Viani Bay, Fiji
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 27 Jun 2014 21:56
While walking round we were told that we needed to speak to Jack, a third generation Fijian who lives in the bay and basically organises everything for yachties. He took our kava off us and agreed to give us protection whilst in the bay. Not quite a full ceremony, but at least we got rid of one of our bunches of kava!
The school in the bay - the children come from houses all round the bay by boat each day to attend
Sunrise over the bay
We wanted to go to Taveuni for a day tour. This is the next island about 5 miles away. When we arranged it, Jack said he would come with us in the dinghy, he didn't offer a water taxi thinking our dinghy was big enough. It is usually big enough, but add in a rather large local, going fast was out of the question. Luckily, the water was flat calm and there was no wind so the journey was easy enough.
The tour took us through beautiful villages with gardens planted with fruits, flowers and vegetables. The villages we saw were really traditional and we saw kava drying out and the plant it comes from, and also pandanus leaves being dried for weaving. Wednesday was obviously also wash day as there were lots of women doing laundry in the rivers.
The main point of the tour was to see the three waterfalls in the national park. We saw some photos before we set off and whilst the first two looked impressive and beautiful the third looked a bit less so. Once reached the second waterfall we decided not to do the further one hour round trip to the third one and headed back down for a swim in the first pool. The water was freezing and swimming up to the fall was almost impossible due to the current!
Ivan and Jack trying to work out how best to tie the dinghy
This village was drying kava and pandanus leaves for weaving
Walking to the waterfalls
How lovely is this?
The first waterfall with swim pool at the bottom.
Hiking to the second waterfall
Back for a swim at the first waterfall - Ivan is about to jump in!
This is what the kava plant looks like when it is growing
One the way back, we stopped for lunch overlooking the bay and then stopped at the vegetable market and the petrol station - we were all amazed to see the petrol being being drawn out of huge drums into small cans and then decanted into our petrol tank!
A very unusual way of getting fuel!
Today John and I did the famous white wall dive with the the dive school in the next bay - a rather punishingly early start at 7am but the dive was well worth it. Lots of fabulous corals and spectacular reef fish. Several swim throughs as well. When we arrived back at the boat, Ivan, who doesn't dive, had prepared his special ginger chicken with rice and then caramelised dalo for dessert. The dalo was very interesting. It is a local root vegetable which we had roasted the night before, but caramelising it and eating it as a dessert is a speciality from the Philippines where he comes from. We could definitely get used to this as we are always starving after diving and lunch is always quick, and never this tasty!
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