Along the path, we met the crews of two other boats who had just arrived the previous night. They had just finished their sevusevu. One of the locals who was walking with them, a man named Akuila, joined us and showed us to the village.
When we got there, we stopped briefly to meet and chat with some of the people along the way. Once we made it to the house of the chief, Akuila asked for our kava and fee and directed us to wait. We were soon invited in and asked to sit on the floor opposite two other men. We were trying hard to keep in mind all of the dos and don'ts we had heard about. Then Akuila started a speech in Fijian, which was interrupted occasionally by responses from the other two men, church style. From the English that did make its way in, we gathered that we were being introduced. The men were told from where we had come and permission was being asked for us to join the village.
At the end, one of the men spoke up and explained to us the importance of making sevusevu to be allowed on the island and told we were welcome to treat the village as our own. When he asked if we had any questions, Maryanne asked who each of them were and their role in the village. I guessed backwards. The chief was the friendly man with the Morgan Freeman voice. The other, even friendlier and more talkative man was his right-hand man; his intermediary with the villagers. Since all five of us were sat on the floor and neither of the others seemed to be dressed up in any way, it was hard to tell. The chief’s house is the same size and shape as most of the other villagers and is not the newest or prettiest one. The only subtle clues to his importance are that his house has two solar panels and houses the village phone.
I guess they were all kavaed out from the other boaters that morning because we were not asked or required to take any during our ceremony. {Maryanne: we later learned that kava is only drunk during sevusevu for really important guests, like the queen}
The beautiful Village of Muana-i-Cake (moo-a-na ee thack-ay)
Our hosts Jone and Mere, and Akuila who helped in so many ways
The Chief, whose name is Simon, told us that we would be assigned a host family for the duration of our visit. If we needed or wanted anything, we only had to let them know. Our hosts were Mere and Jone (pronounced Mary and Johnie), the kindergarten teacher and her woodcarver husband. Akuila then took us to the school where we met Mere just after finishing her work for the day.
Mere was ridiculously friendly. She took us to her house, where she made us tea (brewed from a freshly plucked lemon leaf), asked what we wanted to do and told us about all of the upcoming events on the island. We said we wanted to start slowly, so we could recover from the sail, but that we were interested in doing a few hikes. She immediately volunteered Jone to take us the next day.
The day we arrived the men were cooking for the community as the ladies were having a special meeting (all dressed up)
We soon found ourselves invited to partake of the Kava
In the background of the Kava photo, the men are busy making twine from coconut husks
Jone ended up going fishing the next day, but that didn’t matter. Every single villager we encountered bid us an enthusiastic “Bula!” and asked if there was anything at all that we needed, Mere just assigned someone else (Sukra and & Bali) to the role of guide for us. I made a brief stop at Chief Simon’s house to try to diagnose a problem he was having with his solar installation. He wasn’t there. His wife let me in, so I got out our electrical tester and went to work. I think I traced it down to some corroded connections, which I redid. I kept wondering what I would do if he arrived and demanded to know what I was doing dismantling his house. I hoped I could remember what he looked like. It had been pretty dark the day before – no lights – bad solar.
Maryanne had gone with Mere to her house, where Mere made us a giant, delicious and unexpected lunch, which I ate as politely as I could without leaving teeth marks in her plates. She then handed us off to two of the many guys who were periodically vanishing into the forest for firewood. They grabbed a machete and a chainsaw and escorted us into the bush. I’m sure it will be fine…
Cooking is back to basics but still delicious, everyone eats sat on woven mats on the floor
Men are often seen carving traditional items - as a source of income
We were taken on a trail up to a small nearby cave, which had been used in pre-Christian times as a burial site. One of the men, Sukra, said the cave was only used to dispose of the bones of those who had been eaten (enemies). I couldn’t tell for sure if he was pulling our legs, but the whole of Fiji is well known for its cannibal past.
A trip up the hill and to the cave and the view - and to 'help' with firewood collection
Inside the middle of the cave was a fairly decent sized pile of human bones. Hone said that it was okay to touch them as long as we put them back to where we found them. I reached out and carefully picked up a skull. Many had holes or cracks at the bone fissures, but I found one that was intact. I have never held an actual skull before. I’d held models and plaster casts during Anatomy class, but never someone’s actual skull. In most of the Western world, you would probably have to get a permit to be in the room with one, which you could only get by demonstrating a compelling reason. Here, there’s dozens of ‘em in a pile in an unguarded cave.
