Local galvanised sea kayak. | Last minute preparations. | Alison Bailey and 'local' porters. |
Scribe: Laurie Ford
This was a trip I organised when I was Secretary of the Australian
Canoe Federation Sea Touring Committee. I wanted a trip that was
suitable
for novices and yet interesting enough for experienced paddlers. I
guess
I'm not terribly interested in all those expeditions to cold desolate
places,
but would rather some warmer interesting place. The trip to Japan in
1982
had showed us just how interesting touring in a foreign country could
be,
even though the actual canoeing conditions had been flat calm for 99%
of
the time. Just travelling from town to town, village to village along
the
coast had made an unforgettable impression on those who participated,
and
I felt that more people should be encouraged to do this sort of thing.
Fiji seemed to fit the bill pretty well, and there would be no trouble with customs or language - and the weather would be ideal if we picked the right time, plus it is a reasonably cheap country to get to from Australia.
I got hold of some tourist type brochures from Sydney, but they lacked any useful information for planning a canoeing trip, so I wrote to the editor (Peter Tiffany) of one of the newspapers enclosed with all this information. This turned out to be an absolute stroke of luck because he wrote back and enclosed pages and pages of photocopied information on every subject we could possibly need. Weather conditions and temperatures during the whole year, local customs, departments to contact to get permission to visit some of the offshore islands, names of people to contact in the customs, names of people to contact at Yacht clubs, history of Fiji, etc. etc..
I was then able to pick a couple of months that would provide suitable conditions and plan the trip in much greater detail than I previously thought possible, and start to publicise the trip and encourage people to take part. Heaps of people were interested, but not all could get two months off - so we ended up with nine paddlers. Some were only coming for two weeks, some for a month, some for the two months. This situation is less than ideal but in this case could be fitted in without too much hassle.
Most participants had at least a years full preparation, but the odd one or two came in with only a few months notice. The paddlers came from Tasmania, Sydney, and Thursday Island, and were all asked to put in a fair bit of training in the preceding twelve months. Some did heaps and were absolutely amazing in Fiji, some did absolutely none at all and certainly did not get the full benefit of the trip - although they certainly got enough to have made the trip worthwhile - but at the expense of creating a little friction early on in the trip.
This is always going to be a problem and is not necessarily overcome by hand picking close friends - even those trips have a certain amount of friction. It didn't particularly worry me, and I would do it again and take pot luck with peoples peculiarities - you just have to switch off and not let others get under your skin.
Participants were John Wilde, Cecily Butorac and myself from Tasmania; Steve Jacobs, Ray & Shirley Abrahall, Peter & Alison Bailey from Sydney; and Kerry (Tug) Reid from Thursday Island.
Kerry really was the surprise of the whole trip, and a very pleasant surprise too. We had known her very briefly in Hobart when she'd been on one or two trips in the front of a double - a shortish plumpish shy person who didn't appear to have the strength to paddle out of sight on a dark night - but was dead keen and even discussed the possibility of not accepting the very good job on Thursday Island so as to be able to stay in Tasmania and train seriously, and get a boat fitted out. For people that are genuinely keen I’m prepared to go to a lot of trouble to encourage them, and we told her to go off to Thursday Island, taking her Polo Bat to train in and we'd fit a boat out for her. This she did, and was fortunate enough to find Paul Davis's old boat still there and used that for several long training trips. When we finally got to Fiji she was very concerned that she may not have been fit enough but actually was one of the strongest paddlers - always up at the front of the group - and hence nicknamed 'Tug' by Steve.
It also contrasted heavily with others who had done no training at all and couldn't paddle into a ten knot breeze or handle a two foot swell. Cecily and I had paddled with all the others previously with the exception of the Baileys. Peter was a keen marathon paddler and was an easy-going type who fitted in very well - nothing ruffled him at all.
John Wilde organised the travel arrangements - very roughly it cost about $500 return fare from Sydney per person, plus approximately $240 return fare for each kayak. The kayaks actually went to Fiji on the same plane that we did, but returned to Australia some time after our return. It cost the Tasmanian group a further $80 return fare for each kayak to and from Launceston. It is one of the cheapest and most enjoyable holidays I've ever had.
