We’ve spent five days anchored (moored) off this idyllic place – the Leleuvia Beach Resort. During that time, we’ve seen fireworks, lightning storms and had some very wonderful snorkeling. We’ve also had great food, tropical fru-fru umbrella drinks and $3 happy-hour beers in the resort’s fine restaurant. They’ve really made us feel welcome here. -Rich
(You can click to enlarge/scroll through above photos.)
Update: We visited Leleuvia in 2018 and while it’s still beautiful, it does have a few new issues. If you’d like to read about them; see the bottom of this post: Good-Bye Leleuvia
The weather mostly stayed cooler for our final days at Leleuvia, but our routines remained the same. We enjoyed the early-summer morning feeling while having coffee in the cockpit, afternoon visits to the shore, snorkeling after lunch (which coincided with the warmest part of the day), watching the late-afternoon clouds build in the distance, happy hour visits to the resort and a few terrific dinners there, and nightly rain showers.
There was one evening that was particularly beautiful. We were headed back to our boat after happy hour at the resort. Sunset had come and gone, and we walked along the beach into what I call a Blue Hawaii evening, one of those indigo blue evenings that looks extra beautiful as a background color behind palm fronds. Dusk was deepening by the time we climbed into our dinghy, yet we could see so clearly into the water that we could make out details on the bottom. Evenings like this are surreal and so beautiful; we never take them for granted.
Another neat moment was having some of the young staff over to our boat. The staff at Leleuvia resort were (and still are) so nice. Unfortunately this took place so long ago that I can’t remember their names, but at least I have a photo of their smiling faces!
Below, a few photos of the places we frequented here: the pier, the beach, and the resort bar and dining area, plus a photo of the resort’s cat and the young people we had visit us on our boat. (Click to enlarge and scroll.)–Cyndi
Update: We visited Leleuvia in 2018 and while it’s still beautiful, it does have a few issues. If you’d like to read about them; see the bottom of this post: Good-Bye Leleuvia
Again we have “pets” under our boat – this time squid. They’re so cute! -Rich
(Plans Update: We’re still sitting at the Leleuvia Beach Resort – can’t leave – there’s a lovo tommorow night. A lovo a tratitional feast with the food cooked in the ground. We had one here last week and it was GOOD. Sunday, we think we’ll head to Suva. We’ll sit there for a week or two until we get a good weather window to head to New Zealand.)
These days it was getting light so early. The photos below were taken of the pre-dawn light at 4:45am. It’s no wonder we were up by 6am every day.
While the demise of our Bula net had signaled the end of the season, our net was having a brief resurgence as a few people we knew were headed to New Zealand and using it to compare notes. Being here at Leleuvia with good internet, we could share what we were seeing in the weather forecast.
One morning we listened while everyone reported their conditions, and the seas were quite rough and unpleasant. When it was our turn to report our conditions, Rich said we now have a 2mm swell but just got hit by a 4mm swell when a girl in a bikini dropped her Mai Tai in the water. There was a moment of dead silence before someone said, “Bastard!” It was pretty funny, at least to us. Of course our turn to be out there was coming, but not for a couple of weeks at least.
Meanwhile, while our friends had left, we found we had some new ones. I discovered a friendly spade fish living under our boat after I tossed a mango seed over the side and he came up to check it out. The poor fish was so disappointed that I decided to appease him with some crackers. That went over well, and more spade fish appeared for the feast. We also had eleven little squid living under our boat, very cute!
Of course we were enjoying the snorkeling and found some excellent spots. We found an especially nice drift snorkel on the north side of the island, but all of it was good. Below a map with our favorite spots.
*The light green light green line indicates the north reef where we were able to drift snorkel.
*The blue-green line approximates the marine reserve.
*The blue line shows a nice snorkeling area.
(Note: I must add that Leleuvia was directly in the path of 2015’s Cyclone Winston, a category 5; so I don’t know if the snorkeling’s still good. Cyclones, unfortunately, can smash a reef to bits, leaving nothing but devastation. Coral does grow back and fish return, but it takes awhile.)
We did bring our underwater camera along on a couple of our snorkels, so here’s a brief montage of some of the stuff we saw.
When we weren’t staying cool by snorkeling, we’d use something called Chilly Pads: rubber pads that can be drenched in water and then dropped over bare skin to cool oneself off. We hadn’t used them since Samoa in 2012, but I was glad to have them now. When they’re wet, they are soft and pliable, but when dry they become stiff and leathery.
On night Rich woke me up urgently saying he had to turn on the light! It seemed a dry chilly pad fell on him and he thought he was being attacked by a large winged creature. Of course I thought this was pretty funny, but later karma caught up with me when we had a sudden heavy downpour and all our hatches were open. I had to run around trying to get them closed and got drenched when I had trouble getting a clip-on fan off the open forward hatch, getting drenched before I could remove it and get the hatch closed. It was Rich’s turn to laugh, and I’m sure our friends underway to New Zealand would have been very amused at both our evening’s misfortunes. –Cyndi
We did have a day that was noticeably cooler with a nice breeze; so we decided this was an ideal time to take the hour-long walk around the island.
While waiting for low tide (the optimal time for doing the walk) we had some beer and snacks at the bar and struck up a conversation with a couple of lovely young Swedish women. They weren’t regular tourists; in fact they were here working on their dissertations, one of them a study of the effect of children’s education on Fijian village life. It was interesting to talk with them and hear about the problem of female flight, young women who go off to school, get a taste of big city life, then don’t want to go back and live out their lives in the village. It seems it’s an issue here. (My feeling is good for them—no woman should be forced into a subservient role, and if that means the end of traditional village life; so be it. Incidentally lots of young men go out and work in the cities and/or tourist industry, too, and I haven’t heard anyone worry about that.)
Anyway, one of the sisters opted to join us on our circle-island excursion. Of course since it was low tide we saw lots of exposed coral beds. The shallow water in the pools was very warm, bordering on hot. Brittle star tentacles hung out of little holes in the sand, feeding. Rich took the time to show Amelia, our new Swedish friend, all the cool stuff that gets exposed at low tide, giving me extra time to run aorund and take photos. In all it was a beautiful day!
Below, a few photos from our walk around the island—click to enlarge and scroll through this and the photo gallery that follows.
Later after we got back to the boat, the afternoon clouded over and we got a cool breeze. So cool, in fact, it bordered on cold. The past days’ heat had us considering heading south earlier than planned, but we very happily changed back to our original plan: we’d stay a few more days and partake in the next lovo dinner. It was nice to learn that Fiji can have comfortably cool weather in November.
This great day was topped off by having a dinner reservation to look forward to. We headed in, ordered Mai Tais, and our dinner started with a corn egg-drop soup that was fabulous. Our main plate was also delicious: wahoo in citrus sauce on a bed of starchy vegetables and a side of greens. (I mention this dinner because at this point in time, Leleuvia Island Resort’s food was particularly good. Unfortunately it wasn’t as good on our most recent visit in 2018, but to be fair we were only there for a day.) Below, a few photos from this lovely evening.
After dinner we stopped to chat with the Swedish girls (and the hopeful young man with them—good luck, dude). I looked up to a startling sight: a bright thin sliver of crescent moon under the clearly-visible dark orb that was the rest of the moon. I got everyone to look and we all marveled at this rather unusual sight. With that, Rich and I headed back to our boat, another magical day in Leleuvia. –Cyndi
Update: We visited Leleuvia in 2018 and while it’s still beautiful, it does have a few issues. If you’d like to read about them; see the bottom of this post: Good-Bye Leleuvia