We then returned to the village, where Mere joined us for a walk to the next village to meet a friend of hers, Tage (Tang-i). Her friend ran a shop that seemed full of things nobody out here could possibly need. She was engaged in weaving a bunch of little coin-purse sized baskets.
A quick tour of the next village Muana-i-Ra
While Mere and Tage caught up, Maryanne and I walked around the village. Vulaga used to be part of Tonga and its inhabitants are renowned for their Tongan-derived skills. We met many of them. They talked happily about their craft and even let me handle some tools. I doesn’t seem like a bad life, sitting under a tree carving things at a leisurely pace.
We joined Mere for the walk back to Muana-i-cake, where we encountered a whole precession of people who wanted to meet us and make sure that we were in love with their beautiful island. We were loaded down with gifts the ever-smiling Tage insisted on giving us before she would let us leave her. It seems the Fijians make Canadians look like a bunch of waiters in French restaurants in America. Sorry, Canadians, it’s true. The rest of us, by comparison, seemed to have been raised in the wild by aggressive wolves.
We saw two men sitting and talking by a pile of wet snorkeling gear and went to chat with them about their day. I quickly realized the one on my left was Chief Simon. He looked like any other South Pacific fisherman and carried himself with the same humility before the vagaries of nature and the quality of the catch. As I stood there, it was strange to think that pretty much all of the villages social rules were in place so as to not cause offense to this one man. He seemed really causal about it all, at least as far as we were concerned. He knew we wouldn’t get it all right the first time. His primary concern seemed to be that we were enjoying ourselves.
We had been invited to Sunday, which was a number of church services punctuated by feasts. It would be our chance to meet everybody in the village and to be spoiled a bit by all of them. Unfortunately, the weather forecast was for a biblically bad storm that day. We were worried about leaving the boat unattended and spending the day slogging through the rain. Once we were pretty sure of the forecast, we let Mere know so that nobody would be unnecessarily going out of the way for us. We felt bad because we were delivering the news on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. When we got back to Begonia, we were somewhat relieved to hear one boat after another cancel their Sunday visits and offering condolences.
The village’s next big event wasn’t for a few more days. Begonia’s position was a bit exposed, so we decided to reposition to a protected spot while the getting was good. We chose an anchorage just a couple of miles to the west, in was in shallow water surrounded by a ring of islets.
WOW! The lagoon at Vulaga was once a basin where the geology was protected from the sea. Once it was breached by the ocean, the water started eroding all of the various outcrops. Since the tops were protected from the action of the waves by their height, they eroded much more slowly than the part at the water level. Fast forward a few thousand years and you’re left with a lagoon filled with mushroom-shaped islands overhanging improbably skinny bases. There is an amazing range of shapes. Some look like big stalks of cauliflower, some look like top-heavy battleships and some look like big blocks of Swiss cheese balancing on a corner. At low tide, almost all of these sported a little skirt of smooth sand, like the blanket under a Christmas tree. Our little anchorage looked through the gaps between to reveal even more and more in the distance all of the way to the horizon.
Some time spent enjoying the sights of the lagoon
We went to bed on Saturday with everything battened down in anticipation of the big storm. When we were awakened by daylight, we cringed a bit when we saw that the weather didn’t seem that bad after all. Had we stayed at the village anchorage, we probably could have gone. Now we had slept in a bit and we were too far away to make it.
We were a bit relieved when the weather arrived just a few hours late. The wind was howling and the rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see past the sheets of water running down the windows. We were collecting it this time and quickly had more than we could use.
It was still raining heavily the next morning when we got up. By the end of breakfast it had all moved on. We got into the dinghy and headed out for a tour of the sculpture garden surrounding us.
It’s hard to compare the beauty of places that are so different from one another. Which is more beautiful, the High Sierras, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii, Norway? I’ve never been able to provide a satisfactory answer to that question. Usually, it’s heavily weighted to where I’m standing. With that said, I think our little spot in Vulaga may be the prettiest spot we’ve ever anchored. Mind you, we have been lucky enough to go to some nice places, but this place is unbelievable! Between the crazy shapes and the palm trees and the golden sand and that tropical blue water, it was almost too much to bear. We took so many photographs. Everywhere we turned, something incredible would come into view. We would want to stare, but it was all around us all of the time. We didn’t know where to look. It was amazing to be there. We felt like the luckiest people on Earth. We were a little relieved, though, when night fell and hid it from us. Then we could cook and eat and do normal people stuff.
We emerged the next morning to an even more spectacular view. The sky was blue and the wind was gone. The lagoon was a flat mirror that reflected an upside-down version of the wonders above. Now there was two of everything!
