Taveuni Day One: Boat Rides and Waterslides

To get to Taveuni, you take an 18 hour boat ride from Suva that stops in Savusavu, Vanua Levu (the second largest island in Fiji, which is northeast of Viti Levu). I was surprised by how quickly it seemed like the ride went, especially considering that I didn't really sleep at all (it's pretty uncomfortable trying to sleep in a row of seats that you're sharing with your friends). I enjoyed the boat ride even though there were some issues. Like how the seats had bugs crawling all over them...it's funny how I've stopped caring about things like that by now. Also the crew seemed determined to show every terrible movie known to mankind on this trip - highlights include one of the straight to DVD releases of the Bring It On cheerleader junk movies, and Mr. Bones 2. But, since we were traveling with a bunch of our friends, we had enough to entertain each other with and so the trip over was fun.

Off the side of the MV Sulliven (or Suilven, which is apparently how Fijians spell it) waiting to leave from the harbor in Suva.

All the girls hanging out on the top deck.

As soon as we got on board, some of the crew members invited us to come drink kava with everyone later in the night. We sat on a deck near the back of the boat and drank and chatted for while. I was struggling because they made this kava really really strong. The crew was great though; they let us into the control room to see how everything works, and the chef even called up a friend on Taveuni to hook us up with a place to stay for a couple of nights at a discounted price.

We got into Savusavu around 4 or 5am, so it was getting to be around dawn as we were leaving. We went past a lot of Vanua Levu on the rest of the ride, and it looks very beautiful and very untouched, so I hope I can get the chance to go up and spend some time there eventually.

Finally on Taveuni! There's one main road that goes around most of the perimeter of the island. The bridges are kind of rickety.

Once we arrived at the wharf at Wairiki, we took a taxi to the place where the chef had told us to go. It was a pretty normal setup - just a bunch of mattresses in a large room in a building separate from the owner's house. The woman was very nice, and had a bunch of dogs that barked and howled incessantly during the night, so I felt right at home. Taveuni is one of the islands that got hit very hard by Cyclone Tomas, and evidence of this was all over the roads with downed palm trees and power lines everywhere. The place where we were staying had a rock pool built at the bottom of a stream in the backyard, but the cyclone had washed a ton of sediment down the stream and so half of the pool was filled with sand and stones. A couple of the boys were really helpful though and shoveled out enough of the stuff so that the pool could fill up again and have a little bit of a swimming area, which was great to have throughout our stay there.

Almost immediately, we went to go play around in the natural rock waterslides that were a little ways down the road. I don't have pictures of this since I didn't bring my camera, but a couple of my friends with waterproof cameras took a bunch of pictures so I'll post those on here later once those photos get on facebook. Anyways, these were awesome. I wouldn't think that rock could be too comfortable to slide down, but for whatever reason this one stream had extremely smooth and slippery rocks that were perfect. Since everything was so smooth is was pretty difficult to get up the stream, but it was worth it. The waterslides were just little sections separated by pools along about a 200 meter straight stretch of stream, so you could start at the top and make your way down to the end. Of course there was a little Fijian boy there who was sliding down these things on his feet like he was surfing, and could scamper up the streambed about ten times faster than any of us. It was a whole lot of fun, except Cliff cracked his eyebrow open on a rock so we headed home to take him to the hospital to see if he needed stitches. Thankfully he didn't - I'm growing more and more wary of the healthcare here. We all cooked dinner (pasta shells with sauce and cheese = amazing) and then passed out pretty early since no one really slept all that well on the boat. I didn't really sleep because it was super hot (we didn't have a fan) and the mattress I was on gave me allergies so I couldn't breathe all night, but I dealt with it.