Bula (hello) Traveuni Island
I’m really starting to have a love/hate attitude toward Fiji. Ok, it really is tilting more toward the hate side. Our experience in Savusavu so far is definitely not up to snuff as we compare our experiences in Fiji last year at Denarau and the surrounding islands there. At this point, I can’t wait to get out of Savusavu, but we are stuck here waiting for a boat part to arrive.
I have to remind myself that Fiji is barely a 2nd world country. After coming from a first-world country, New Zealand, we have been spoiled for the last few months. When I say “spoiled”, I mean being able to go to the grocery store and buy everything on the shopping list in one store. Or, being able to buy really fresh fruits and vegetables. A place where sidewalks and roads are not in a state of disrepair. And, having decent places to dine out when the mood strikes. Or, like being able to order things by mail without the constant hassle of customs and import fees.
Mark replaces a light at the top of the mast
Let’s start with the not-so-good going on with us. Then, I’ll try to end on a positive note.
Buying food here is a constant challenge. I’ve already talked about the real lack of fresh fruit items like grapes or most berries. The fruit that is available is hardly fresh. We need to pick our way around the bad apples to try to get a few good ones. Even in the local market, the fruits and veggies can sometimes sit for days. When new stuff arrives, it is just dumped on top of the old stuff and nothing is rotated. We didn’t have this issue in Denarau last year. The markets there were well stocked and choices were abundant. Savusavu is well below the curve.
Cindy does a very nice job of planning meals and menus for when we are away from the marinas. On one particular occasion, she was preparing coleslaw to go with the chicken I was BBQing. When she cut open the cabbage, it was full of insects. Needless to say that quickly went over the side of the boat.
We had purchased the cabbage about 3 days ago before leaving . Fortunately, this not Cindy’s first time in a country like Fiji. She always wraps or puts everything in plastic containers that comes aboard. The fact that Cindy had wrapped the cabbage in plastic prior to storing it saved our other foods.
Forget buying decent meat. About the only thing we have found tolerable are whole frozen chickens. The meat at the local Savusavu butcher is all frozen and it is impossible to tell if it is quality until it is thawed and cooked. We purchased some chicken breast. They were so tough we just tossed them rather than suffer through a chew fest and suffer from jaw fatigue. I’ve lost count of the number of meat items we’ve had to toss.
Forget any beef items. We learned about Fiji from our last trip and filled our freezer with Wagyu beef from Costco in New Zealand before departing. We also brought Costco ground beef with us but sadly this has all been eaten. The ground beef in Savusavu is horrible. It is only sold frozen. When thawed we discovered it is like shoe leather and impossible to mold into anything like a burger or meatloaf. It has a slimy consistency. The amount of fat chunks in it was repulsive. That went to the trash without being cooked.
The only meat sold fresh is usually covered with flies in the store. It is mostly lamb but to be honest, it looks so disgusting I’m not going to risk it. Besides, neither one of us is fond of lamb. Even something as simple as hot dogs, or for that matter, any type of sausage is impossible to find. There is no such thing as freshness when it comes to meat. A much different experience from Denarau last year.
Trying to buy the ingredients for a decent salad is difficult in Savusavu. There has yet to be a day when a trip to the market and all four grocery stores in town yield enough to build a salad. There are rarely spring onions. Things like beets, bean sprouts, or cottage cheese just don’t exist here. Forget about fresh mushrooms.
We have found that we are not fond of any product made by Watties. Watties is a New Zealand food company that seems to have mastered a way to put vegetables in cans and make them taste bad. Last year in Fiji, we bought some of their baked beans. Never again. In NZ we tried some of their canned veggies. Again, no thanks. Most of the veggies on the shelves in the Savusavu stores are Watties’ brand. It’s because they are cheap.
Our own private little beach in Dakuniba Bay. We sat for a while just to watch the tide go out.
There have been a couple of times in Savusavu where had it not been for our travel-savvy awareness, we would have been ripped off. Once in the market, Cindy placed her backpack on the ground near a stall while shopping for veggies. She was never more than a meter (3 ft) away. Somehow, it wound up under the table pushed out of sight. When she paid for the veggies, the lady tried to stand between her and the pack ushering her away. This was an instant red flag to Cindy.