We first got together as a group on the Continental flight leaving Sydney - most of us met in the airport lounge but Tug was cutting it a bit fine and just made it before they took the gangway away. The flight arrived in Nadi airport (Fiji) in the evening and we were met by a mini bus from the seaside resort we had picked from the extensive list Peter Tiffany had provided - we had booked a couple of “Bure’s” by phone some time previously at the Sea Shell Resort. Nadi (pronounced Nandi) is slightly inland so we chose a modestly priced resort on the coast about an hours drive from Nadi. As it turned out this was ideal for our purposes for a starting, finishing, and intermediate stopover place. The night we arrived was hot and sticky but once you got used to it it wasn't at all hard to take, and we quickly retired to bed with the big ceiling fans whirring away quietly.
The next morning was our first real look at Fiji - gently waving palm trees along the shore, and a distant view of surf about a mile offshore as it crashed over the coral reef which surrounds a fair bit of Viti Levu (the main island of Fiji). The proprietors were extremely helpful in organising a truck to take us into Nadi to pick up the kayaks, having to wait an hour or so while we got them through customs. We were fairly lucky here as I had previously written to them and ascertained what charges would be made and had their reply with me. At first the local lads were a bit confused because it was outside the normal freight they deal with but the letter from the Head Office worked like magic. We had to pay about 30% deposit of the value of the kayaks which would be returned when the kayaks left the country, but somehow the actual cost of transport is also included in the value so we paid a bit more than expected - but got every cent back upon our return to Australia. The kayaks were then taken back to the Sea Shell Resort and we spent the next couple of days with last minute fitting out by some people, plus a fair bit of shopping for food and other items. I think we ended up with three separate 'cooking groups' which worked out well in practice once people got used to each other.
The basic paddling plan was to go out the Yasawa Islands and return in two weeks so Steve could fly back to Sydney (only newly married you know) then continue on round the southern side of Viti Levu to Suva where the Alisons, and Shirl, and John would leave. Cec, Ray, Tug and myself would complete the circumnavigation of Viti Levu.
So here starts the actual trip report, fairly long winded but I would like to put it all down on paper so that in my old age (fast approaching) I have something to refresh my memory of another very memorable experience. In any case you're not paying for it so I suppose I can say what I like.
The kayaks were a fairly diverse lot of designs. Cecily & Steve had new Greenlanders. Ray & Shirl had a kayak Ray had designed - very similar to the North Sea Tourer but without the hog in the keel and with a rudder fitted in the skeg - altogether it looked a beautifully finished design - and used the latest VCP hatches. John, Alison, and Kerry were in North Sea Tourers (Kerry in Cec's old boat). Peter had an Ice Floe and I of course had the Longboat. All the kayaks were fitted with sails, rudders, hatches, and electric pumps - as is fairly standard practice these days. Steve's boat had been completely broken in half on it's maiden voyage in NSW but was put back in a mould and went back together fairly well, although the colour couldn't be matched perfectly - but this is another story which Steve is still writing up for future publication - I think!
The forecast for most of our stay was for very light SE trade winds, which it was most of the time - quite often being a flat calm - and for just a few days increasing to a very stiff head wind as we made our way along the south coast. It was hot and sunny most days, with one day of rain - altogether very pleasant weather for a holiday, which was the whole purpose of the trip. We weren't setting out to make world headlines with breath-taking experiences in some untamed wilderness, but to spend our annual leave in a relaxed style while soaking up the culture of a foreign country.
To get to the Yasawa Islands meant paddling north up the coast for a couple of days before heading out on a 30 mile open crossing to the first island in the group. Visiting yachtsmen need special permission from the authorities in Lautoka so we had to call in there on our way. Our first days paddle was a leisurely one in brilliant conditions, and as we passed over shallow bits of coral we could easily see the bottom and the myriad brightly coloured fish swimming about. Most of us had brought some sort of snorkelling gear, and John, Steve and Peter were well equipped with fishing lines. The shoreline was mainly beaches with rolling hills behind them, mostly covered with sugar plantations. The first nights camp was on the beach just short of a very exclusive Hotel serving the Nadi area.
