The Garden Island of Fiji- Taveuni

Tuesday, February 18

Great news this morning. Fijian officials have allowed the ship to be cleared for us to disembark for our excursions today. They did have their personal at the top of the gangway to ask us our port of entry before joining the ship and they took each person’s temperature. And their officials are staying on the ship for the duration of our time in Fiji. But that’s fine as long as they let us leave in a couple of days.

There are 332 islands in the Fiji group, with 110 of them inhabited and our stop today is on the third largest of the islands, Taveuni. It is called the Garden Island of Fiji and since we’ve been here, it’s feel kind of like living in a terrarium – hot and steamy. As a result it is unbelievably green, and it looks like you could drop a seed and it would be growing by dinner time. The national flower of Fiji, the tagimaucia, grows here, however, it’s not blossom time so we saw only pictures of its beauty.

Not surprisingly, the main industry here is agriculture with 12,000 of the total 915,300 population calling this island home. The fertile soil and climate allow crops of cotton, sugar, pineapple, bananas and copra to grow well. Copra, which historically was the most important crop is no longer grown commercially and the move is to cava, taro, vanilla and coffee.

After breakfast the tender took us to the pier where we were picked up by mini buses to take us on our selected excursion to Bouma Falls. We got to see some of the small island on our way to the falls including the thriving megalopolis of Naqara. There was actually a sign indicating you were entering a densely populated area but it was really no more than a village.

At Bouma, there are three falls you can visit in this national park and we chose to just do the 10 in walk to the lowest of the three, as the two further upriver were 40 minutes to the first and another 40 minutes to the second and they were both a challenging hike with paths that were wet with mud and fairly vertical. And we just didn’t have much time.

From the check-in location for the park we followed a beautiful walkway edged with beautiful plants that we struggle to grow in Canada as house plants but which grow almost to Jurassic Park proportions here. The signs were accurate and 10 minutes later we found ourselves at the main lower pool.

After taking a few pictures I grabbed my Go Pro and in I went to be thrilled by the refreshing dip. It was a little cool, but felt great and I soon got used to the temperature. The pool got deep really fast, and the pull from the water coming over the falls and in to the pool was really strong. I carefully swam around to the back of the falls using rocks on the side and back of the pool to rest and catch my breath. Sitting on the shelf at the back of the water fall gave me such a unique perspective. There was so much water coming down in a concentrated area, I was afraid to go through the falls in the middle for fear of being dragged under, but I did swim under the edge where there wasn’t too much water hitting the pool. It was exhilarating. (Read terrifying). I felt a little like I was in a Tarzan movie.

After more pictures and letting ourselves dry off a bit we took a leisurely stroll back to the waiting area. So glad I made the decision not to try to get to the next pool. Those that did complained about it being really slippery on the way up the quite steep path, and they couldn’t get in to the second pool because the rocks around it were slippery and they didn’t have time to stop for a swim in the first pool.

On our way back to the pier in the van, we stopped at a signpost indicating the International Date Line. Although the arbitrary drawing of the date line for pragmatic administrative/commercial purposes zig zags around various islands, the actual meridian that is exactly half way around the world from Greenwich Mean Time, goes through the middle of Taveuni. The local Rotary Club built a cute little photo op spot which almost everyone on our ship took advantage of visiting.

After we got back to the boat we signed up for a sailing safari, which was an opportunity to get pictures of the ship with the sails up. When we are off the ship they are usually down, and if if we did see the sails up any other time, we’d have missed the ship sailed and would be in a pickle. The fellow responsible for all sporting activity, Dain, took us out in the Wind Cat and went around the ship allowing us to take as many pictures as we wanted to get the perfect shot. Of course the sun and clouds has something to say about that as well, and the bouncing of the boat meant that many of my pics weren’t on the horizontal.

We are setting sails for our next island this evening at 10 pm and it will be fun to be up on deck for Sail Away at night with the lights on the unfurling sails with Vangelis in the background.