People acting a little unusual makes us instantly wonder what is going on and a little red-alert siren goes off inside our heads. It appears as though they were trying to make her forget about her backpack or have an opportunity to move it away without her noticing.
Another time at the bakery, the cashier tried to charge Cindy the amount on the screen facing her. It seemed rather expensive. Cindy took a closer look and realized they hadn’t rung up her purchase at all. The amount they were trying to charge was for the previous customer. When Cindy pointed out the “error”, it was met with a very sheepish look.
There are most definitely prices for tourists and boaters versus the prices locals pay. Most items in the market are not signed. Often, the retailer will look sheepish when quoting a price. When this happens, we walk away and find the same item cheaper at another stall. This seems to be a regular practice in the market at Savusavu. In Denarau and Nadi last year, we had no issues with “tourist” prices.
Cindy gets credit for this great pic of a Speckled Sand Perch. Note the water clarity.
We met a lady in the Savusavu customs office while we were waiting over an hour for a single piece of paper (that was supposedly ready three days prior). She was Australian and had moved to the area a few years ago for retirement. She wasn’t far into our conversation when she started to express her unhappiness with Fiji and stated she was moving back to Australia. I will not bore you with the details but the list of gripes was very long. Most had to do with the real lack of not being able to buy something you need meaning it had to be imported. Importing it means having to deal with Fiji Customs. She needed a washing machine part. It was under $50.
She had to travel to Suvasuva to pay the import fees. Customs required her to do this in person at the customs office. They do not have anything online that allows payments. She had to pay customs before she could pick up the part. The customs office never has any change. You must arrive with the exact amount (we have experienced this also with customs and bio-security). She said it took her the entire day to accomplish this simplistic task. She also had to wait over an hour for her single piece of paper to show she paid the import fees.
So far, our boat has been boarded and searched by Customs three times (I will write in detail about this idiotic practice in Suvasuva later). Fiji has a big drug problem and they are looking at cruisers as a possible source of supply. Think about how idiotic this is.
Like most cruisers, we are traveling westward very slowly. We left Panama a few years ago. Then, we stopped in Galapagos. Afterward, we spent 3 years in French Polynesia. Customs and Immigration know this. It is on the forms we fill out upon arrival. It is also easily verifiable. Do you honestly think if we were smuggling drugs, we’d still have the drugs aboard the boat to specifically unload in Savusavu, Fiji?
Cindy is on a mission to get a great picture of a Regal Fish. They tend to be shy. Almost there.
Speaking of customs, they have delayed a part we ordered for no reason. While we were out trying to have some fun, we anchored near Rainbow Reef. This is a renowned dive and snorkel spot. When we pulled up the anchor to move to another area, the motor overheated in the windlass decided not to play anymore. As luck would have it, this is the one motor that we don’t carry a spare.
We moved to another area and dropped the anchor by hand hoping to be able to fix the windlass while there. That didn’t happen and the reality set in that we needed to buy a new motor. Using our Starlink satellite internet, Cindy located one in New Zealand from the same company from which we purchased our new anchor chain when there. At the same time, I found one at SVB in Germany.
On a side note here, the USA retailers were by far the most expensive for the part. Even the online USA discount retailers made me scratch my head as to why the price was so high. We saved about 50% because we shopped globally.
The company in New Zealand is called Chains, Ropes & Anchors and they are awesome. We purchased new anchor chain from them in New Zealand and were really impressed with their attention to detail. They worked out a great price for us on the windlass motor and included DHL Express shipping to Fiji. We made our way back to Nawi Marina in Savusavu as this was the easiest place for us to ship the motor. This is where we are waiting and waiting and waiting.
Chains, Ropes & Anchors did their part. They bent over backward to box up the motor and get it shipped out quickly. DHL did their part and got it to Fiji in a couple of days. Now, the Fiji customs in Nadi have sat on the package for over a week. Thus, we just wasted a ton of money on express shipping.
It gets worse as this saga continues. Cindy has been in daily contact with the local DHL office trying to figure out what the delay is with our motor. DHL has sent email after email to their contact in the customs office who for whatever reason has decided not to write back anything at all (we are copied on each email). DHL and Cindy are at a complete loss of what to do next. Meanwhile, we sit at the new Nawi Marina waiting for our part to be cleared. The downside is we are back across the river from the grotty little town of Savusavu.
