M/Y Iron Lady

The trip up to Yanuca was butt ugly and unfortunately the anchorage off the village didn’t offer very much protection. We scouted around for a better spot and talked to another visiting yacht and the conclusion was to stay put. It was bad enough the first night that we didn’t launch the dink and stayed aboard although we did make contact with Jack, the acting Chief.

The next morning brought better weather and the feast was planned so we launched and headed to shore. Everyone was out awaiting our arrival.

The other guest of honor was being prepared as well.

While the villagers were preparing the lovo, Kim, Paul, George and Debby were off to the school with books, crayons, markers, paper and stickers that we had brought along. The school (like most village schools we went to) was in desperate need of supplies. The children expressed their thanks by singing songs and individually coming up to collect the books we had brought. Pictures of the school are available on our first post about Yanuca.

I stayed behind and watched the villagers prepare the lovo. These are taro – a starchy root vege and they are first onto the hot rocks.

Then comes our friend the pig wrapped in palm leaves along with fish and chicken wrapped the same way. ONce everything is assembled, palm leaves and banana leaves cover everything.

Then comes a tarp and sand.

Once in the love, everything cooks for around 3 hours. Meanwhile other dishes and desert are prepared. Desert is boiled tapioca with a sauce of boiled coconut milk and brown sugar.

While we were waiting, some of the villagers returned from a day of harvesting sea slugs. The process involves dropping a line with a weight on the end in deep water. Attached to the weight is a barbed hook which impales the sea cucumber and they are hauled back to the surface. One would think the process is inexact and inefficient, but they came back with three large tubs full of the critters.

Not sure how many were there but it I guess they numbered over several hundred. The sea cucumbers are then gutted and dried in the sun. They are further processed by brining and drying them. Once processed, they command something like $150 in the asian markets as a male enhancer – I will leave it to you as to which part they feel gets enhanced.

At any rate, this is the villages main source of income. Jack pays each villager something like $20 for each one they harvest and process. Jack then sells them to a middle man for an amount that he did not disclose. Some of the proceeds are used to benefit the village as a whole (like the new sea wall they are building) and the balance goes to Jack.

Our gift to Jack was a handheld GPS which he said will be very useful in saving good spots to capture the critters – not to mention transiting to and from Taveuni in bad weather.

After a full morning, the food was ready.

Once again, we managed to eat far too much.

After dinner, Debby was presented with gifts from the villagers – a woven mat and place mats. These now grace our deck in Pittsburgh.

George was playing with one of the locals.

Kim and Paul were enjoying a little desert and a suki (Fijian tobacco rolled in news print).

All too soon our day was over and it was time to head back to our gal before we got cut off by the tide.

At first light, it was off to Savusavu but our fond memories of our time at Yanuca will remain. For more about this wonderful little place, look at our first post on Yanuca.

Our next stop was Yanuca – home of the former and future Lovo. Before heading off to the Lau group, however, we contacted Jack (acting Chief) who happened to be in Suva at the time and gave him the approximate date of our arrival. He assured us he would be back in time.

At any rate, straight from Yanuca, here is a “real life” message in the bottle story for you. A young women in San Francisco put a message in a bottle asking that anyone who might find it to contact her. Years passed by and much as it seems hard to believe, the bottle washed up on the beach at Yanuca.

The young man who found it made contact and the young women agreed that she would travel to Yanuca so they could meet. In story book fashion, they fell in love and the women moved to Yanuca. They built a house on the hill overlooking the bay and the village. I believe this is a picture I took of the house although I am not certain – anyway, you get the idea.

She helped the young man buy a nice panga with a 40 HP outboard. The house has its own generator In short, life was very good for the young man.

I wish I could report that they lived in fairy tale fashion happily ever after. Well – not exactly. You see life on a tiny island is very different then the big city life that is San Francisco. You can well imagine what a culture shock it would be to pack up and move to a tiny island 1 hour distant from nowhere by small boat with just a few hundred other people. WHile the prospect of living on a tropical Pacific Island might sound like paradise, for most accustomed to bigger places it turns into a gilded prison.

Such was the case with the above mentioned couple. Small island life turned out to be too restrictive for her and the big city was too much for him. She gave him the house et al and moved back to the states.

We saw clear evidence of just how difficult it is for young people to bridge two different worlds successfully during our second visit. On our first visit, we met Wadi, a very attractive young women and she and Debby quickly became friends.

Wadi is from the “big” city in Fiji, Suva, but she had met a young man from Yanuca and they had fallen in love. So Wadi moved to the island. During our second visit, Wadi was no longer the smiling young women we had met on our first visit. She confided to Debby that she missed her family and the big city life in Suva – she just couldn’t stay any longer. She asked if we would take her to Savusavu when we left so she could catch the ferry to Suva. We agreed.

