Adventure Photos

We are anchored in front of the Musket Cove Resort on the island of Malolo Lailai in Fiji. What a lovely place! Low island. palm tree lined, white sandy beaches, emerald green waters shading to yellow as it shallows near the beach, soft breezes, sunny skies, lovely sunsets. Sounds like a travel brochure, doesn’t it? Well, it is. AND no mosquitoes—or at least they haven’t found me vet. So far we haven’t needed the mosquito net in the evenings, and I haven’t been bitten during the day. Heaven!

We came Monday afternoon and plan to stay for a week or two. The owner of the resort is an ex-yachty so he understands what it’s like to find a friendly place to anchor. To that end, he has opened his vacation spot to boaters and has given them special benefits. For a "lifetime membership" of $1 for the captain, and $5 for each crew member, he makes all of his services available-pool. showers, dinghy pier, wind surfers, etc.—and his special Thursday pig roast buffet that costs his hotel guests $20 apiece is only $12 for yachties. We plan to go tonight. Every six weeks he has a cocktail party at his house on a hill above the resort. He had one Tuesday evening and invitations were motored out to each of the boats in the harbor (about 10 of us). We thought this was a bit unusual, but when we arrived we discovered he had also invited all of his hotel guests! Ever hear of anything like that? He had quite a group in his lovely home and we enjoyed each other’s company almost as much as we enjoyed looking at his vast shell collection.

Well, let’s go back a bit. In my last letter, we were getting ready to leave Tonga. The night before we left, a group of us were invited to a Kava party in a local village. Never having tried the stuff and hearing so much about it, we quickly accepted. Kava is a root that grows all over the Pacific. The drink made with the dried and ground root mixed with water looks like a light gray liquid. It is scooped up in halved coconut shells from a wooden kava bowl and is passed around the room to the people, usually men only, sitting in a circle on large woven grass mats. Our yachting group consisted of three cruising couples and two children under 12 years of age. We were guests so it was OK, but usually women and children don’t take part.

This was the "usual Friday night kava group;" several groups meet in different parts of the village depending upon jobs and interests. One man was responsible for preparing the kava each week and the other men gave him $2 when they arrived. This money was noted in a ledger book and would be deposited in the bank. At a certain time in the year, the men got their money back with interest—a kind of Christmas Club. It was also a good time to get together after work and enjoy each other’s company.

The "leader" poured and passed around the coconut cups—one for pouring, three for passing. A man would drink the kava then toss the cup back to the "leader" who would fill it again and pass It until all had their fill for a while. Suddenly someone would break out in song and soon all the men would be singing a Tongan ballad, usually a love song. The voices were unaccompanied and were wonderful to hear, sung in two or three part harmony. When the singing stopped, more kava was poured. This began around 8 p.m. and would continue sometimes until 2 a.m.

The drink, that comes from the root of a pepper plant has a peppery taste and isn’t very good. One of my guide books says it "looks like dirty dishwater and dirty dishwater probably tastes better!" If you drink more of it, kava will slightly numb the tongue and throat. It’s a kind of anesthetic and tranquilizer. I didn’t drink enough for this to happen but we noticed that after a while the men talked with slightly slurred speech. The drink is non-alcoholic and non-narcotic. It’s just a sociable drink common to the islands, and, just as coffee is used when people get together, so is kava, even to the extent that here in Fiji, the office workers have a kava break! Personally I don’t see what’s such a big deal about the stuff, but they probably feel the same about coffee. And it’s interesting to note that the missionaries kept the people tea-totalers but didn’t prevent kava drinking.

Our trip to Fiji, about 450 miles away, began the next day and it was a wonderful sail—that day ! The next day the wind began to die and each of the next two days moved our boat no more 30 miles. We hesitated about using our engine because we didn’t know how much fuel we’d need to pass between the islands of Fiji to get to Suva, the capital city, to check in for customs and immigration. We couldn’t stop at the other islands before we did this. Since the islands are surrounded by dangerous reefs and coral groupings in the middle of nowhere , it makes for a very nervous passage. Just before we left, we had word that friends who had left three weeks before went up on one of those reefs during the night and lost just about everything when the villagers on the island helped themselves to their belongings. Their boat broke up soon after and they left Fiji with little more than the shirts on their backs. So we were doubly careful when we entered the group, especially because now the wind picked up and began pushing us toward the islands at a faster pace than we expected and the visibility diminished because of mist and sudden squalls. Ah, the cruising life! Well, our SatNav worked perfectly and we threaded our way to Suva with no problems and with most of our fuel intact, since we only used it to raise anchor in Tonga and get into the harbor in Suva.

