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Published: August 12th 2007
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Cute lorikeet
Obligingly sat still for a photo session. The ferry trip to Vanua Levu was quite good as they played movies to keep us entertained. The first was a good one, "Catch A Fire" which was about Aparteid. The second, called "Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever" was an awfully bad action movie starring Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas, who both seemed awfully embarrassed to be part of such a plotfree monstrosity.
After landing, we waited for a bus north in the village of Lao. It seemed that tourists didn't stop here very often and half the village came to talk to us and ask questions about where we'd been etc. The bus shelter was fenced in with barb wire, so it felt like being in a zoo! One guy, who may have been the chief invited us to stay in the school ("We're seventh day adventists, we pray for an hour every day!"). It was quite cool, cos some local teens were collecting coconuts which we got to try. They are so much nicer when green, the flesh is softer and there is more milk inside.
Eventually we got up north to the place we wanted to stay, Silktail lodge. But it turned out they'd stopped operating years
Fiddler crabs
This beach was covered by them! They were all waving their big yellow claws about in territorial displays. They would come out even when I stood above them. Very cool. before, despite the website still being operational... The owners were very nice and gave us some roti and tea. They plan to reopen again once they retire so they can devote more time to the lodge. At the moment insurance costs are too high for them to be running it so it's not worth it unless it can be open year round. So we caught the same bus back down south again to the island's second biggest town, Savusavu. There are lots of tourists here as it is the point where yachts must go for customs. The town is built around a thermal area and there are steam vents all over the shore line, making the beach and rockpools very hot to walk through!
We stayed at Hidden Paradise Guest House. The room we stayed in was one they didn't normally let as "it gets quite hot". As we had spent all day travelling, we didn't stop to think about this warning & took it anyway. Turns out it gets very hot. Far hotter than being outside. Even when walking into the room from the hallway there was a large increase in temperature. There was a rotating fan on
the roof which took about 12 seconds to complete each turn. Only about a quarter of this time was it pointed at the bed, so I'd lie there boiling hot for 9 seconds and enjoy a lovely 3 cool ones. One the second night, the owner gave us a 2nd portable fan, which provided some relief. It's effectiveness was ruined by Israel's hulking body stopping the air flow from getting to my side of the bed though...
Anyway, I did another two dives here, at the sites "The Lighthouse" and "Nuggets". They were nowhere near as brightly coloured as at the Rainbow Reef, but there were still plenty of fish and I enjoyed myself a lot. The second dive was particularly good as I felt I managed to keep neutrally buoyant (oooh, scuba jargon) quite well. The photos here turned out better as I put more effort into making sure I was close to subjects. Most of the subjects are fish's behinds as they kept swimming away from me for some reason...
Watch a video from my dive at Youtube by clicking here. In the morning before we flew back to Suva, we walked up the beach and found lots of hermit crabs. I filled my jackets
pouch-pocket with them. These land hermits are really bold and will walk around on your hand. The day before I'd been carrying one, when I suddenly noticed I was only holding a shell... opps! You gotta watch to make sure the crab doesn't go to desperate measures to escape you. Some of the crabs we found today were far bigger than their current shells so we collected some empties. It was so cool to find they'd moved into the ones we supplied!
Overall, Savusavu wasn't as great as other places we went. I think the room spoiled the experience a bit + the fact the staff weren't that great (especially compared to the doting ladies at Tovutovu). The chef in particular was quite rude to Israel on a couple of occasions, for no good reason. I wouldn't suggest staying here, even though it does have free buffet breakfast. (MMMmmmmm, pawpaw).
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