September 25, 2013
The head of Mbavatu harbor had a rocky shoreline, but a small boat dock made landing there easy. We were able to step off the dock onto a large swath of well-manicured lawn surrounded by trees and a vertical hillside. (You can click to enlarge and scroll through any galleries in this post.)
The hillside was too steep to climb, but someone had built quite an impressive series of stairs that went all the way to the top of the hill. The promise of beautiful views from the top gave us the incentive to climb, and so we headed up. It wasn’t easy, but the view into the treetops provided a nice distraction and lots of excuses to stop and look (aka rest).
At the top, we found ourselves in large coconut palm plantation. It was relatively flat, subtle slopes covered with palm trees, the grass kept well-trimmed by the wandering livestock. We took a guess as to which way to go and made our way among trees and scattered cows. I worried about bulls (on walks like this you want to keep an eye out for them), but luckily we had no problem.
Soon, we came across an area of cottages, the caretaker “village” we’d heard about. No one seemed to be around. We continued on and spotted two nice-looking small houses that we assumed belonged to the yacht club owner. We’d heard they may be rental places, but today no one seemed to occupy them. After knocking in the doors to ask permission and finding no one there, we walked around them.
One house had a view over to the sea on the west side of the island, where we’d previously been. Straining to look over an area of bushes, we still couldn’t see all that much. We did, however, get an unwelcome view of the same species of god-awful spider we’d first spotted in Tonga. Below, some photos of our walk from the stairs out to the small houses including a photo of one of the spiders (palm sized, long spidery legs, big yellow abdomen and lots of inscecty-looking parts—bleh.)
We then headed to another small house overlooking the bay. Again it was vacant, so we walked behind it and found a stunning view of Mbavatu Harbor. Even under the current gray sky and drizzle it made a beautiful picture.
Rich now hoped to find a man named Bui, the caretaker, to make sure it was OK that we were walking around here (although at this point it would be more like asking forgiveness than permission). And so we set out to look for him. A man riding horseback directed us down the path, and we followed it until we came across an outbuilding and heard the sounds of people working (they process coconut products from the plantation). There we met Bui, a nice guy who told us it was fine if we wander around. Good news since we’d already been “wandering around.”
We now decided instead of going back to look for the stairs, we’d head down a long sloping path that led from here down to the shore. In the end, it might have been easier to find the stairs.
We finally ended up at the dinghy landing. In all it had been a successful day: no bull attacks, no spider attacks, successful “sneaking through backyards,” successful view-finding, successful “orienteering” (the NZ term for finding your way around without proper direction), and no caretaker verbal spankings. Plus some beautiful scenery.–Cyndi
