End of Fiji

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Easter Weekend was thrown at us pretty early. Most of the group decided to check out Vanua Levu the second largest island of Fiji. Little did we know this would take a 15 hour boat ride to get to it and a 10 hour boat ride followed by a 2 hour bus ride back on ferries that were at least second hand. Certainly the boat back seemed like it was 3^rdhand. It had been a German boat before and was most likely designed for a one hour ferry crossing, not a 10 hour crossing. Even the trays in the café were second hand- I noticed some Caledonian MacBrayne ferry trays, who would have thought you would be on the other side of the world being served with a tray from a boat operating from mainland Scotland to the hebrides!!

Vanua Levu was very quiet, extremely lush and green and surprisingly wet for Fiji. Unfortunately the cyclone had hit the island pretty strongly so there was a lot of coral damage, so no diving. The water there is very pure and clean so we spent some of the time checking out the waterfalls and relaxing. On our first boat over we met a guy who worked at the local dive shop. His leg was in a large cast. This was the first time he was going back home from Suva after the cyclone. He was on the dive boat when the cyclone hit and part of the boat fell onto him, deeply cutting his leg, he dived into the already surging water and it took him 2.5 hours to swim to shore with his leg badly bleeding. He had to have a skin graft and had been in hospital for over a month. One of his friends who is a taxi driver was driving back along the coast road as the first of the tidal surges hit. He dived out of his car and ran up a nearby hill only to look back at the road a few seconds later and see that his taxi had been swept away by the water!

Once we were finally back on Caqalai after the long weekend the rest of the week was back to surveying, with me surveying invertebrates. There were a lot more Crown of Thorn Starfish now than before. These eat coral so can be detrimental to coral reefs. Our final dive was one of our best though as we saw a hawksbill turtle fast asleep in a cave. It was startled by us and swam out and down away from us, but it was incredible to see their colour and shape. It made me think about the eggs that the hawksbill mother laid on one of our early weeks on Caqalai and I wondered whether they survived Winston, let alone life challenges that may lay ahead of them. The final snorkels were also impressive seeing a couple of blue spotted stingrays.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Fiji and onto my next adventure. Thanks to Qantas that adventure started early when their plane decided to stop working at Sydney, causing us to be delayed by a few hours. Fortunately Emirates had it covered and I was able to get a later connection to South Africa with 45 minutes to spare before our introductory meeting for part two of my travels.

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