day 136 & 137: i cassavan’t eat any more
Miriam here, What a full and lovely couple of days we’ve had! Dravuni Island has been idyllic, a true paradise. I have accepted an invitation to be a sister wife so I can stay here forever. Kidding, but I did get a joking invitation and am seriously considering it. So what have we done, you ask? Yesterday was a slow morning with a cassava porridge breakfast to fuel us for our walk up the hill to the highest point of the island. I managed to clean half of the hull which had gotten a bit of an algae build up waiting for everyone to finish their cuppas. Mauruuru carried us to land and while we thought to set out straight away the village had other plans for us. We met Saiasi and Lika as we looked for the path and ended up sitting with them and their neighbour in a palm thatched shade structure talking for ages, having all of our questions about the village answered. We finally went off for our walk despite their concern that we were going in the heat of the day. We wandered the path through the village into the jungle, coming across hens with their chicks and pens full of long snouted muddy pigs, to the huge mango trees that marked the turn to the hill path. Climbing the ridge line to the top we beheld an incredible view: the entire island with it’s groves of coconut palms and jewel toned houses, the surrounding reef as darkened mazes against the gleaming turquoise waters beckoning us to explore, surrounding islands from the near uninhabited ones to Viti Levu faint in the distance, and breaking waves delineating the Astrolabe Barrier Reef surrounding the Kadavu Island cluster. When we returned Saiasi had young coconuts ready for us to drink, splitting them skilfully once we finished so we could eat the meat. I had been coveting the woven palm fans and so approached the gathering of villagers socialising with the Education Ministry officials that had come from Suva for a meeting to ask the women in their colourful tropical print dresses about buying one. They directed me to an older man who, when I asked, insisted I just take his. I had that awkward moment of not quite knowing the culturally appropriate response and so just accepted with profuse thanks (Vinaka vaka levu!) He spoke something in Fijian that caused a burst of laughter through the gathering; I’m glad I could provide some levity and my fan is spectacular.
Today Robin, Naomi, and I went adventuring while Jamie stayed home to be domestic. We took Mauruuru to the nearest uninhabited island to comb the beaches for shells and do some snorkelling. Some treasures were found as well as sea turtle tracks in the softest sand sifting beneath our bare feet. The snorkelling was phenomenal, truly captivating. We saw two Blue Spotted Ribbontail Rays with brilliant blue spots against their yellow skin, shyly hiding beneath coral overhangs. An Eagle Ray as well and the extravagant juvenile Longfin Spadefish with the longest fins I’ve ever seen. So many other incredible beings, some familiar and some new to me, a cryptic raggedy red Scorpionfish another highlight for me. And the coral, wow. To capture it in words would take more space than I ought considering there’s two days and three more people to write but I was in the water for almost three hours and could’ve been there another three without even noticing, so spellbound I was by the colours and textures of them all. My favourite was possibly the golden undulating waves all fuzzy with new growth, or maybe the fuscia staghorns, or perhaps all of them. But we had a dinner date to make so home we went where Jamie awaited us. We went to Saiasi and Lika’s and they hosted us so generously, feeding us a beautiful meal and giving us heartfelt gifts. We have to go in the morning to get Robin to her flight but could happily stay here so much longer. Vinaka vaka levu, Dravuni!
Jamie here, Yes this island is so idyllic and island life is truly magical. Our friends we made here have their family land and they build their house and live off the land, working on the farm during the day. We walked to the top of the hill here in the heat of the day and it was glorious, a good sweat up. Some of the mango trees around are dripping with fruit which are not quite ready yet. Dinner tonight with Saiasi and Lika was so special they made cassava, bok choy in coconut milk and battered fish. We were gifted fresh veges from their garden and home made necklaces made out of leaves and flowers, called salu salu. These are gifts for leaving. Lika made us fans out of coconut fronds. She made Naomi and robin two big ones and me a small one and we had a good laugh about her little joke. She is such a sweet lady. Saiasi bought his barren but sturdy fishing rod back to the boat and we spooled some line onto it and tricked him out with some spare lures. Hopefully he will have better luck than us at catching fish. Great to be able to share our fishing gear with people who will make the most out of it. Bring on tomorrows passage all the way to the big island with hopefully a dive in the passage on the way out and a quick spearfish!? Watch this space. WOD (robin) : tariff. Tariff - an import/export tax. U.I.a.s! - I need to be careful, my pants will tariff I keep climbing over fences like this.
