Fiji Guide – Our Fiji Saga

Our own Fiji confusion started long before we got there.  Fiji has never been on either of our Bucket Lists, and we only had a vague idea about what it might be like.  When we ran across people who’d been there, we’d eagerly ask how they liked it.  Our confusion only grew when, for every person who loved it, someone else didn’t like it at all!  We decided we’d have to experience it for ourselves and had no idea whether we’d love it, hate it, or think it was just OK.

We had signed up for the ICA Rally, which we came to regret.  It seems to get the reserved mooring and other benefits of this rally, you have to leave pretty much when they do, and we were leaving a month later.  They’d also run out of information packets by the time we arrived for their seminar.  We pretty much paid $250 for nothing and it was non-refundable.  We did go to the talk but it wasn’t really helpful at all.  This guy has been to Fiji so many times he has no idea how to talk to people who’ve never been and have now idea of where things are and how things work.  Someone who emphatically states things like “Suva is a PIT!” without explaining what Suva is or why it’s a pit is not someone who’s going to be very helpful.  (By the way, Suva is not at all a “pit.”)

And so we left for Fiji with the idea of going to Savusavu on the southern island of Vanua Levu because the predominantly easterly winds made it seem like the best place to start. We got a mooring and braced ourselves for the check-in process because we had the impression they’re very strict.  As it turned out, this was the easiest check in we’ve ever done.  We were encouraged when we loved the waterfront town, a bit reminiscent of Neiafu (Tonga), but with better grocery stores.  And the people here were the warmest, friendliest people we’ve ever met.

We signed up for Curly’s seminar for cruisers, excited we might learn everything we need to know to cruise here.  Curly is a local ex-pat, much like Baker in Neiafu, and is the go-to guy for local info.  He does this talk every Wednesday afternoon (or if you can get a few people, he’ll do a special talk for people who can’t make it on a Wednesday).  There’s a nominal fee, and the restaurant where the talk is given serves a special burger lunch for the event.  The fee covers the talk, his packet of maps with some waypoints, and his services in that you can call or e-mail him for particular waypoints if need be.  Curly is a great guy, and in spite of what I’m about to say, the seminar is worth doing.  His maps can be helpful, and we did call him once for waypoints.  But I think it’s been a long while since Curly has actually cruised around here.  I’ll put it this way: the 70’s called and they want their seminar back.

The seminar had some helpful information, but it also left us with lots of unpleasant impressions about cruising Fiji.  It seemed like a mass of hazardous winds, reefs and seas waiting to wreck your boat.  You can’t leave a bay too early, but you can’t arrive at the next one too late, and you have to have properly adjusted waypoints, and it has to be sunny, and you can’t have wind, and you have to check in for sevusevu every place you go even if you’re only stopping for the night or you will be dead to the locals and they won’t help you when you end up on the reef.  You have to go locate the village and find a representative to take you to the chief, who may or may not accept you.  And your kava needs to be fresh and you need to trade for everything.

“Ladies, it’s up to you,” he said. You need to have flour and sugar and crackers and know its value so you can portion it out and trade it for fruit or more kava.  And you need to have a laminated copy of the Fijian laws in both English and Fijian so you can show it to the people as you argue with them when they try to charge you.  When he finished his talk and asked if anyone had any questions, someone held up his hand and said, “Yea, I need the waypoints to Tonga!” Everyone laughed because we knew exactly how he was feeling.

When the going gets tough the tough get going.  The rest of us head for the bar.  We were not in good shape mentally after the seminar and started thinking about where else we could go because Fiji was obviously not our kind of place.  Maybe try to get back to Tonga? Or Vanuatu, which we knew nothing about?  This was a huge wrench in our plans and we didn’t know what to do.  So we sat with our friends and drank beer, and more friends showed up, and things started looking a little brighter.  By the end of the evening we had arranged for me to take a dive class with a friend who’s an instructor, and we had a destination for our first anchorage.  Things just fell into place after that, and this story has a happy ending in that we ended up loving Fiji.  Unfortunately we cannot say the same for everyone: we knew a few people so overwhelmed they barely left Savusavu.

(There’s also a newer, and longer, Curly seminar rant here.)

Update: Curly has since passed on, but I still consider our experience at his seminar relevant because many of the old-time sailors here share his opinions and will not hesitate to lecture the new arrivals with the same misinformation.