We didn't need to paddle past Lautoka to go out to the Yasawa Islands, so chose to stop near another beach-front hotel and get a bus into the city to get the required permission. I decided to leave early the next morning to make sure of locating the appropriate authorities and sort out any problems that might arise from our peculiar circumstances, and let the others follow on at their own pace later in the day. I left in the dark and arrived at Vunda Point just as it started to get light enough to see where I was, which was exactly where I planned to be. After pulling the kayak clear of the water I changed into dry clothes and set out to walk the 10 miles to Lautoka - it still being a bit early for buses and in any case the Govt. offices wouldn't be open for ages yet. This early morning walk was a good opportunity to see the countryside coming to life - the Indian cane cutters with their machetes going off in groups, the little wayside shops and stalls opening up, buses starting to bring people in to the city from the country, and more and more people walking quite long distances from the outskirts of the city. Some of these provided me with directions to the right building and then I had a slow wander around the main city blocks before many of the shops were open. Lautoka is one of the two main ports in Fiji which consequently supports this second largest city.
As soon as the dept. opened I had a bit of fun with the young lady at the counter trying to explain what we wanted to do, but it really seemed to be a bit beyond her comprehension. She'd obviously never heard of sea kayaks and I feel quite sure that she ended up under the impression that there were nine people on a yacht called the Longboat even though I'd done my best to explain we were all in individual boats. She finally just shrugged her shoulders and went into the inner office for the boss to put his signature on the form, and then told me that as soon as I could produce all the passports we could go where we liked. We'd expected this and I'd arranged for the others to bring their passports in to meet me about the middle of the day.
While waiting for them I visited the main telephone exchange and was given a guided tour of the establishment and found it almost identical to Australian exchanges. The Yasawa Group each have a radio-phone at the local post office - the call being operator connected. I also had time to nip down to the wharf area and find the Harbour Masters office and purchase a copy of the tide tables as there is a fair rise and fall around Fiji. At high tide it is easy to paddle inshore of most of the coral reef but at low tide you lose a lot of gel-coat on the coral and it was generally better to go outside, hoping to find a way back inside when you wanted to get ashore.
It's rather a delightful experience wandering through a foreign city to see the different wares for sale and compare prices with back home. European type food was comparable but most other items were up to a tenth the price you would expect. Fresh fruit and vegetables were always available at the many outdoor markets, and the bigger towns support the supermarket that seems to be common all over the world.
Having sorted out everything in Lautoka after we met up together at lunch time, we caught a bus back to a small village near the Anchorage Resort and walked back along the beach to our kayaks. The staff at the resort were very friendly and made a shower available for us and we had a very pleasant evening meal in the main dining room before retiring to our tents on their lawn on the beach front.
Before we had left the Sea Shell Resort Peter Tiffany had visited us with his wife and family and had written a very good story for the two newspapers, one of them putting it on the front page. During our two months paddling some people remembered the article and many didn't, and we were always a bit doubtful about our reception at the big resorts. After all, it's not everyone who wants a lot of scruffy sea canoeists putting up tents in front of exclusive hotels full of well paying guests - but generally speaking (with one exception) we were made to feel very welcome.
The next morning was the real start of the trip. The previous two days had just been following the coast, still within sight of civilisation so to speak - but now we were heading out to sea, hopefully to visit real Fiji village; untouched by the twentieth century. The only charts we had were one very small scale chart of the WHOLE of Viti Levu (A4 size) and some very large scale ones of the Yasawa Group. (These were all provided by Andrew Rust who had been an early starter but pulled out about the time his club decided not to be a specialised sea canoeing club). Going across to the Yasawas we couldn't really tell on our small scale chart whether the little dots were just coral reefs or inhabited islands so weren't sure if we were going to do the whole 30 miles in one go or camp somewhere halfway.
