from Lautoka to Suva were littered with pot holes and generally in poor repair. On our way back we were caught in a torrential rain storm, sheets of rain reduced our visibility to next to nothing so we were forced to stop. The next day and the sun was blazing as we travelled in land to visit a village called Navala (recommended). We started to realise very quickly that we needed a 4x4, not Mr Singhs low slung sports Toyota, however undeterred we crawled along. Sabine and Roger from Branec (trimiran) came along for the ride and got a bit more than they bargained for. We were constantly in and out of the car, trying to lighten the load and it's probably nothing short of a miracle that we didn't put a hole in the under carriage. John was particularly concerned about the sump and when at one stage we saw liquid leaking we thought our time was up.  Not so, luckily it was condensation from the air con, so on we pressed, having switched off the air con (we were also concerned about fuel). Three hours later at an average speed of 15mph we arrived. Seeing the village nestling in the valley below us was an amazing sight, made more so as we really thought the car wasn't going to make it. Descending we came to a wide river with a modern concrete bridge and were greeted by some of the villagers. They were far from shy in coming forward and before we knew we had a guy sitting in the back with us, machete tickling Kim's ear demanding money - not quite like that! When we arrived at the bridge we were surrounded by local workers/villagers who had been harvesting in the sugar cane fields, hence their machetes. There was a good deal of friendly banter and haggling, John knocking the price down and settling the deal to an approving chorus of "yesses" and hand shakes. Then the main man plonked himself in the car (the last of what suspension we had gave up) and we scraped the 200 yards to the entrance of the village. The deal then promptly broke down and more money was expected. We produced our Kava (more on that later) and asked to see the chief, where John desereved a gold medal for his negotiating skills. We were expected to pay 25 dollars per head to visit the village but the "bridge fee" was a swindle. With our money refunded the welcome ceremony, such as it was, proceeded. According to the books and other people's experience the chief is supposed to share the Kava with you, he wasn't feeling too generous on the day we visited so we missed out. Kava is a peppery root which is ground and then made into a kind of tea. Officially it is classified as a soporific, so if you have enough you should feel mellow and pleasantly chilled out. It also has a numbing effect if enough is taken. Not bothered in the slightest that we missed out - apparantely it tastes like old potato water! There was much singing and clapping as the women had a dance with us whilst shrieking with laughter (laughing at our expense). John practised a few of his salsa moves, to more howls of laughter. The chiefs daughter showed us around the village and told us something of their way of life. Had we of known we could have caught a bus from the nearest town Ba and saved us and the car a lot of stress. Not so much fun though! On our way home the car finally complained and we had a puncture.
Having explored a little on land we then cruised around some more of the Islands. One of which we visited was private, but no sign to inform you. It was a tiny place surrounded by a fine sandy beach and on approach we couldn't believe how close we came. At about three boat lengths from the beach we lost our nerve and dropped the anchor. We could have come even closer, the water was deep right up to the beach! On landing the owner despatched one of his minions to inform us that it was a private island. We asked if we might be able to stay for a beer and were given permission. However we had just sat down to drink our beer and were asked to leave. Some confusion - the deal was buy beer and leave immediatley!
We tried to get into Denerau Marina but our timing was all wrong and we ran aground at low water! At least it was a sandy bottom. Had some help from a local power boat and before long managed to free ourselves. Sailing around the Islands you're in constant danger of running into a bommie (coral head), as quite a lot of water is unchartered. On one occassion we were in 50 metres of water and suddenly found ourselves looking at 6 metres on the depth gauge!!
We visited the Yasawa Group of Islands, a chain of around 20 or so and  glad we did. (The films Castaway and Blue Lagoon were shot somewhere on this Island group). The water was much clearer and we had an entire bay to ourselves on Island Waya. We went ashore and walked along the beach. It wasn't long before we were joined by Bill and Eesay, two kids (about 10) who were apparantely on their way back to school even though it was gone 6pm. They were so polite shaking our hands and telling us about their day!
In the morning we slipped anchor and travelled further north to Naviti Island to a bay called Somosomo. This time on going ashore we took books and pens etc for the kids and right on queue as soon as we landed we were surrounded by a throng of smiley faces. They helped us up the beach with the dinghy and then Tambua and Sero (couldn't decide whether Sero was a girl or boy probably about 7) took us to see the chief. Sadly our supply of Kava had run out so we presented our paltry gift, he said a few words and with some hand clapping, permission was granted and we were free to explore the island. It was a joy! Before long we had about ten children escourting us around. We sang some songs together and they constantly tested us on whether we could remember their names. It was all very spontaneous (not staged at all) and for that reason will be one of those special moments. They were cheeky, sweet kids, no agenda and great sense of humour. On our way back to the dinghy another Bill, maybe 14 asked if he and his Uncle could come and see the boat. We hesitated but only for a split second and said they could visit the following morning before we were due to leave. (Had visions of the whole village turning up). We have never seen such beaming faces! They were over the moon and said they felt very priviledged. It was an absolute pleasure and we were so pleased to have made them happy. Photographs to follow!
From the special bay of Somosomo we headed south again for Drawaqa and had some of the best snorkelling we'd had for a while. That evening we spent on Lady Kay, a catameran with Michael and Jackie and proceeded to drink far too much of their very nice wine! During the night the wind picked up 20+ knots, on a lee shore so we were up and down all night checking we weren't dragging onto the reef. Daylight finally came and we decided to make our way back to Laotoka and then onto Musket Cove, which is where we are now! Hooray finally up to date.
We've had three nights on the dock and plan to leave tomorrow July 5th Saturday for Tanna in Vanuata. It's like having a holiday within a holiday here! No messing about with the dinghy to get ashore - dry bottoms, so can wear a posh frock! No rolling or worrying about dragging the anchor over night! Bliss! We are packed in though, so no privacy, just a fenders width between us. Reminds us of Round the Island race back home (Isle of Wight). Have spent two lazy days around the pool, there's a lovely resort here, facilities open to us! It would be nice to spend longer but on we must go! The pace is proving too much for some of the fleet, some alikening it to a forced march and they're pulling out in Vanuatu, going south to New Caledonia and then onto New Zealand to sit out the hurricane season and then cruise at their leasure in 2009. They will rejoin the fleet in 2010. It would be nice to follow suit but not possible so we shall be seeing this through to the end, all being well!
The little we've seen of Fiji has captured our hearts and one day we would love to return. We've only scratched the surface.
So now we are bang up to date! Bit of a mammoth exercise but hope worth it and you enjoy reading about our travels.
Take care all - news from home always welcome.
With love and best wishes
Kim and John
x
PS As no reliable internet connection since Tahiti unable to up load lots of photos - just the one for now.
PPS Not even able to upload one photo for now, will try later.