In the past, we have used Fiji Freight to import items from the USA into Fiji. They are top-notch and we’ve never had any delays with customs. However, as I mentioned previously the USA prices were so much higher and we went another route. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a terrible mistake.
Good camouflage. I am surprised Cindy spotted this fish.
Savusavu doesn’t offer anything. It is rather rundown, and frankly speaking just a reminder of how some of the people live in Fiji at a poverty level. About the only nice thing here is Nawi Marina. It is extremely upscale. It is a brand-new development. They are trying to sell off building lots on the man-made island for future home sites. I looked at the prices. Yikes!
Someone really didn’t think this all the way through. Is a person really going to invest a shit-ton of money into a custom home on an island where the main shopping center is Savusavu offering nothing for an upscale lifestyle? For the sake of the people in the marina and their jobs, I hope the developer is successful. But, I have a feeling in a few years, the marina will resemble the town and go badly downhill. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
The marina is our sanctuary here. Because they are on a man-made island and have 24/7 security, we feel somewhat safe. Savusavu has recently gained a reputation for crime against cruising sailors. There have been a lot of boats broken into. And, I mean a lot. These were mostly on moorings in the channel or near the shore of Savusavu. This sadly includes a sexual assault and some violent crimes.
I really can’t wait to get out of this place.
Speckled Hawkfish – Cindy is on a roll.
Ok, let me try to lighten things up a little bit. We left the bay near Rainbow Reef after having some fun snorkeling. For about 3 days, we had to stay on the boat as the winds blew too hard to venture to the reef and snorkel. This meant our anchor dug in deep some 15 meters below us due to the force of the wind making the boat pull on the anchor. It came time to pull up the anchor and move.
Without a windlass, we have to get 75 meters (about 246 ft) of chain out of the water and into Cream Puff’s chain locker. This is not something we can do by hand (even in our younger years this would have put me in the hospital). The 75 meters of chain weighs 170 kg (375 lbs). It would be backbreaking to haul this all aboard by hand.
The windlass has a manual backup mechanism. The idea being we insert a handle into a slot and ratchet it back and forth pulling up the chain. It took me exactly 2 minutes to figure out with each ratchet we moved about 5 cm of chain. Doing the quick math this meant 1250 ratchets. If a ratchet takes about 10 seconds, this meant we’d be doing this for the next four hours and I’d most likely wind up dead from heatstroke. Since Fiji has crap healthcare we needed to find a better way.
It would normally take us less than 5 minutes to get our anchor chain up using the windlass. Thinking about it, we realized we have other electric winches on the boat. So, Cindy and I rigged up a system to use our large electric cockpit winches to pull up about 8 meters of anchor chain in one go. We laid the chain out on the deck making sure to secure it after each haul to prevent it from going back down. We also had to be very careful not to overload the cockpit winch. After about an hour, we were on our way.
The beautiful Paradise Taveuni Resort – our view for the next few days.
Across the water from Rainbow Reef is a boat-friendly resort called Paradise Taveuni Resort. By “boat friendly”, I mean they welcome cruising boats to come ashore. Paradise is so friendly they have installed 5 moorings and offer them to visiting yachts for no charge. The moorings are on a first come basis and they do not take reservations. However, Cindy sweet-talked them.
Cindy called Paradise and explained we really wanted to visit them but we are having difficulty anchoring due to our windlass situation. Normally, if no mooring buoy is available, the visiting vessel needs to anchor further out. This would mean we’d have a lot more chain out than what we had just hauled up. That did not appeal to us.
The resort said they would be happy to hold an open mooring for us as an exception. As we got closer to them, we called them on the VHF radio and announced our arrival. Thankfully they hadn’t forgotten us and had one mooring left with our name on it. They even sent out a small boat to help us tie to it. For the next few days, we found ourselves in paradise.
While we were attaching the Puffster to the mooring buoy, a small pod of humpback whales swam past us just a few meters off the stern. Wow! What a treat. Needless to say, that got our attention and we completely missed the mooring and had to circle around and approach it again. The locals in the boat helping us were just as excited to see the whales as we were. They didn’t mind that we missed the ball.
The resort is a very upscale operation for SCUBA divers. Each day we watched 3 boats leave full of divers. Being at this resort and watching people spend upward of US$1,500 per day makes me wonder where are all these people getting their money. We don’t dive anymore but we sure did manage to get in a lot of swimming and snorkling there.
