April 19, 2025

Vanua Balavu Island

After a day at sea, we came into the Islands of Fiji.  There are over 500 Islands in the group. 

We have entered an area called Melanesia.  We will island hop our way over to Papua New Guinea, then down to Darwin, Australia from where we fly home on May 10^th.

As you can see from the pictures, these Islands are among the most beautiful in the world.  If you have ever visited Fiji on a cruise ship, you probably stopped at one of the 2 largest Islands.  95% on all Fijians live on these 2 Islands, with 74% of those living in the capital city of Sava.  Well, we were not stopping at either of those modern cities, we were stopping at 2 very sparsely populated Islands. 

The first Island was yesterday, Good Friday.  The Islanders had planned for a church service for all of us.  Fijians are ultra conservative; we were told we had to cover our shoulders and knees, and we could not wear any head coverings.  Our color group, orange, drew the short straw and we were told to board the zodiacs by 7:00 AM.  Now, if you know me at all, you know my day doesn’t start that early and there is only one thing I hate more than early starts and that’s long pants.  I opted out and stayed in bed. 

There was a group singing as the zodiacs arrived.

The church was open air, no air conditioning anywhere on the island.  The service was advertised as 1 ½ hours was not even half that long. 

They did show us the islands first cell phone and told us it could be heard from almost anywhere on the island.

In the afternoon, they took us snorkeling where there was plenty of large coral, doesn’t that picture look like its taken in someones living room aquriam?  Coral grows very slowly, less than 1” per year, so some of the stuff we were seeing was over 300 years old. 

Today’s Island, Yasawa, had lots to see and do.  Again we were greated with song and dance.

The road from the beach to town was lined with women selling everything from baskets to blankets, Kim bought a Pereau from a lady that had come from a nearby island just because our ship was visiting.  It had cost her about $50 US for the boat ride.  Kim soon found out that most of the women selling things were from other islands and come to this island whenever a cruise ship is scheduled to stop, which is not very often at all.  She told Kim that this was her only source of income.  All of the people were very friendly and plesant.

Before we were “allowed” to visit the island, the chief had to approve our visit.  Last night, 2 men from the island came aboard and explained the ceremony that would take place in the morning.  After the explanation, they said we needed to choose a captain from the guests.  George (seated in the chair with Jill beside him) volunteered to be our captain.  We had met George and Jill about a week ago.   We had booked a polar bear excursion in Churchill Canada after hearing about it from an expedition leader. When the paperwork was emailed to us, there were several questions about our general health and mobility issues.  Since I do have mobility issues, we started getting concerned about if I could manage this trip.  We started asking the expedition team if they knew anyone that had done this trip, well, we found out that Jill had done it a few years ago with her mother.  She was happy to answer our questions and described the experience to us and said her mother was much more mobility challenged than I was.  Last night, we had been invited by the cruise director, Lupi to join him for dinner.  We were the first to be seated at the table for 5.  Shortly after we arrived, the other couple arrived, you guested it, it was George and Jill.  We had a great time visiting with them and Lupi. 

At the ceremony, Captain Geoge would sit facing the chief.  After exchanging greetings, one of the elders made a bowl of Cava, the root of the Cava plant is dried and pounded into a powder, the powder is put into a mesh bag and placed into a bowl.  Water is then poured over the bag and the elder with his hands works the bag by squeezing it.  Once he is satisfied that all the good stuff is mixed into the water. He scoops out a bowl (coconut shell) and presents it to the chief.  The chief then drinks it, emptying the bowl.  Then Captain George was given a bowl of Cava and drinks it, he was instructed to empty the bowl, or the chief would be disappointed and may not allow us access to the Island.  He did a good job and we were allowed access to the island. Cava has special “powers” and some mind altering effects. It also makes your mouth feel like you just came from the dentist, numb.

Today was the first day that the heat was too much for me, so after about 2 hours I retreated to our cabin Again this afternoon, Kim went snorkeling. It was mostly a good swim.

Okay, still not worthy of pool cronicles, but close. At the briefing, we were told that the landing would be wet, meaning there was no dock to let us off. So, they basically run the zodiacs aground on the beach and we get off in very shallow water. When he asked for questions, a lady asked if we would be allowed in church with wet shoes, really? Then came the great one. How wet is the landing? Well, my mouth works way faster than my brain most of the time, so I said in my best indoor voice, “how wet is water?”. I can’t imagine how anyone could ask such a question. The speaker answered nicely and finished with “not even going to ask for any more questions”.

Again, thanks for your comments, I like to hear from all of you. For the grammer and spelling notzies, thanks for over looking my less than perfect writing.

More to follow…….