An hour or so later we were passing numerous very small islands, any of which were suitable for an overnight stop. Most were gleaming white beaches with a little growth in the centre, and no more than 100 metres long and 30 metres wide. The day was cloudless, and the underwater view clear to the bottom - this whole vast area being quite shallow. Slightly south of our course were many of the well known island resorts which we expected to pass by on our return from the island chain we were heading for. It was an easy day, touring from islet to islet before arriving at Vomo in the early afternoon. This was a much larger island with a partly constructed village on the northern side - apparently being built for tourist use. There are many boat cruises out this way and Vomo is a popular stopping off place for snorkelling and a barb-b-que on the beach. It was deserted when we arrived and we decided to stay the night and get a bit of snorkelling in ourselves. The warm water was unreal, especially considering we had only left a Tasmanian winter a few days previously, and it was the first good look at coral for some of us. Towards evening a large two masted tourist ship arrived and the passengers came ashore for a look around and some swimming. We hadn't put up tents at this stage but did so later well along the beach away from their bar-b-que area. They seemed to be a little put out by our presence and didn't know what to make of us, but ignored us in the end.
The following day was another long paddle straight across to Wayasewa Island with nothing much to see till we got there, and a gentle side wind that slowly increased during the day. The group was pretty slow so I spent some time zigzagging upwind and back for a while but John's mournful dirges (sung at full volume) finally got to me and I stayed about a mile upwind on a parallel course. As we closed the island I spotted a native sea canoeist way up ahead and was able to sneak up on him while he fished. He was a good mile or so off shore and got the shock of his life to see me just arrive out of nowhere by myself, the others were still well back just out of sight over the horizon. His kayak was a little different to ours, but was a very common design in Fiji and we saw many of them later on. It is constructed of a single sheet of corrugated galvanised iron bent in half along it's full length. At the bow and stern the iron is nailed to a stem and sternpost and sealed with a black roofing type compound, and they sport a wooden gunwale similarly fastened. The centre of the kayak is sprung open with a wooden brace, and most of them have a small seat in the stern fastened by nails straight through the iron and sealed with the compound. Paddles were wooden shafts with unfeathered blades like table-tennis bats. They seemed quite unstable craft but were used extensively in this area for fishing and transport.
Fiji is quite hilly and mountainous and this chain of islands was no exception, having rocky coastlines frequently interspersed with beaches. The rest of the party hove into site fairly soon and we made for the nearest beach for a rest and to decide our next move. The large scale charts showed a village close by on the next island of Waya so we decided to try it out to see what sort of reception we would get. Although we'd had lots of information about life in Fiji from Peter it was still a little hard to comprehend. Some tourist books suggested the visitor put up by a native should pay an equivalent amount that he would normally pay for a hotel, while others suggested it was not the done thing. We didn't know, and the next week or so we could have unintentionally offended some people. (Some very straight talking a week later by a chief's wife put us right on this point).
The wind was up to about 10 or 15 knots as we rounded the point into Natawa village and ran into the foreshore of mud at low tide. We were immediately spotted and the shoreline was thronged by the entire village as we carried the first kayak ashore. The rest of the kayaks were grabbed by the villagers and we finally felt we had arrived in Fiji, chatting to the locals, surrounded by thatched Bures. A rather nice young lady with a baby offered to have the lot of as for the night, but the headman took charge and insisted we use his house. Here we found it is the normal custom for the whole Fijian family to move out of their home and stay with relatives, leaving us the free use of the building.
The typical village Bure (pronounced boo-ray, roughly speaking ) is a single room with thatched walls and roof, several windows (some glassless) and usually two doors. They are very cool due to the thatching, and the floor is very finely broken coral (pieces about the size of marbles) covered with a woven grass mat - very comfortable to sit on which is just as well because there is almost no furniture. Mostly they have beds behind curtains, and the occasional table and shelves and cupboards. Like in Japan with their Tatami floors, it is extremely bad form to walk on the mats with shoes on, and during the whole two months we only had a couple of very brief lapses of memory about this custom.