Suva was all everyone said it was, a great place to work on our boat, and we sure did. We found a boatyard and had a mizzen mast and main boom built for $500 less than we expected. We bought a new battery and another solar panel for less than stateside. Bob took care of little problems and there was always some place that sold just the part we needed. We sampled the local foods and shopped for souvenirs. We even went to the local theater and saw "Presumed Innocent" at, are you sitting down?, $1.60 Fiji each, or $1.10 U.S.—and these were the best seats in the house, the others were $1.40 Fiji! Back in the 1800’s, when Fiji was part of the British Empire, indentured servants were brought over here from another part of the empire, India, to work the sugar cane fields. After that was discontinued, most of the Indians opted to stay and today they make up most of the population. So it’s fascinating to see all the ladies in saris and other Indian garb shopping downtown. While we were in Suva, three holidays were celebrated: Fiji Day (Independence Day), Mohammad’s Birthday for all the Moslems, and Diwali Day (Hindu New Year’s). Really international.

We anchored at the Royal Suva Yacht Club just outside of town for $20 a week (about $14 U.S.) and took advantage of the facilities: mail, dinghy pier, showers, trash, Friday night barbecues, inexpensive sodas (60 cents Fiji for 16 oz Coke which came to about 40 cents U. S.) and meals. We also had the companionship of lots of cruisers we met in Samoa and Tonga as well as several new ones we met there in Suva.

The only drawback about Suva was the weather. It rained almost all the time. We had very few days when we saw the sun, and almost never saw the moon. It was quite depressing, especially since we had to stay there seven weeks to get things done. When the weather did clear, we managed to take a cab to a local park with hiking trails, water falls and crystal clear mountain pools and picnic tables set in a tropical rain-forest. We hiked and picnicked and swam and Bob and Lara, a 10 year old daughter of one of the yachties, swung across one of the pools on a rope before falling into the water. Another time we visited the museum, tried kava Fiji-style (supposedly a bit stronger than Tonga), toured a cultural center, saw Fijian dancing, visited with the sister-in-law of the Fijian teacher I worked with in Samoa, shopped in the huge farmers market. But mostly we sat on the boat and or at the yacht club hearing how beautiful Fiji is from all those people who had managed to leave Suva to explore the outer islands, especially the western section where we were heading. We could hardly wait to get away.

And then we did and what a wonderful experience! The sun was shining the day we left and when we looked back at Suva there was a dark cloud over it! Our first stop was Beqa (pronounced Mbenga). a small island 35 miles away with a barrier reef surrounding it. I had promised I’d visit Arieta’s father as well as her sister-in-law, and he is a Tui (chief) of three of the villages there. Well, he wasn’t there, had just left for Suva the day before, but we still had a good time. We presented kava root to a chief in one village (as kind of a courtesy "gift," some call it a bribe), to get permission for anchoring outside the village and being able to visit it (one of the customs here). We bought the kava at the market in Suva ($16 kilo Fiji but you dole it out in ¼ kilo bundles for chiefs). One family befriended us and invited us to their house for dinner. Their fifteen-year-old son, Moses, was our guide to the village where Arieta’s father lived (not a secure anchorage like the one at Moses village), and we invited him on the boat for an "American lunch" (hot dogs, relish, baked beans, cornbread, lemonade, and chocolate cake), later having a Fiji dinner at his house made of pulusami (fish, onions, and spices wrapped and baked in taro leaves), sweet potato and cassava from their farm. We all exchanged gifts, vegetables from their farm for a bottle of Joy, cleanser, matches and oil from our boat’s provisions.

We were there two days and left (still sunny and lovely and a dark cloud still hanging over Suva!) to an overnight stop in a bay by the Fijian Resort Hotel that charges hotel guests $250 a night with meals extra. We planned to leave the next day, but the winds came out of the west, the direction we planned to go, and it was so nice that we stayed an extra day. In the morning we left for Malolo Lailai.

We plan to stay here at Musket Cove for another week or two (and enjoy the sunshine—no rain since we left Suva!), then head north to get out of the area during hurricane season. We’ll stop at Funifuti in Tuvalu Islands, then Tarawa in Kiribati Islands, then Kosrae, Pohnpei, Truk and then on to Guam by March. The next place we’ll get our mail will probably be Tarawa sometime in December. So it will be just Christmas cards this year. The goodies we bought for everyone won’t be mailed until we get to Guam because of the expense of postage in so many parts of the Pacific. Guam will have U.S. postage as in Samoa. We’ll be able to give you a local address when we get there so you can write direct. Until then. continue to use the Seattle address.

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Copyright 2000 by Robert L. Webb
Goose Creek, South Carolina 29445 USA