Day 3 and 4 at Kioa Island

Yesterday, we had a very nice walk around the village, guided by Agelu and his 7 year old cousin, Kaisami. We had tea at one house with a couple who had recently moved back here from the big city of Nadi (Gok and Keli). We visited a basket maker and a lady who was brewing Kava. We also attended a dance ceremony put on for some tourists from a dive resort across the water. All in all - a fun sociable day. And as a bonus, I came away with some baskets, a tapa cloth, and a few shells purchased at a craft show that followed the dancing.

  

Agelu and Kaisami in a dugout canoe made by Agelu's grandfather.

Local kids fooling around in a fisherman's canoe.

Toddlers at the beach.

Roasting coca beans

A cocoa bean pod

Making kava or grog as the locals call it.

Rani, Evotia, and granddaughter. Rani bought two of Evotia's lovely baskets

Little piggy goes to market

View of Ladybug from one of the concrete walkways that run through the village.

When I admired a lei worn at the dance ceremony, the lady gave me her lovely garland 

Today we had another visit from Agelu who cam with his little cousing John. I had made fudge so we had tea together before we went ashore to visit again with Gok and Keli. Chris and I both had a chance to take Agelu's canoe for a paddle. I had difficulty keeping it going straight, but Chris found it similar to paddling a Canadian canoe.

When we went ashore, I brought some yogurt starter for Keli and Chris some freshly made fudge, which we gave out to some of the people we knew as we walked through the village. One woman, whose child was suffering from pink eye told us that her child was much better after she took my advice (picked up from Pat on 'The Rose') that she should squirt breast milk in the eye to cure the infection. It was amazing to see that in one day the baby's eyes were significantly improved. Breast milk has anti-bacterial properties.

We had a lovely visit with Gok and Keli and later rowed Gok out to Ladybug for a visit (Keli had to attend a woman's committee meeting to organize some sort of large event scheduled for August). Gok liked our boat but after we told him about the dangers of travelling by sea, he told us we should sell Ladybug and move to Fiji. He invited us to stay with him when we come here.

Chris paddles Agelu's canoe

Rani takes a turn. Note the lovely calm conditions.

Keli and Gok pose beside their outdoor kitchen

Gok was making rotis on a tava over an open fire when we arrived. It turns out that he is the only Indian on this island. They had also made a breadfruit curry for us and we had a delicious lunch on their deck by the outdoor kitchen.

Sepola and grand-daughter. Sepola is Keli's cousin. She lives down by the beach where she makes toddy from the coconut palm.

Collecting 'toddy' from the new shoots of a coconut palm. The sap is then boiled down to make a sweet syrup and can also be fermented to make a powerful alcoholic drink.

We have left Viani Bay!

We are now anchored off the village of Salia on Kioa island after spending 16 days in Viani Bay. We said our good byes to the family on our little island and motored and sailed for a few hours to our new anchorage. Kioa island was settled by Polynesians from Vaitupu island in Tuvalu. They relocated here shortly after World War II due to overcrowding on their own island.

The people in Kioa are up to date technologically, with electricity from solar panels and a diesel generator that is run at night for lighting and running refrigerators and laptops. One family we met regularly video skypes with their fashion model daughter in Winchester, UK!

Lugi prepares broiled fish while her husband Frank and Rani look on

Shaleen, Jovan, and Rani.

Rani watches children breaking open local almonds

Jovan visits his his great grandmother, Frances. Jovan is just learning to walk.

Rani with a visiting child and Caroline (Frances' daughter)

Chris makes his first friend on Kioa

We went for a walk this morning along the beach. All of the following pictures illustrate how rich an experience one can have in a very short time here.

The Kioans still use dug-out outrigger canoes to fish as well more modern fiberglass open outboard boats

Lopati gathers palm fronds to thatch a new house.

In addition to chickens we saw pigs in wooden cages, which are raised off the ground, presumably to ensure their captives do not dig an escape tunnel.

Weaving pandanus is a Tuvaluan tradition. This pandanus is drying in a cave at the end of the beach.

Beach panorama. The shelf is full of corals, brittle stars, and worms.

Not sure if these coconut palm baskets are used in fishing or food storage.

Giant clam on the coral reef.

Giant elephant ear leaves dwarf Rani

Unfortunately, there was some garbage on the beach - a reminder that civilization has made it to Kioa

A worm explores a tide pool for food.

We call these eye-ball trees. The similarity is alarming.

Coral graves in a clearing above the beach.

Viani Bay - Lovo and some more pictures

We attended a lovo or feast arranged by Jack to raise funds for his daughter to study over-seas. The food is cooked in a pit lined with hot rocks and covered with leaves and, these days, blue poly tarps. Delicious food!

Lovo food - the coconuts contain a mix of taro leaves and onions cooked in cocunut milk - pasalmi. The pan contains taro and you can see breadfruit to the left side.

Rani helps move the food out of the oven.

Ubiquitous dogs

Charming little Tupo blows bubbles 

Jack shows us how to de-husk a coconut. He is a former champion at this.

Taranui III - Tony, the skipper gave the fleet a briefing on visiting the Lau Group of outer Fiji islands.

Lovely blossom drifts toward Ladybug. Note Ladybug's new red paint.