It was a very tearful departure for both Wadi and her significant other. While I suppose it is possible that the romantic bond between them will draw one or the other to make a move to Suva or the island, my suspicion is that they will both end up staying in their respective worlds.

Fairy tales are nice, but the truth is that there is a lot more of the story to be told after the happily ever after part then the story that comes before.

By the time the weather broke a bit, it was time for us to head on north so we will have to reserve the Exploring Isles in the Lau group for another time. Having said that, there were some beautiful bays, beaches and islands to explore around SuSui as well.

I never get tired of fish pictures so here is another.

And one as Mr. Mahi gets dressed for dinner.

We had some more fish adventures on the way to Qamea, but they will remain stories about the ones that got away.

Pictures tend to flatten the waves dramatically, but they were running over 10 feet – that is the top of one swell behind the boat. Despite the waves, Kim and Paul are enjoying a comfortable ride on the back deck.

As for the ones that got away, we had a big Marlin take one of the meat lines – that lasted all of a few spectacular seconds. The other monster was on the rod – we fought it for 45 minutes and couldn’t gain any line. It finally broke off – no clue what it was but we expect a monster tuna. Glad the Mahi decided to stay for dinner.

We arrived at Qamea but the bay off the resort was too rough and reefy to risk anchoring there. We headed one bay north and found reasonable although not ideal conditions. The main reason for the stop was the reef. Unfortunately the water was roiled from wind and rain so the reef wasn’t really lit up, but it was still beautiful.

We had two nights and just over one full day at Qamea mostly devoted to snorkeling but the troops did manage to hit the resort and the spa – big surprise.

Next stop Yanuca.

In my last post, I talked about what Mom Nature gives you. We wanted to go to the Bay of Islands but the weather was being difficult so we moved across the atoll to SuSui instead.

Unplanned but wonderful none the less as these folks get very few visitors. It all starts with the village tour. A friendly greeting from the kids.

The school.

Son George played a game art the school. BTW, Mom introduced him as Baby Boy George. Thereafter, the villagers called him Baby Boy in an accent that only the Fijians can do.

The Church

There was the usual hospitality as we were invited into their homes.

Baby Boy wanted to try his hand at husking Cocoanuts.

And then the process of turning it into milk.

Of course there was the inevitable goofing around.

Hard to believe he was a Magna Cum Laude triple engineering major at Duke with a Masters in Electrical Computer Engineering from Stanford. Oh well Baby Boy.

He wasn’t much better at climbing Cocoanut trees.

We also went on a tour of the island. Kim and Paul made some ground level attempts at dislodging cocoanuts (without success).

Geo made another attempt with little more success – climbing coconut palms is much tougher then it looks.

One of the locales did it right.

The result was some delicious coconut water and cocoanut mouse – very refreshing.

Deb and Kim found some beautiful (and rare) Nautilus shells on the beach.

A happy Kim and Paul.

Some nice beach shots.

We also went back into the bush to see where the villagers lived in caves generations before. Now it is home to the pigs with some very ancient graves in the caves.

On the way back, we stopped by a copra dryer.

It takes a lot of cocoanuts and about 2 days of drying time to process the meat. They receive about $250 a ton – not much.

Well, we never made the Exploring Isles with the weather as we had to make north to stay on schedule. Sometimes what the weather takes away, you get back in other ways.

The Lau Group is a string of islands stretching some 150 nautical miles from north to south about half way between Viti Levu (the main island of Fiji) and the Kingdom of Tonga to the east. These islands are very beautiful and offer some of the best cruising in Fiji but they are also extremely remote. There are no resorts and no services of any kind so the cruiser is completely on his own out here. So if you go, go prepared.

While we would have liked to explore more of the Lau group, our children had deadlines at home and flights to catch from Savu Savu so our time was limited. Based on various recommendations, we chose Vanua Balavu as our Lau experience of choice. Also known as the Exploring Isles because of the myriad of small islands that ring the lagoon, there are indeed many places here to explore and several weeks could easily be devoted just to this area without seeing it all. This area is reputed to be one of the top 10 best dive sites in the world with much of it, as of yet, unexplored. Continue reading →

Just a few pictures this time – you can look at our other posts on Suva. Our primary reason for returning to Suva was to pick up our daughter, Kim and her friend Paul who were flying in from the states. They arrived the day after our arrival back in Suva. Ian was busy clearing in and getting our onward permits for cruising the Lau group.

Deb hit the highlights with Kim and Paul as well as doing some minor provisioning. Ian and I decided to put some time up our sleeve by heading off around 4 PM the next day to time our arrival in the Exploring Isles in the Lau group for early the next day. This group is quite remote and lies almost half way to Tonga but is supposed to have some of the best cruising in Fiji. The weather was favorable with unusual westerly winds which meant for a smooth trip.

Shortly before dark, George boated several small dinner sized Wahoo.

More about our arrival in the Lau group shortly.