Wow, how lucky we are
We skipped breakfast, coffee and all that and jumped into the dinghy for another tour. We wanted to get out there before the orange light of dawn whitened. It is just too much…
After our delayed breakfast, we had a big snorkel around the area. There was lots of color and variety. Maryanne even spotted a big octopus, which put on a show of colors and textures for us as it tried to find the right combination to get us to go away.
Below the waterline too
Since the weather was supposed to be calm and sunny for a day or so, we decided to take Begonia to a spot nearer the pass so that we could snorkel it at the next day’s slack water. I hated to leave our perfect little anchorage, but we managed to find a place almost as pretty to spend the night. We were by a bunch of little stepping-stone islands that hopped their way to the end of a palm-covered island. When the tide receded, they all became connected with a strip of golden sand and one of the longer islands revealed itself to be a raised archway connecting supports at each end.
When morning came, we decided we were still a bit too far from the pass to get there by dinghy, especially if we were fighting a current, so we took Begonia right to the inside edge and anchored there. When the swirling of the current started to abate, we loaded the dinghy with snorkel gear and headed into the pass.
{Maryanne: We often talk about snorkelling the 'pass'. The pass is a narrow entrance in the fringing reef where we can enter the lagoon, but it is also an area of huge water flow (as the water can only go in and out of the lagoon from a few narrow gaps). Because of this water flow there is generally some wild currents (so we try to pick the time of slack-water), an especially healthy set of corals, and a large number of fish and sharks, the whole food chain is most active here.}
Snorkel the pass
We may have been just a touch early, because the ebb was still flowing out pretty fast. It was only possible to keep from being swept along while swimming by finding an eddy in the lee of a big bommie. It was a bit scarier for the chase person in the dinghy. The bigger eddies were harder to come by and it wasn’t long before we were both approaching the standing waves at the exit.
It took judicious power and careful playing of the turbulence at the edge of the pass to make it back into the safety of the lagoon. We snorkeled around Begonia for a few minutes and then headed back. The current was much milder then and the water at the exit was flat. Most of the other boats at Vulaga then dispatched their dinghies and there were soon half a dozen in the pass with an average of three swimmers each.
The pass really is spectacular, particularly on the west side. We saw lots and lots of fish, hundreds and hundreds of meters of multicolored coral and even a few sea turtles. By the time we made it to the dropoff on the outside of the pass, we were fighting pretty hard to get out of the lagoon. The ebb had switched to flood.
I boarded the dinghy and Maryanne went into the water for the drift back to Begonia. As the tide went up, the current, which had been flowing along the pass, topped the coral walls on each side and started going a little across the pass. I was staying up-current following Maryanne when I noticed a woman in one of the other dinghies across the pass raising her outboard and swinging around a lot. She was in the shallow water off of the side of the pass. I zipped over to the edge of the wall and threw her our long line for a tow. By the time we got the lines tied onto our respective ends, I was approaching the wall and had to dash to get our outboard up before it got crunched. We then both drifted helplessly along the reef for a while, our maneuverability constrained by our tether. I guess Maryanne will have to flag someone else down if she gets into trouble.
I passed over a waist-deep sandy patch and decided to try to stop us both by jumping in. That worked. I then pulled her to me and then gave her a big shove toward the depth of the channel. She didn’t make it, but got to a sand patch of her own. We then reversed roles and I was soon shoved by her into the depth of the pass. The current was trying to push me back, so I had to get the motor down and pulling fast. I twisted the tiller into reverse and the little Torqeedo very slowly backed us into water deep enough for us both to be using our outboards. I was so glad we had charged it full after all of the week’s tooling around.
Then as quickly as it had happened, I was given my line back and everything was back to normal. I don’t think any of the other boats even realized we were in trouble, mild as it was. Maryanne was having such a good time swimming that she hadn’t noticed my detour. When I returned to give her a ride back to Begonia, she said she was happy to swim there.
The village’s next big event was a fundraiser that is held once a year to pay for the expenses of the church, the school and boarding for students attending High School in Suva. It’s a big deal, with people coming in from the adjacent islands to sing and dance for each other. Once we heard about it from Mere, we decided to delay our departure from Vulaga by a few days to make sure we got to see it.
During our pass snorkeling day, the rumor was floating around that the village had had to delay the festivities by a day. The overdue supply ship was expected that day and they needed to focus on unloading it. Plus, it looked like it may be raining.
