We are working our way south along the west coast of Fiji with the island Vatulele as our destination. Today, for the second leg of our trip, we motored head to wind on our way to Robinson Crusoe Island – but due to a minor pilot error wound up at nearby Natadola Beach instead! This turned into a pretty fortuitous mistake, as this was a beautiful spot with a great sand beach, surfing quality waves, and assorted activities that kept us busy all afternoon. We had caught a walou on the trip over on our trolling lines and as Rod was cleaning it on the swimstep, a local fishing boat came over to say ‘Bula’ and compare fishing notes. They hadn’t caught anything yet, but Rod sent them away with the head, the tail and half the body – and we enjoyed the other half for our dinner that night.

We went ashore in the dinghy to the local village and performed a nice sevusevu in the chief’s house there, receiving a warm and friendly welcome. Then we wandered down to the beach and came across the local horseback riding concession. Pretty soon we had negotiated a package deal and Rod, Anouk and I all went on a short beach ride on the local stock. The bridles were predominately rope contraptions with skinny rusty bits, and my rope reins had a pretty good fray in them! The horses here are uniformly small and scrawny – not much over pony size. Mine was grey, Rod rode a chestnut stallion with flaxen man and tail and Anouk’s was a plain bay. All were well-behaved and willing to walk, trot and gallop with only a little encouragement from the tree branches we had been offered for crops. This is the first time Anouk has been riding since the horse she owned in Holland died when Anouk was a teenager. Rod has only ridden a few times, and not in the past 18-20 years (his guesstimate) but they were both at home in the saddle and went cantering down the beach with no hesitation (and no stirrups!). I was happy to walk, remembering that my helmet is at home in Tucson in the closet.

Following the ride up and down the beach, we returned the horses to their owners and were met with another impromptu beach blanket market, each Fijian woman encouraging us to start our shopping with her (“Lady, start here!”). We turned down green coconuts to drink and instead wandered into a very nice little resort across the road that had a stucco and bougainvilla Spanish flavor to the construction…something we haven’t seen here before. Anouk went for a run, Carol went for a walk, and Rod investigated a broken-down rental scooter situation by the side of the road.

Rod turned down an invitation to come into the village in the evening and drink kava with the locals (“Don’t bring any money!”) issued by one of the fisherman who had enjoyed walou lunch courtesy of Raven.

There had been a pretty stout breeze the entire trip today and we had been slamming up and down into the oncoming waves the whole way so Rod informed us we were leaving at 5:30 am. the following morning, as soon as there was light, in hopes of making progress before the wind comes up again. This is our last leg to Vatulele, across a stretch of open ocean, and should take us most of the day.

Our itinerary for the rest of our trip is to enjoy Vatulele and the neighboring island of Beqa – both of which are reported to be beautiful with great diving spots and very traditional, non-touristy villages. Then we will run over to Suva on the mainland to clear immigration out of the country. The remainder of our trip will be spent on the island of Kadavu – also reported to be a lovely place – until the weather window opens up for our return to New Zealand. Note to Steve and Linda: Apparently the clearance in and out in Lautoka was regional for the west side of Fiji. New Caledonia is on next year’s itinerary – but this year Mike should be back for at least some of the basketball season.