Snorkeling

We took a “Bay and Beach” tour which was to include a narrated tour of Savusavu Bay and a couple of hours at one of the few nice sandy beaches in the area. The tour company also gave us the option of taking some of their snorkeling equipment in case we wanted to try a bit of that. Good thing they did because the bay tour was pretty lame. The boat operators basically just went straight across to the opposite side of the bay, then along the coast just enough to point out a copra (coconut) mill, adjacent BP refinery, and a shoreline village. I think the total narration consisted of three sentences. The beach they took us to was small and nice enough, but still a bit rocky. Overall, we would have viewed the tour as a complete ripoff had it not been for the unlikely saving grace of snorkeling.

I was a bit unsure about snorkeling as I’ve never tried it and don’t even really swim. Myra has never snorkeled either. Deborah swims well enough but hasn’t been snorkeling in something like 25 years. We also brought Semoko along, our trusty Fijian neighbor who is very comfortable in the water. While the rest of us had on life jackets and flippers, Semoko was swimming around in his flip flops. After the unimpressive initial minutes of struggling with unfamiliar equipment and floating over mostly empty seafloor, we eventually got the hang of it and then stumbled upon some really interesting coral reefs full of colorful fish, sea stars, and giant urchins. It really made me wish I had an underwater camera.

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We were mostly in warm shallow water where you could even stand up, but I wasn’t bothered by the deeper sections either thanks to the miracle of the life jacket. Even if, as Deborah said, it made me look like some dorky character from Borat, I was amazed how well it kept me comfortably afloat no matter how inadequate my swimming skills. My biggest problem was keeping saltwater from going up my nose. I regularly use a saline nasal spray at home anyway, but this was way too much fluid for comfort. Either I wasn’t breathing 100% through my mouth as I intended, or the facemask wasn’t making a good seal against my face, possibly because of my beard. If Deborah and I follow through on our intention to try snorkeling again, I will either need a nose clip or a shave.

Myra and Deborah on the boat

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Semoko with the tour crew

View of town from the bay

(photo by Myra)

Blake and Deborah

(photo by Myra)



Wet Blake and Deborah
(photo by Myra)

At the beach

Snorkel babes

Labasa, Part 5 - The Family

For the one night we were staying over at Naseakula Village we were given Semoko’s sister’s house to stay in. We felt entirely guilty as she and her husband and some subset of the six kids they are looking after probably ended up sleeping on some mat on the floor at Semoko’s mother’s house next door. But we would have felt even more guilty had we refused their hospitality. The house was a small, simple place with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and living room. The bathroom was a bit of a challenge as the light didn’t work so at night when we took our showers we had to leave the door ajar to allow a little illumination. The shower was just a pipe pointing down from the ceiling. No showerhead. No hot water either. Not that the cold water is all that cold around here, but it’s not what we pampered Americans are used to. There wasn’t a lot of furniture; the Fijians don’t really do chairs. Sitting on a mat on the floor is the preferred mode of hanging out. Again, not what we are used to.

On Sunday morning we went back into town to catch a bus back to Savusavu, only to find all the buses had been cancelled due to a tsunami warning. We took a taxi instead – a much more expensive option, but it got us home. The tsunami never really materialized here, which was disappointing as it would have been rather exciting. No cyclones yet either. How boring.

Morning tea and bisquits served Fijian style (on the floor)

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Semoko's niece; initially shy when she first met us...

...then turning into her true rascal self (here she is wearing Deborah's hat and sunglasses), earning her the nickname "The Monkey"


A couple of the nephews and/or cousins

Deborah gives Caroline's a haircut in the near dark with kitchen shears - impressive

Cooling off in the shade under the house, with new soccer ball in hand

Semoko's mother

The cat

What are these two doing here?

(photo by Myra)

Semoko and his mom. Semoko is one of the nicest, most generous people you could ever meet, but he never smiles for photographs.

The family

Labassa, Part 4 - Kava

Every culture seems to have its favorite substance to eat, drink, chew, or smoke for mood altering purposes, whether it is beer or wine or marijuana or coca leaves or betel nuts. In Fiji it is kava, also known as yaqona or grog. We were invited to drink kava with several men (and a couple of women) from the village. It’s an important part of Fijian culture and a way of welcoming visitors so we of course accepted.