Robin here , I was falling asleep so this will be short … yesterday Naomi got back at me for inspiring a small dose of shell envy in her by sitting me down, opening a big plastic tub she keeps squirrelled away somewhere, and showing me each shell she has collected on this entire trip. Ugh now I am greeeeeen with shell envy! How does one find such shiny cowries? I searched and searched on the little isle we went to today, even going so far as to prowl the shallow water with mask and fins an dig around in the sand, found a few good ones but not shiny and the best had hermit crabs living in them. Otherwise an epic last couple of days with such kind hospitality from our new friends we met in Dravuni village, so generous to cook us a nice meal and share their lives with us for a bit. Time to snooze with a full belly and heart !
Naomi here, we have really been adopted by Saiasi and Lika now they have been so nice to us, yesterday we sat for ages talking with them. Next month there’s 3 cruise ships coming to the island, between 1,000 and 3,000 people on each ship, they come and do a big sevu sevu , the village puts on a kava ceremony for them and does dances, they make a lot of food and sell them sulus and handicrafts. We cannot imagine what it’s like to have so many people descend on such a tiny village of only about 170 people to poke around and look inside houses and so forth, it frankly sounds awful. We asked Saiasi and his friend about it and they smiled and said Oh we like meeting people! Imagine our shock and surprise to hear that the cruise ship passengers were mostly Australian and that they are well behaved ? The coral today on our little island snorkeling trip was incredible, it is just so diverse here, there’s a few different colours of blue, a couple of pinks and reds, two or three different kinds of yellow- most notably the lemon yellow with highlighter yellow polka dots , and another favourite, the yellow background with purple spangles, there’s the stubby spires, the tall spires, the flat spires, there’s flat horizontal dish shaped ones, vertical fan shaped ones, there’s tiny little fuzzy stuff that wafts in the currents, the kind that’s hard and looks like a colony of tiny sea anenomes in both small size and large, there’s the big maze kind, the little maze kind, the smooth kind, the rough kind, knobbly, pimply, polka dotty, the kinds that look like a wrinkled bed sheet, the kind that looks like alpine ground cover, the kind that looks like alpine bushes, the kind that looks like bonsai, there’s a kind that looks like a string of pearls plant…. That’s probably most of them. I also saw 3 different kinds of sea cucumber including one kind I’ve never seen before, I saw many crown of thorns starfish, I’m not sure if they are invasive here or not, and I saw the type of juvenile coris that looks like a little tiny clown fish, as well as some more nemos in their big anneenemomone , I saw maybe a white mouth moray gaping away, more tiny tiny electric blue and bright red little fishies so crisp and little. It’s very difficult to look at the extremely intricate brightly coloured fish, especially the butterfly fish, and try to remember how many black bars it has across its eyes or its tail fin and where the little dots are and how long it’s little fins are, then hold that in your head for the whole dinghy ride home and unpack the dinghy and dry off and have a drink and perhaps a snack and look at the reef fish book with page after page of extremely similar looking fish and all of a sudden you’re trying to remember exactly where the black bars were- across the eye or behind the eye ? Were they more dots or lines? You resolve to pay more attention next time but each time you end up going, well, I guess it was either that one or that one …. Or maybe that one… hang on tho maybe it was a bit more like that ? One thing that really stood out was the spade fish and I cannot emphasise enough just how stupid this fish looked, like just a face with massive fins coming off it, truly ridiculous, I’m so happy to have seen one. With any luck I’ll dream of some tonight !
Bluebird out