Cooking is done outside on an open fire, except for a few more affluent families who had a small cookhouse - still with an open fire. Meals are eaten in the bure where a tablecloth is spread on the floor and you sit cross legged round it while the hostess serves it up. Very few of our hosts would actually eat with us, but would eat after we had finished. We found this very difficult at first - to eat while our hosts just sat and watched but it seemed impossible to get them to do otherwise. The staple diet seemed to be fish and cassava - cassava being a rather bland root vegetable something like a potato, and I must confess by the end of two months I was thoroughly sick of it. It was also a little surprising sometimes to find the host family rushing out to their local store to buy tinned fish to feed us - it appeared that it was more economical to sell their fresh fish to the big tourist hotels and buy Scottish salmon or something similar - although this did only happen on a couple of occasions.
Our most unusual meal was probably the morning some of us peered out the tent openings and saw we were surrounded by several solid pairs of black legs. Every single square inch of land in Fiji belongs to someone and the owners of this particular spot had been informed we had arrived late in the day and were there to invite us back to the village some miles away. When we arose they proceeded to demonstrate how they feed themselves while away from the village, and very quickly dug up some cassava and dropped a few coconuts and cooked them on big green leaves - it was quite surprising to find that we all enjoyed it - it wasn't too bad at all.
Back to our first night at Natawa village - our first experience of the real Fijian way of life. We ate under an open sided roofed structure complete with a large table and chairs and then retired fairly soon as it had been a long day. The next morning we wandered here and there through the village which sprawled along the shore because the land rose very steeply behind it - halfway up the hill there was a concrete block church. There were many pigpens built almost at the waters edge around the shore slightly away from the village, and we later found pigs were kept in many villages.
There was no electricity, nothing mechanical, no roads, just a very basic simple life existing on fishing and basic agriculture. We found them very pleasant and happy, living a slow seemingly casual life style although it became obvious during the trip that they do work a lot harder than first appearances would indicate. We came across plots of land dug and sown by hand, we saw the men out for days at a time fishing very long hours, we saw the women spending weeks weaving grass mats to sell at the markets for a mere pittance. The villages were amazingly clean and the population pretty healthy, and the children were certainly not shy in coming forward to be photographed, or to put on an impromptu sing-song as happened some weeks later.
After seeing most of what there was to be seen at Natawa we decided to move on to the next islands about 7 or 8 miles away even though there was a bit of a breeze still blowing from the day before. In Tasmania we would have considered it to be no more than a light sea breeze but it caused a few problems to those who hadn't been training at all. There was one capsize as we left the shore, and then a couple found the going a bit tough as we worked our way along the shore towards the end of Waya Island, so much so that it was obvious we weren't going to make the next island so we opted to run in for shelter behind the end of this island. This was a good chance to run off before the wind and try the sails out for the first time. These were in all shapes and sizes and colours, and I was amazed to see Alison, who'd been having a bit of trouble in the conditions in her North Sea Tourer, put up one of the biggest sails in our party. She mightn't have had much experience at sea canoeing but she wasn't scared to have a go and was off like a rocket downwind. This was OK for a while as the wind was on one side but as we ran more square on before having to jibe round the point she came to grief and capsized. Of course the water was warmer than anything we'd paddled in before so we put her back in her kayak and proceeded at a slower pace round to a very small beach a few hundred metres behind the point and set up camp again.
I had worked out that we needed to average about 7 miles a day to get right round the whole string of the Yasawa Islands and be back at Sea Shell Cove Resort in time for Steve to fly home and wasn't expecting any real trouble achieving this figure - as 15 or 20 miles constitute an average day trip back home - but today we had only made 3 miles.
A wander along the shore found another beach complete with a large coconut grove and a dilapidated bure - sort of a beach shack to live in when harvesting the coconuts. At low tide a few children appeared and spent some time fishing and playing on the long stretch of flat rocks in front of our small patch of beach. Towards evening the wind dropped off and we spent a quiet evening under the stars.
