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Yup The little islands look like mushrooms....kind of...sort of....maybe.
Anchor down just inside the pass in Fulanga, in the southern
Lau, the eastern most islands of Fiji after an almost perfect weather window
for heading in the wrong direction of the normal trade winds. With the sun shining, off we went with Erie
Spirit to snorkel the pass we just drove through. Lots of little fish with an
occasional big one and a turtle swimming like something was chasing it and yup
pointy edges that we happy made it through.
After that a glass of champagne
and a relaxing dinner, then a good night’s sleep!
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| More Mushrooms |
Next day we moved to the village anchorage were we went in
to do our Sevu Sevu, with Erie Spirit and another boat that had just arrived
from Savu Savu, Local Talent, with Dean and Sabina on board. Once at the village we put on our Sulus (long
skirt or wrap) and asked around for Joe and Tara, who were Mystic Moons hosts last
year. We had pictures and a letter for
them from Mystic Moon. After a friendly hello,
we exchanged some stories about John and Kathy.
Then Joe took us to see the chief, grabbing a sulu off a line on the way. The chief is in his 80s and doesn’t speak
English, so his son, Simon, is there to interpret. We pass on our Waka and $50 and are welcomed
to the village. We are then get assigned
a host family, it got a little confusing as they thought that Erie Spirit and
us were on the same boat, there was no way 2 girls would be on their own boat
so they must be crew of Erie Spirit. So
we had tea with Tie’s family Erie Spirit’s host , and then he realized that yup
2 girls can be on their own boat, so then we were assigned our own host family,
Bis and Joanna as each boat has a host family.
Bis and Joanna are a young couple, both have degrees from
the university of the South Pacific.
Joanna is from the village and Biz is a city slicker from Suva, they
married a couple of years ago and are enjoying village life. Sunday sees us at church, yes, again!! The service was all in Fijian, so all we can
say is the singing was lovely!! They
were probably 30 or 40 cruisers there, a greater number than the
villagers!! After church we went to our
host’s house for lunch. We were served
fish, two different ways, both awesome and coconut water, so Karen was happy. To
soak up the sauces we had coconut bread cooked in an earth over, lovely!!
Interesting that we were given cutlery, our hosts used their fingers, then
passed around a bowl of water after to wash our hands. No dinner that night, way too full!! Do they
normally eat that much….WOW!!!
Joanna took us clamming!
Awesome, she was very successful, Cheryl was also productive, I found a
few as did Mark, Susan found 1. Since you have to float in the water and find
the little cracks in the sand where the clams are breathing let’s just say
after 2 hours in the water we were FROZEN TURDS! So we dropped Joanna off at the shore and
went back to our boats to warm up. We
cooked a bucketful of clams and made clam fritters, we then took them over to Erie Spirit for the
feast of our bounty. Cheryl picked up
Bis, Joanna and Tie and we had clams as fritters, clams boiled and dipped in garlic
butter and a sea weed salad a la Interlude(we call the sea weed sea grapes, not
sure what it is really called. Poor man’s
caviar?). Lovely.
Next low tide we went crabbing, at least Mark, Susan and
Karen did, with Cheryl staying on the boat as the once a month delivery barge
anchored right in front of Local Talent and us a little too close for us. Karen,
Mark, Susan and Tie took the dinghy two bays over to where Tie has his
farm. We went up and down and onto
Mangrove flats. Tie caught a mangrove
crab right away, a BIG one! Tie caught
it with his bare hands, crawling in the cave with half of his body into a ‘cave’
to pull it out. We then spent the next
hour or two wandering around the mangroves, where there were rocks behind for
the crabs to hide in. I had a Bahamian spear
with me, while I saw several crabs, none large enough to kill, so they got to
live another day, to grow. Then as we
were walking around we saw an amazing sight it was the migration of thousands
of small crabs with large red claws, quite a sight to see.
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| Tie with dinner |
On the way back Tie pick some Cassava, the root of a tree
somewhat a cross between a hard yam and a hard potato. Tie showed Susan and I how to make a basket
to carry our Cassava and Papaya back to the dinghy.
We picked up Cheryl and went to Erie Spirit. The crab was cooked, Tie peeled the Cassava,
then Susan and I cut it up. Mark cooked
it as pan fries, making it very tasty.
We had made a salad, so once again we had some nutrition. Another feast yummy
We had Joanna and Bis over for lunch. Phad Thai was served, with fish. After a second helping for our hosts, the Phad
Thai disappeared.
We moved over to the sand spit anchorage to see what was
there. We walked the beach with Susan at
low tide and saw some amazing turquoise pools and white sand beaches; we walked
from one end of the beach to the other, just another lovely day in paradise. 
Mark on Erie Spirit has to be back in the States for work,
so they moved on. Our playmates were
gone! What a great time catching up with them but we know we will see them
again real soon.
One day in the village in between rain and wind the village had
an inter village competition:
volleyball, singing and dancing.
We watched some great volleyball being played by the villagers both men
and women…boy they are good, then it was our turn to play a bit it was truly an
embarrassment.
Being good cruisers we listen for weather everyday on the
SSB when we don’t have Wifi so as we had been listening on Gulf Harbour Radio,
an SSB net run but a retired meteorologist, who gives an awesome weather
summary. (on 8752 at 0715 our time) So we found out Moondance was on her
way. And then we heard Moondance on the
VHF, saying they are at the pass waiting for the tide to come in so we waited and
waited and waited. They made it in but
they got lost and went to the wrong anchorage!
So we had a laugh about that, (yup they even said they wondered how they
made it to Fij). So with plans for them to move over the next day to where we were
as the forecasted was for the winds to pick up and we had hunkered down by the
village as it was the most protected anchorage in Falanga. And boy did we get wind and rain. Moondance finally made it over, two days
later along with all of the other boats in the other anchorages. We took them into the village for their Sevu
Sevu and show them around and as we passed Joe someone grabbed him a Sulu off
the clothes line and he took Moondance off to see the chief.
One day in the village we made poor Tie teach Cheryl how to
make a basket. You see the Fijians make
these baskets out of palm fronds. They
use them to carry everything. Last year
we had one made by Sepo at Paradise and put fruit in it. It seems to us that the fruit lasted longer
in the baskets. While, Cheryl was successful
and Tie still has fingers, but it was close, the question really is would
Cheryl finish the basket before Tie ran out of patience. So now we have two baskets holding our fruit,
one made by Cheryl and one made by Karen.
Tie was a great teacher….Cheryl was an okay student but need more
instruction for sure.
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| Right over left or is it left over right?????? |
So with new playmates we had dinner on Moondance and played
42, a domino game. We had Doug and Carla
over for dinner and played more games! They are such good company it was sad
when we had to move on!
Next stop: Vanua
Balavu, in the northern Lau
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