After departing Waya, we headed north along the Yasawa group and anchored of a beautiful beach owned by the folks in the village of Soma Soma. They had told us that this beach had some of the best coral in the Yasawa’s just off the beach. The infamous “they” were in this case correct – the reef was gorgeous.
Unfortunately, my underwater camera is dead, so you will not get to see it, but we want to go back for a variety of reasons – maybe then.
The following are pictures of our approach to the beach.
In the last picture, the dark areas are all reef just barely submerged.
Not long after we dropped the hook. villagers happened by (they don’t miss much and we were one of the first boats here this season) and presented us with 5 nice mangoes. After a bit more conversation, they got around to the Keri Keri part (asking for a favor). Seems the village was out of premix for their outboards and none was expected for a few days – did we have any? He showed us his gas tank and all it contained was fumes. He couldn’t have possibly made it back to the village. How could we say no.
Not much later, boat 2 came by asking for premix. Salu and his grandfather still had gas in his tank and we politely declined saying we didn’t have enough extra. After some conversation, he fired up his outboard, got 20 feet away and it died. He asked if we could drag him in to the beach. That obviously wasn’t the end. He had no tools, spare plugs or anything else for that matter. We obliged by helping him try to fix the ailing outboard with our tools but to no avail.
He said he had to collect firewood – if he couldn’t get the outboard going, could we drag him back to the village in about an hour? How could we say no.
An hour passed and he was still collecting firewood – we were on Fiji time. Approaching hour 2, he was ready and the tide was about to leave us stranded on the beach. Off Deb and Steve went in Little Lady with Salu and his boat, firewood and grandfather in tow.
Salu was immensely grateful and his friends had a grand old time teasing him about being drug home by Palanges. In the village, Salu took us to his home and entertained us and served light refreshments. He urged us to come back and he would prepare a Fijian feast for us. Think we have to figure a way to do that.
After a hard day at sea saving stranded Fijians, Deb and Steve enjoy a glass of wine on the back deck.