Damn! We had already stretched our stay longer than I had wanted; so many places to see, so little time and all that. We could handle yet another day, but the bummer thing was that we had agreed to have a farewell breakfast with Jone and Mere on the morning before the festival. With no festival on and with us not leaving, it seemed like it would be rude for us to show up at first light in the rain. I’m sure we all would enjoy sleeping in a bit. We couldn’t get a message to them, though, so we decided it would be even more rude to stand them up if they had made a fuss for us. We upped anchor again and headed back to the village in preparation to be off of the boat at first light. Maryanne spent the balance of the evening baking goodies to take to breakfast.
When we got to Jone and Mere’s house, all of the doors and windows were closed against the previous night’s rains. We knocked sheepishly and after a little while Jone appeared, looking surprised to see us. Uh, oh. Mere popped out, said she was expecting us, then popped right back into her room to finish getting dressed. Oh, dear. They must have been hoping we wouldn’t show.
Then she opened the oven and produced a giant tray of rolls that had just come out of the oven. She then produced big bowls of hot food that had also been waiting. They had expected us. It’s so hard to read these things.
Over breakfast, Mere told us that the festival had been delayed again. The ship was late. The visiting islanders didn’t have enough fuel to make the trip until it arrived. Some of the costumes were also on board, so we everybody was going to have to wait until after the ship arrived. The festival was now moved from Thursday until Monday, maybe.
That’s it. We want to see this thing, but we can’t stay until Monday. We meandered our way out of the village, stopping to say goodbye to all of our new friends along the way.
When we got back to the boat, we heard another American boat announcing a big Fourth of July BBQ to be held in a couple of hours on a beach at the other end of the lagoon by the pass, where most of them were anchored. Aw, c’mon! We had just come from there!
Fine! We didn’t want to be the only boat conspicuously not going, so we upped anchor again and headed back to the pass. At least it would make for a quicker getaway the next morning.
The spot they chose was spectacular, with another sweeping landscape of improbably balanced islets as a background. The BBQ was nice and low key and it was nice to match faces with boat names. The other Americans avoided doing anything too crass. It was actually a Brit who got the award for biggest drunken schnook when he introduced himself to Maryanne with a string of inappropriate misogyny. Before things got heated, his lovely wife sent me a look that she would let him have it on our behalf when they got home.
4th of July beach BBQ & Pot-Luck
As we were weaving our way toward the pass the following morning, word came over the VHF that the festival WAS happening. It was now starting in just a couple of hours. I was a little miffed because I already had it in my mind that we were about to go to sea. I was not nearly 100% confident that this wasn’t one of those “Fiji Time” things, where we would later be told they had re-decided not to do it today after all. If we went to the village, we would miss slack water in the pass and would have to commit ourselves to the extra day whether anything was happening or not. The decision was finally made when we saw a panga full of Fijians speed past us toward the village, presumably from Ogea, the next island group to the east of Vulaga. I guess they eventually got tired of all of the rescheduling themselves and decided it was on.
We walked to the village at the appointed time and saw little sign of anything out of the ordinary happening. We found Mere, who seemed to know as much about it as we did. She directed us to a friend of hers who might know.
We never found Mere’s friend. As we wandered through the village, we came upon many others we had met during our stay and stopped at each to catch up. By the time we had made it to the plaza at the center, we could see a bit of activity starting to happen. A large group of people were sitting under the biggest of the temporary shelters that had been erected. As we got closer, we realized it was a kava circle for each of the villages.
We made the rounds, going to the other shelters to introduce ourselves and meet the participants. At the Naivindamu tent, room was made for us on the mat and we were asked to join the group. Naivindamu is the “other”, third village on Vulaga. They can only get to the connected villages of Muana-i-cake and Muana-i-ra by boat, so we had yet to meet anybody from there. They were all very nice. Almost as soon as we were sat down, the man sitting next to me passed me a coconut shell half-filled with kava. Sure, why not? “Bula, Bula!” Down the hatch.
Kava definitely has a flavor that isn’t best suited to sipping. Lots of it produces a mild sense of relaxed wellbeing, bordering on camaraderie. I had three half-shells (a portion sized known as “low tide”) and felt not much more than a slight tingling of my gums. Naivindamu was having a little fun with their island neighbors. Kava can’t grow on Vulaga and the late supply ship has had everyone’s stocks running low. They had apparently set some aside and were conspicuously passing it around all day while the other villages were rationing themselves and even offering to buy any extra the yachts might have aboard.
