Caqalai

Saturday morning we got up early to catch a bus to a small boat station by Nausori, which was a rickety shack by the edge of the road next to a muddy river. This is where we would get a boat transfer to Caqalai, a small coral island. It's off the coast of Ovalau, a larger island off of the eastern coast of Viti Levu. It was a really rainy day, and the first boat at the station (an hour later than scheduled of course) was a covered one that could only take so many people so five of us stayed behind to get on the next boat that was "leaving in 5 minutes as soon as the captain gets back from picking up petrol". This turned into a 3 hour wait, during which we played games and laid around - some of the others actually did an ab workout that my laziness had no interest in. After our delay, the boat owner came back in a cab filled with groceries to be taken to the island. We headed out in the boat through a river fringed with mangroves that spat us out into the ocean (complete with choppy waves that soaked all of us) and finally got to the island.

Caqalai's tiny; it takes about 20 minutes to walk around the entire thing. There's one backpacker resort on it and that's the only thing on the island. The place has some friendly staff, a few happy dogs, and not much else other than beautiful beaches and reef all around the island.

The first day there, we hiked out to Snake Island at low tide. I think it looks like something out of a Dr. Suess book, like a clod of dirt plucked out of the ground and stuck on a reef. We walked out on the reef to the island, which is pretty much just sharp, craggy volcanic rock with one palm tree. We snorkeled back, which took about an hour. The snorkeling was great - there were tons of fish and colorful coral all along the reef.

We had a good night of hanging out. I went for a walk on the beach at night and saw a bunch of little bits of bioluminescence on the beach! I tried digging around in the sand to figure out what sort of little worm or whatever was making the light but it was too small to find. I was really excited though. The second day we were there, it was a lot sunnier and much more beautiful.

A brittle star. These were hiding in little holes all over the reef surrounding the island with a few legs poking out. If you grabbed one of their bristley legs they'd rush back into their holes to avoid getting eaten.

Will's feet. We went diving on the second day, and it was absolutely amazing. We took a little boat out about a half hour to the reef crest, and it was very swelly and kind of scary since it was stormy and very windy. Once we got there though it was great. I saw sea turtles for the first time! They were just slowly flapping their fins going up and down the reef edge, looking for food. We saw big schools of batfish, triggerfish, and lots of other fish. Will had a leak in his BCD (the flotation vest you use to control your buoyancy) and ran out of air early, so he had to get up to the surface and float there for a while. I got low on air next, so we headed up - except I had some issues with getting up to the surface. My head cold is still hanging around, and I was fine with equalizing the pressure in my ears on the way down, but coming back up was terrible. I kept hearing lots of popping and whistling noises in my sinuses, and a ringing in my right ear, and it was very painful. I had a reverse block, where you can't equalize the pressure in your ears on the way back up from the dive, so your eardrums are sort of pushed inwards and you can't push them back out. By the time we got to the surface I had a huge headache and a nosebleed. I didn't go down on the second dive, and instead just laid on the boat. I felt better eventually, and I feel all better now, but it was the scariest thing I've had happen to me while diving so far. I still want to come back and do it again though, because it was very beautiful here.

Arti, Claire, Nichole, and Sam on the boat transfer back to Viti Levu. The boat ride back was much smoother than the one there since it wasn't windy and rainy. I think this is my second favorite island in Fiji so far, behind Taveuni, and I definitely want to come back. I probably won't be up to too many interesting things this week since I have a lot of work in Physiology (test, term paper, lab), but some people want to head to an island in the Yasawa group which would be a lot of fun. We'll see.