Blossom (Barringtonia Asiatica) up close

Blossom in place with seed pods

According to Wikipedia, these trees are also known as Fish Poison or Sea Poison Trees. All parts of the tree contain saponin, which apparently can be used to stun fish in freshwater streams. The seeds can float for up to two years on the ocean and like the coconut are great island colonizers. They were among the first seeds to arrive when Krakatoa emerged from the ocean (see http://www.naturia.per.sg/buloh/plants/sea_poison.htm). They line the waterfront near our boat.

Viani Bay

We have been here in Viani Bay for a couple of weeks now - much longer than we had first intended. This is a very fine base for snorkeling and SCUBA diving. We have made several trips out to locations on Rainbow reef including 'Fish Factory, the 'Cabbage Patch', and the 'Great White Wall'. We have also finished painting Ladybug's sheer stripe and I have repaired a weak area in the coaming where one of the stanchions was not correctly backed up. Rani has spent quite a bit of time visiting with the family on the small island off which we are anchored and we have had a couple of hikes into the hills around the bay.

The snorkeling has been wonderful - many varieties and colours of hard and soft corals as well as plentiful reef fish and a few sightings of larger fish on the edges of the reef. Rani has made three dives including a spectacular dive of the Great White Wall, which is famous for its huge wall of white soft corals. These are most beautiful when viewed from below against the light. The dive began by descending through a lava tube and took Rani down to about 100 feet. We have Helena and Kari on 'Merilelu' to thank for Rani's renewed enthusiasm for diving. Helena is a dive instructor and she gave Rani an excellent refresher and lent her the SCUBA equipment and tanks at a very reasonable price. I free dived down through the upper part of the lava tube and had a brief glimpse of the lovely white fans and corals at the start of the wall, but it was too deep to stay down for long (about 40 feet).

While Rani was off diving, I prepared and painted the large red stripe that Ladybug normally wears. We have been without this stripe since before we left New Zealand and our friends have remarked that they do not recognize us without it. I used a single part polyurethane by International called 'Toplac'. This is supposed to give about 5 years of service as opposed to the fancier two part polyurethanes that promise 10+, but it can be rolled on more easily and does not require mixing. Our friends Holger and Roz, professional painters, recommended we use a mohair wool roller for this, with no need for tipping via brush. The results are quite good - a nice gloss and even finish, but not quite as smooth as we could have achieved by spraying. The stanchion repair required grinding away damaged glass, re-glassing, and adding a layer of mat followed by 1/4 inch plywood followed by 3 layers of glass cloth on the inside of the coaming. The glass I worked around both edges of the coaming inside a cockpit locker and this should stiffen things considerably. We need a good solid backing for the stanchion here because this is one of the posts holding up our solar panels. In the event of a sea sweeping the boat, these panels can take a lot of force.

Rani enjoys a swim at one of the falls at Bouma park

Nice views from the falls hike at Bouma park

Rani also traveled across the Somo Somo Strait to Taveuni island where she replenished our supplies and went with a van-load of cruisers across the island to Bouma National Heritage Park. Here she hiked to and swam at a series of three waterfalls. She had enough sense not to dive off the falls, recalling her back-breaking experience doing this in Australia, but had little success dissuading other cruisers from abstaining. Thanks to Craig and Bruce from 'Gato Go' for the pictures from Bouma Park. I forgot to put the memory card back in our camera.

Steep trail to the higher falls

A cooling swim

The falls are impressive with some people for scale.

We are just back from an arduous hike up onto a viewpoint through jungle and bamboo forest. We invited Amy from 'Morning Glory' to join us. Amy is a fellow pharmacist and she and Rani had a good chat about their respective experiences. Morning Glory is a family boat with two teenagers who were attending school on board today in between diving and other more enjoyable pursuits. The hike started with a walk along the sand and mud flats at low tide and then climbed up into the forest following a wild pig trail. We had received rough instructions from one of Rani's island friends, but were soon quite lost, scrambling up a long ridge, dislodging rocks and stepping into ants' nests with predictable consequences. We were soon breathless, sweat bathed, and ill tempered. The ant bites were remarkably painful and we all regretted our choice of footwear - open sandals and water shoes. Despite this, we wanted to reach a view point and when our way was barred by a dense forest of bamboo, Rani lead the way on a traverse that eventually brought us out into a clearing riddled by boar trails. Clearly the pigs had taken another way up, but we failed to find one of their trails leading down.

Nice start to the hike along a beach.

Amy swings from a vine as we climb along a traverse.

Rani leads us through the bamboo

You got us into this! No - you did!

We snapped a few pictures and Amy then took over and lead us down via a stream bed. We hopped and scrambled over slippery green boulders and crashed through barriers of fallen bamboo trunks until the terrain leveled off and opened up into a sparse forest with copra planting. Amazingly we arrived back at the bay within 100 meters of where we had entered the jungle. Amy's son Stephen was shocked by the appearance of his mother when we dropped her off at Morning Glory, but Amy claimed that the experience had driven the last vestiges of a cold from her system and she seemed quite cheerful about the whole thing. A swim in the sea has rarely felt as good, washing away sweat, mud, and grime and soothing the scratches and ant bites.

View from look-out. Ladybug is the left-most boat

Bamboo barriers across the creek bed.

We  found this highly poisonous sea snake near the dinghy. It's head is inserted in a hole in the sand, eating its dinner.