Month: September 2015

September 24, 2015

That was the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had! We order it with fish instead of bacon at Lulu’s Cafe at Port Denerau Marina. -Rich

September 24, 2015

I don’t generally do current-time posts because I’m too busy trying not to fall even further behind on my chronological order stuff. But we have a few friends cruising in the area, and instead of just saying, “You ought to go see this place; it’s neat.,” we can make a map, put in some pictures, talk about our experiences, and maybe help some other cruisers make a more-informed decision about what might be worthwhile for them. (It’s amazing–and frustrating–how little information there still is about cruising Fiji.)

It doesn’t look like we’ll be doing much cruising for awhile; clouds and rain have come to western Fiji and plan to stay awhile. That’s OK, Fiji really needs the rain, and maybe I’ll get more caught up on the old posts. –Cyndi

September 20, 2015

As we headed back south, we stopped at a place called Yalobi Bay on Waya Island for the night. We’ve been there once before but never got around to writing a post about it; so I’ll do it now.

Waya Island is the southernmost island in the Yasawas, and it’s also the most mountainous. These mountains tend to get topped by clouds, which brings moisture to the area and makes it far greener than other western Fijian Islands, which are typically quite dry.

Waya Island’s most beautiful bay is Yalobi Bay on the south side of the island. Tall mountains surround the deep teal blue water in the bay, rising up dramatically behind the small palm-covered village onshore. The beach stretches all the way along the bay. In all, this place looks far more like something that belongs in Marquesas than in western Fiji.

The best way to see Yalobi is to stay long enough to watch the changing light of day on the mountains. So far we’ve only done two stops en route south and have yet to spend a full day there, but we managed to get some nice photos just in the time we were here. (Click to enlarge and scroll gallery below).

We deciding to do one more thing: spend a few days at the marina in Denerau before heading back to Vuda Marina. It’s a tourist hub, loaded with shops and good restaurants and an excellent place to be in cloudy weather. –Cyndi

September 17, 2015 at Nacula Island, Yasawas, Fiji

We found a free helicopter tour of Nacula Island. Only one catch: Legs instead of rotors!

(Click on picture for a larger version.)

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Here are some of the pictures we took from our imaginary chopper. (Click to enlarge and scroll through the images.)

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Plenty of rotor-wash as shown by this “Wind Sock.” (No. We didn’t do it. It was already there!)

In the anchorage, it was gusting to about 20 knots when we left. The wind on the ridge was blowing at least 40 knots. At times it would literally knock us off our feet and send us scurrying for balance on all fours.

What a great hike! It was a bit hard for me and it took three or four hours for the round trip, but it was well worth the effort. The lagoons and reefs visible from the summit are breathtaking. They’re as beautiful from our sneaker-clad helicopter as they are from our boat floating on the beautiful blue water.

Here’s an interactive Google map that shows the routes we took (as best as we can tell – the trail isn’t real obvious from the satellite view). The green line is the route we took from the Blue Lagoon Beach Resort to the first peak. The blue line, the optional trail to the highest peak, and the purple line is the gently sloping route back to the resort.  Click on the markers to see what they are.

-Rich (with most of the pictures by Cyndi)

September 14 – 19, 2015

After doing the Sawa-i-Lau cave, we headed back to our favorite anchorage at the Blue Lagoon Beach Resort. This place has it all: beautiful scenery, a resort with a great restaurant, a dive shop, great snorkeling, scenic hiking, good protection from the wind, a sand bottom for easy anchoring, lots of activities, and the endlessly-entertaining sea plane. We like every place we’ve been in this general area, but the BLR anchorage is our favorite and feels like home. (Click to enlarge and scroll photos below).

And below, some more pictures we found on our other camera…

We did two dives with the shop: The Crazy Maze and the Nalova Pass. The Crazy Maze has a lot of swim-throughs, canyons and tunnels, and the Navola Pass has lots of coral, tons of fish, and sea turtles. Both were wonderful dives and well worth doing.

(Just a note: None of the dives we’ve done on the west side have been in the same league with the dives on the eastern side of Fiji, but they’re still terrific dives.)

After the dives, a couple of wonderful meals ashore, and a long hike (see next post), we felt we’d done all we wanted to do here. Not that we wouldn’t have been happy to sit there forever, but we were starting to run out of provisions. With a week of cloudy weather coming, we decided this would be a good time to return to the marina and restock our food, wine, propane, clean laundry, etc. It was time to head back south. -Cyndi