Clownfish hanging around a sea anemone, as they do
Nemo! Another clownfish
Awesome clear water with tons of fish
Since our boat is tied to their free mooring, we feel a little bit obligated to spend some money with them. You would think this would be understood. But, sadly we watched a couple of other cruising boats tie up, use things like the pool and showers for a couple of days. They would announce to the resort their departure on the VHF radio and in that conversation it was clear they hadn’t charged anything to the tab the resort requires to be opened. I wonder how much longer the moorings will remain free.
We booked a private tour of the island via the resort and spent a ½ day with our driver. Zeet was fantastic. He mixed in fun stuff with our need to buy some groceries. One of the more fun things was straddling the International Date Line.
Just north of the resort is a church and on their grounds they erected this little tourist attraction. It sits exactly on the longitude of 180. This is where today and yesterday meet. Or, tomorrow and today meet depending on where you stand. We have crossed the dateline on Cream Puff a couple of times but this is the first time we’ve done it on land. On this particular day, we crossed it about 20 or 30 times.
Standing on this spot also put us exactly halfway around the world from GMT, Greenwich mean time. Or longitude (0°) of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England.
As usual, I’m a day behind.
Zeet grew up on Taveuni Island and has a wife and 2 youngsters. He supports them by working as a tour guide with most of his jobs coming from the resort. His business is doing well and he just purchased his own truck for tours. He is a favorite of the resort as he has a warm personality and keeps his truck running with the air-conditioning on during stops. He has never seen snow and doesn’t dive.
The island is Fiji’s 3rd largest island but only has a population of about 19,000 people (about 2% of Fiji’s total population) of which about 75% are indigenous Fijians. The people living there all live within a short walk of the ocean. The interior of the island is too mountainous to develop and there are no internal roads. They don’t even have a road that circumnavigates the island. The leeward side is the most developed and the lower half is a dirt road which is why Zeet drives a truck.
Zeet took us to three different grocery stores in Somosomo on our “tour” and explained why he stopped at each one. One had better cheese. Another had bacon. The first place we stopped had the best prices and a market next door for veggies. It sure is much easier to buy food with a local tour guide at our disposal.
Buying veggies. We had better luck here than Savusavu – not much to pick from but at least they were fresh.
Zeet told us how locals will hike inland to hunt for wild pigs and birds. Apparently, the trails aren’t well marked or traveled and they discourage tourist from doing the same with a few exceptions. There is a lake and a couple of waterfalls.
In addition, some braver than us (and probably younger) tourists hike in and go to a natural water slide. The Waitavala Water Slide is 50m long. The rocks are “smooth” so you can slide down. Before you jump on this and plan your trip. Keep in mind there is no 911 here and most Fijians have to leave the country for any type of decent healthcare. We passed. Perhaps in our younger days. Here are some brave souls who did this.
There is a small lake up there that supplies some of the island with hydropower and drinking water. The rest of the island depends on rainfall and alternative methods of electricity. Life on this island is pretty simplistic. In our conversation with Zeet, we discovered there had recently been a murder on the island.
We were talking about crime and how most people don’t lock stuff up. When a crime happens, everyone already knows who did it. Like Cindy said, she grew up in a small Texas town and when she did something naughty, her mom already knew about it before she arrived home. The same is true for island life.
A 58-year-old man was brutally murdered by a 21-year-old man from Savusavu in April this year. It was the talk of the island for weeks. This sort of thing just does not happen on Traveuni, Zeet told us. He gave us all the gory details. The man was found guilty and is now in jail in Suva (Fiji’s capital). Zeet finished up by saying he got a one-way ticket to Suva.
When he dropped us off at the resort with all of our goodies, he needed to quickly go and pick up his wife to catch the ferry to Suva. Sadly, his father-in-law recently passed and they were going to the funeral. Cindy made sure to take his Whatsapp info and phone number to post on various sites where cruises look for recommendations.
One morning, we decided to have breakfast at the resort. We got an extra special surprise. While we were waiting for our food, we happened to look out at Cream Puff. Another pod of humpbacks was passing through, again. This time we had the camera and managed to snap a rather bad picture. Regardless of the picture quality, this will be one of those treasured memories. What a great way to start a day!
Just barely got a couple of the tails before they disappeared