The next day was back to the calm sunny days that we came to expect for most of the trip and while waiting for the rest to pack I decided to tighten up a bolt on my rudder. It held the cross bar onto the rudder stock and although not very loose had been annoying me slightly for some months now. It is a stainless steel bolt into a threaded hole in aluminium, and promptly sheered off at the first attempt to tighten it - damn! I now needed a power drill or good hand drill to put some self-tappers in either side of the bolt to re-attach the cross bar - I had plenty of spare screws and tools, but no drill so would have to go without a rudder till we could locate some tools at one of our stops.
Finally we were ready to leave and made our way across towards Narara Island. On the way one of the members came alongside me to look at my chart and when he'd finished I dug my paddle in hard to accelerate away and the aluminium shaft promptly snapped in the middle - it just wasn't my day. Still, it wasn't any trouble paddling with half a paddle C1 style for the rest of the morning. Up in the passage between the next group of islands we came across another tourist ship with the usual load of tourists sunbaking and swimming on the nearest beach. A lot of the tourists were really a sight to see - absolutely white skin and huge pot-bellies and looking as if they'd have a heart attack if they walked more than a hundred metres - see what the evils of money do to you! We lunched on the SW end of Naviti Island and I glassed my paddle back together during this stop.
Camped the night in Sa Bay and talked to a local canoeist in his iron canoe on his way home from a days fishing. This one had a fruit bat clutching a stick on the rear of his kayak - apparently a delicacy in Fiji. We were apparently camping on his land but he said it would be OK.
(To be continued )
In the last issue we were making slow progress along the
(To be continued)
Next section missing. Not on the computer but still available in print in the old Sea Canoeist. I will find it and put it in here as time permits.
As I was saying last issue, Mana was a top spot. We had a hamburger lunch in the snack bar when Kerry had finished diving and got away about 2.00pm. Castaway Resort (another island) was a short distance away and we pulled in for a drink on the balcony before paddling on past Club Natasi. Along Malolo Island we came across a lovely grassy campsite on a sandy point and stopped for the night. Cecily saw a striped sea-snake in the shallows, and played with a tiny octopus as well.The next day we stayed inside the reef all morning, passing
a small village where they told us John had gone past two days ago, and also
told us the Fijian Hotel was only a little further on. There the staff welcomed
us and told us we could use the showers so we did and got into dry clothes to
have a look around, and lunched at one of their restaurants. After lunch we
went out through the gap, heading for the large river and town of the same
name, Sigatoka. Several yachts passed us going in the opposite direction.
Somehow we missed the river entrance and gingerly made our way in through a
small gap in the next bay and headed for some European type houses. One had a
very spacious lawn that looked ideal for camping on but the house looked very
unused. The one next door had servants at home, and we waited for Dr Cecily
Hands to arrive after work. She was a lovely old dear, been here for years, after
living in India. She rang around and eventually located the owner of the next
door property who gave us permission to lift a few louvers out if we wanted to
get in and use the place.
All along the southern coast we were paddling into a SE
wind, quite fresh at times, and the next day was no exception. I was fully
recovered but Kerry still suffering from some wog, never the less she paddled
quite strongly all day - no doubt due to the immense amount of training she'd
done the year before - a solid ball of muscle. We paddled as close to the
breakers as we dared, being careful not to get TOO close as they crashed over
the reef. About lunch time we found a large gap and went inshore to discover a
deserted resort with a launch anchored in the bay. As we lunched ashore in the
grounds an old man told us it had been deserted since the cyclone the year
before. It still showed massive amounts of damage with walls stoved in and the
swimming pool full of debris.
Peter and Ray and Kerry went for a paddle up the river while
I checked out some nearby apartments and booked one for the night and paddled
mine and Cec's kayak along the beach to it. When the others arrived back from
their paddle we carried all the kayaks up to the house and then showered and
walked miles up to the Golf Club where there were supposed to be cheap drinks
and free nibbles but it was a bit of a take so we caught a bus home again.
(To
be continued) Actually never written up - sorry. Problems in my person life interferred.