It's Cava Time!
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2007
1
6
27
Trip End
Dec 15, 2007
Nadi,
Fiji
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
After a 40 min boat ride we got to a reef named Desperations, we were desperate and this was the only reef that had waves when it was small. It was a good surf but the wave was a bit short and dumpy.
The rest of the week we surfed every morning until lunch and chilled by the pool in the afternoons.
Sarah joined us on the surf trip after the first day at a new reef called Wilkes Passage. What an awesome wave! Sarah's first experience of surfing in Fiji was, um, more exhilarating than she had hoped for. She caught a really nice wave but took off a bit straight and got taken about 800m down the reef. I tried to catch anything that moved to get to her but she was just being pummelled over the shallow reef. The boat driver saw her as I was paddling to help and plucked her out of the water. After a couple of minutes on the boat to catch her breath and calm down, she was the first one to say lets get back in! Good on ya!
The best day of surfing and definitely my highlight of the week was the last day. It was perfect 3 to 6 foot waves with not many people out. Eventually the crowds did come and did go after a number of them met the reef very personally! One guy getting stabbed in the head by a staghorn coral. Very pretty indeed. The sharks must have been fed already, because he was pouring with blood!
The last hour was undoubtedly the best as it was just Kalle from Sweden and me. We took turns at taking these perfect waves. Absolute bliss.
In the meantime it had gotten too shallow for Sarah, so she threw her board on the boat and grabbed her mask and snorkel. After a few mins of snorkelling around the boat, the driver (Manu) asked her if she'd like a tour of the coral..... not entirely sure what he meant, she grabbed the rope he threw her and held on. She had a 30-minute high-speed tow around the coral in the area. The contours of the seabed changed from shallow coral blocks, filled with brightly coloured fish and then fell away into deep gullies between the reefs. This is where she encountered her first shark (a silver tipped reef shark) and it suddenly occurred to her that she had seen a program where they tow bait behind a boat to attract the sharks!!!! This was definitely the highlight of her trip so far.
After the snorkelling trip she jumped back on the boat. We had lost the anchor a few days before and Sarah had spotted it in her snorkelling trip. Manu dived in to try and retrieve it, leaving Sarah in charge of the boat. As the swell picked up we glanced over and saw her driving the boat up the swell and turning back into the channel. I'm sure she yelled "Yee-haaa!"
One afternoon we decided to take the bus into Nadi. That was quite an experience in itself. The bus was decorated with what looked like Christmas decorations and golf balls!!! We drove into the next village where all the children came running up to the bus to wave at us and pose for photos. They were really friendly.
Nadi was a bit of a culture shock, very busy and dusty. Full of hustle and bustle, especially when we were almost the only white faces. It was very colourful none the less.
We found a Hindi temple, which looked so pretty. There we were greeted by a very strange man who told us that I was Robin Hood and that he used to have dinosaurs in his back yard! Um yeah, freak!
The market was pretty interesting, there were LIVE chickens wrapped up to their necks in bags ready for your dinner... well you'd have to kill and pluck them first!!
Most evenings after a lovely dinner we would grab a couple of Fiji gold beers and gather round for some cava and tunes. Manu, Ricky and the other guys brought in their guitars and such traditional and modern Fiji songs..... it was such a good laugh. We'd all grab an instrument and join in..... Sam on bongo's, Lydia on tambourine, Donovan on African drum and the rest of us clapping along.
Next stop the Yasawa's ....