Kava is a mildly narcotic drink made from grinding up or “pounding” the root of a particular type of pepper plant and mixing the resulting powder with water to whatever concentration satisfies your mood-altering needs. The mixing is done by wrapping the powder into a cloth, pouring water on it, and squeezing it into a large wooden bowl called a tanoa. Three men sit around the bowl doing the mixing and handing out the bilos (half coconut shells) full of grog to the participants who all sit cross-legged on the floor facing the bowl. If one of the men manning the bowl leaves the room, another will slide up to take his place, maintaining the required threesome. And there are rules as to who can sit where; for instance, Caroline couldn’t sit next to Deborah for awhile because it would have also put her right next to the eldest son of a village chief, which is not allowed.

The protocol is to drink the bilo offered to you in one go, but you also have the option to pass. There is also a bit of clapping before and after each drink, as well as frequent declarations of “Bula” or “Vinaka”, but I couldn’t discern any precise pattern in the ritual. I suspect it gets even more imprecise as the evening wears on. We were told that these grog sessions can last well into the wee hours of the morning, with who knows how many dozens if not hundreds of bilos consumed before the drinkers crawl home.

We each had two drinks to be polite, then just sat back and watched the rest of them slowly get stoned. Kava looks like muddy water and tastes a bit like it as well, although Deborah finds the flavor reminiscent of dental anesthetic. Our two drinks were enough to give us fuzzy tongues, but not much more. The other men just kept drinking and drinking until the tanoa was nearly empty and we thought the session was coming to an end, only to have them mix up some more and promptly continue drinking.

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After awhile they broke out the guitars and ukulele and started singing (between drinks). The songs were reminiscent of Hawaiian music and frankly all sounded similar, but the singers were surprisingly talented. Apparently this particular group of musicians is often asked to perform at other villages. They talked Deborah into contributing a couple of songs, but they didn’t know the music to “Crazy” or “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” so she had to basically sing acapella and, unprepared for such a command performance, struggled to remember the lyrics. She sounded pretty good though and they were all very appreciative of her efforts. We exited the room after our butts starting going numb from the unfamiliar position of sitting on the floor, and left our grog drinking buddies to carry on into the night.

A bundle of kava root, before pounding

(photo by Myra)

Powdered kava is poured into a cloth over the tanoa

(photo by Myra)

Water is added and the cloth is squeezed into the bowl

(photo by Myra)


The bowl is stirred and the drinks dished up using half coconut shells called bilo

Then you drink...

(photo by Myra)

...and drink...

...and drink...

...then you break out the guitars and ukulele

Labasa, Part 3 - The Lovo

Lovo are traditional Fijian feasts where the food is cooked in an underground oven using stones heated by an open fire. We had expressed to Semoko our interest in experiencing this, thinking we could buy the food and he could just cook it in his back yard, not realizing until very recently the huge amount of time and effort involved, which is why they don't happen every day. But Semoko may have passed our desires along to his village where we found upon our arrival that a lovo was planned for that day. We felt very honored by the many villagers who came to meet the Americans and to help in the preparation of the lovo.

Fish, chicken, dalo (taro), tavioka (cassava), and palusami (coconut cream and onion wrapped in dalo leaves) were on the menu, along with watermelon and, believe it or not, Tang. I haven’t had Tang since I was a kid but it’s surprisingly popular here. The chicken was moist and tender. The dalo root tastes somewhat like potato and is a bit bland without some sort of condiment. The lolo wrapped in dalo leaves, however, was to die for. We were told that once you have real coconut cream you will never be satisfied with the stuff you buy in a can. We believe it. It was impressive that in addition to the dalo root and dalo leaves, the dalo stalk was also eaten: peeled and sliced and sautéed with onion. The photos below describe the whole delicious process of the lovo.

Coconuts are scraped

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A little water is added to the scraped coconut and it is squeezed multiple times to wring out the coconut cream

Coconut cream (lolo) is poured into a stack of dalo leaves

The leaves are folded and placed into coconut shells or aluminum foil

A kind of steamer cage is constructed from palm fronds

Chunks of cassava are inserted into the cage

More dalo is peeled

An impatient Myra contemplates sushi

A hole is dug in the ground

A fire is lit in the hole using chopped wood and coconut husks

Stones are stacked on the fire to be heated up

An improvised shelter keeps the fire going during a rain shower

A layer of steel mesh and palm stems creates separation between fire and food


The food is piled on top

(photo by Myra)

...then covered with palm leaves

...then burlap (or something like it)


...then dirt

(photo by Myra)

The honored guests sit around while everyone else does the work. Semoko takes a break, still with cleaver in hand.

After and hour and a half of cooking, the pile is uncovered...

...and the food is removed....

...and set out to cool.

(photo by Myra)