We bid them farewell and returned to the central Muana-i-cake tent, where we were called by village friends who insisted on giving the us the best seats in the front. I ended up sat next to Chief Simon’s Spokesman, who had been present at our sevusevu. After a while, there was a tap on my arm and I turned to find a low tide shell of kava being offered. They were low on the stuff, but they weren’t out yet. It would be considered rude for them not to offer it and rude of me not to accept, so I took one each time it made the rounds to me. They were very widely spaced rounds, but once I had had a couple, it became acceptable for me to pass on the basis that I was a newbie lightweight. More for the guys who really go for the stuff.
Each village presented a different dance - video added later
The festivities began with the Ogea contingent singing and marching their way from their shelter to the stage. The stage in this case being a tarpaulin spread out on the grass in front of Muana-i-cake’s shelter. A row of costumed dancers sat at the front edge while the singers and drummers filled in behind them. The dancing seemed to be highly ritualized and was done entirely from the waist up while sat on crossed legs. The men sang in beautiful baritones while the women harmonized in high, nasal voices.
About halfway through, a woman carrying several unwound bolts of colorful fabric came across the grounds from the Ogea tent to the stage. She then wrapped the whole troupe with several layers of the cloth, while they pretended their best not to notice. She then started dumping talcum powder on the heads of the singers and dancers and smearing it on their faces with her hands. She then came over to the audience and powdered us. Occasionally, one of the dancers or drummers would break form to grab one of her ankles. This caused her to fall all over everyone in a cloud of white powder, emitting a long string of Fijian that caused the natives to clutch their sides and roll around with uncontrollable laughter. The woman had tears of laughter streaming down her face. The performers were clearly trying their best to ignore her and carry on, but their concentration was betrayed by smirks and giggles. How strange. It appears that the people of Ogea have a bit of a sense of humor.
No more than anyone else, though. Every village’s performance had the same theme where, halfway through, a jester would enter and wreak havoc on the solemn proceedings to the uninhibited delight of the crowd.
The performances broke for lunch. We were shown to an adjacent house, where we found a huge spread laid out before us. We were fed mountains of fish and clams cooked in coconut and papaya respectively. We were also presented with lots of cassava cooked in various ways. There was way more than everybody could possibly eat. In Fiji, it’s considered embarrassing to not have leftovers because it means you haven’t satisfied your guests. We were told not to worry, the pigs would have their own feast later, someone will get married or die and they will become the feast. It all comes full circle.
After lunch, it was Muana-i-ra’s turn. When the group started, we were happy to see Tage sitting up front. She is very shy and very smiley. We had said goodbye to her the previous day when we thought we were leaving. When she saw me and Maryanne in the audience, she blushed and started giggling. I don’t know why we would make her bashful. There were a hundred other people watching, most of whom know her better than we do.
When her group was done with their routine, Tage broke free from their march back to their tent and ran over to place the lei she had been wearing around my neck. She then ran back to her sister, grabbed her lei and trotted over to adorn Maryanne with it. Well, didn’t we feel special!
Last up was Muana-i-cake. Theirs was the only routine that involved stand-up dancing and the only one where men danced. They had a heckler as well, who was apparently hilarious, judging by the reaction of the crowd. Acting as an even better distraction was a little girl just past walking age. She changed her mind every forty-five seconds about whether it was the greatest or the worst thing ever to be dancing next to her more polished mother. I’m pretty sure the only relief she will ever get from hearing retellings of the story will be if she moves off of the island.
Okay, so it was worth going to the thing. I’m not grumpy anymore. When the final tally was made, they had raised almost 50% more than their goal. As far as I know, none of the visiting yachts were asked or pressured to contribute. It was explained to us that each family and village was expected to raise the money themselves as a semi-voluntary tax to pay for the island’s expenses. Most families had long finished saving their yearly contribution to be handed over during the festival. The festival was not timed for the yacht’s visits or intended to involve us. It really was a coincidence, not a show for the tourists, but they all seemed more than happy to make room in their internal affairs for those of us who were there. Sevusevu made us honorary villagers, but we were still considered welcome guests. It would be rude to invite someone to dinner and then tell them you would like a few bucks to help pay the gas bill.
Memories from Vulaga
That "straw" in the coconut was a freshly hacked from a wild stem by Joe as we were walking the trail back to the boat
It took us a long time to leave that afternoon. It seemed that everybody wanted to shake our hands and wish us a safe journey. It was hard to go and it felt a little cruel to say we didn’t know how long it would be before we make it back. One thing is for sure, though, if we ever get back to Fiji, we’re definitely going back to Vulaga.
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