November 5, 2013
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
