Another week in paradise! We explored Buliya Island, Vurolevu Island and sailed to Beqa this week. The islands are simply stunning-incredibly verdant and lush with friendly people everywhere we go. The villagers on these islands live simply, their lives revolving around fishing and farming kava root, coconut, and bananas. Some villages have running water; others not. Electricity comes from solar panels-usually less solar that we have on board Meraviglia, so it mostly powers lights. Everyone greets us warmly as we walk through the villages and they are eager to engage in conversation. As for traditional customs, however, we continue to strike out. We’ve described sevusevu in previous posts. We have approached the chief in each village we visit in traditional dress and offering kava as is the custom. However, so far, the response has been…underwhelming. We have yet to witness a sevusevu ceremony. At best, we’ve watched as the chief blesses the kava and then welcomes us to the village, which takes about, oh, 2 minutes. The worst? Well, one guy said “hello, welcome” and tossed the kava in a bin. I’m not really sure what to make of it. It could just be that we have been unlucky. I also suspect that the chiefs probably suffer from sevusevu fatigue. There are a lot of cruisers visiting Fiji-the majority come from New Zealand for the season. I think if I had dozens of people coming ashore for sevusevu, I would get tired of it pretty quickly, frankly. Although, we’ve tried to pick out less-frequented spots. Who knows? I’ll just keep strapping on my sulu (okay, it’s a skirt) and hoping for the best.

On the nature end of things, however, we’re having better luck. We’ve been kayaking quite a bit to explore some hidden beaches, which have been beautiful.

We also swam with manta rays, which we haven’t encountered since the Tuamotus. Mantas are some of my favorite animals-their grace and beauty are phenomenal. For this experience, it was a challenge, as the wind had really kicked up and the water was pretty rough. However, we did find three mantas feeding together near a reef off Vurolevu. One was quite large-a female-and the other two were males. The female’s name, we later learned, is Boulder and she was recently pregnant. We saw her and a male swimming close together, the male on top of her and this, evidently is manta mating behavior. That was very cool to experience.

At the end of the week, a rare thing happened! We sailed! Without the motor! It was so exciting! There’s a saying: “there’s either too much wind, not enough wind, or it’s from the wrong direction”. We’ve experienced that pretty much constantly since we left Tonga. But we had a fantastic 6 hour sail from Ono Island to Beqa on Saturday (that’s Friday for you Western Hemisphere folks)! The wind was consistent at 20 knots on the beam and we absolutely flew! It was amazing! I hand-steered the whole way because I was absolutely NOT wasting that on the autopilot. And so here we are on Beqa. Kava once again offered and welcome VERY brief. So we’ll see what we find. There are a number of promising anchorages and there are NO other cruising boats here currently.

Everyone else seems to be making for Musket Cove on Malolo Island, where there is a huge regatta coming up this week. Kim and I decided to skip it. “Regatta” is a fancy word that conjures up visions of men in jaunty captain hats smoking pipes and uttering pithy phrases like “I say, old boy, I do so like the cut of your jib.” In reality it’s a big party with a lot of alcohol consumed and people making questionable decisions. Kim and I will make our own trouble, thank you very much.