Vatulele

For the first part of study week, we spent a few days camping on Vatulele. Vatulele is a small, skinny island south of the Coral Coast of Viti Levu. This is the one island that I read about before coming to Fiji and decided that I absolutely had to go to, so I was very happy. It has 4 small villages, and one luxury resort, has a ton of really cool stuff, and is next to impossible to get to. We've spent the last month trying to figure out a way to get there, since the loaded people that head to the resort land there via a private airstrip and there are no commercial boats that head there from the mainland. We've contacted the resort staff, the villages along the coast of Viti Levu, fishermen on the island, and the only lead that we had was a fisherman that offered to take us $500 one way. Our Fijian professor tried talking to some locals that he knew, and we were losing hope when my friend Will ran into a guy working at the zipline place who said he was from Vatulele and also turned out to be the nicest man alive. His name is Joe, and he did everything in his power to make sure that we had a great time getting out to Vatulele and seeing everything on the island. He talked to a bunch of his friends from his village and got a fisherman to do the boat transfers, in addition to drive us around for the three days that we were there to make sure that we could see everything we wanted. He was amazing. He and his son hung out with us for most of the time that we were there.

When we first got there on Sunday, we were exhausted from getting up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a bus out to Korolevu, where we met our fishing boat that took us to the island. Joe told us that the island was about 18 miles away, and luckily we had beautiful weather the entire time that we were there so that the boat trip from the mainland only took about an hour. The boat captain said there was one time when the weather was rough and a boat got off course and ran out of fuel, eventually drifting all the way to New Caledonia where they were very confused when we landed. We arrived at the island and were amazed by how beautiful the place was right away - it's a low lying coral an volcanic island with the clearest water that we've seen in Fiji so far (there were parts where we were in water about 40 feet deep and could still see exactly what was on the sea floor). We were led to a campsite in the forest right off of the beach, under a giant tree in an area that had been cleared out by some of the villagers. These people were incredibly generous and nice the entire time that we were there. Once we set up our tents, they gave us a giant tarp to lay our woven mat on, brought out the village's only generator to give us a lightbulb to find our way around at night, and brought a box filled with bugspray, papaya, and a handful of books that had been left there by some other travelers (a few cheesy looking political thrillers and a Nicholas Sparks novel that I somehow ripped through about 70 pages of). Once we were settled we made a bunch of tuna fish sandwiches, then napped while we waited to be summoned to go to the village to present our sevusevu. During this time I discovered the hundreds of massive black and white spiders that hung from giant webs all over the canopy (I saw a couple of webs that were about 3 feet in diameter), which I wish I had somehow not noticed. Anyways, a sevusevu is a sort of offering that is given to a local village whenever you visit or use their land; typically it's kava, which we bought a few bundles of (in the dried root form) before leaving Suva. After napping we went to the village, which was pretty nice in terms of Fijian villages since most of the buildings were built from concrete instead of metal sheeting. There were lots of puppies and pigs running all around, and people greeting us all over the place. The chief of the village was busy at the time, so we gave our gifts to Joe's brother to present to the chief so that we could go back and cook dinner before it got dark. We made a feast of hot dogs, baked beans, and corn, which was one of the best meals I've had in Fiji. We spent the night hanging out around our fire and having a few drinks before curling up in our tents and trying to get a few hours of sleep despite the mosquitos.

All of us after we climbed up into the giant tree in the center of our campsite.

We woke up at daybreak since a couple of the villagers were screaming at us to WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP, and we're not quite sure why. We had a breakfast of breakfast crackers with peanut butter, jelly, and cheese, and waited around for a couple of hours for the boat to show up to take us around. Joe told us that we had a lot of stuff to do today. We first drove around the tip of the island to see the resort, which was absolutely ridiculous. This is one view off of the boat.

Baby sea turtles that were being raised outside of the dive shop at the resort. The staff said that they picked them up a few months back, and would release them in December, when the baby turtles typically hatch and head out to sea. Sea turtles are protected in Fiji, but a couple of the boys talked to Joe who said that the village still went out and hunted turtles for special occasions where they were needed for a feast.

A rocky ledge by the beach. Like I said before, the water was clearer than anywhere I've seen before in Fiji.

One of the villas from the resort. This was on a cliff, overlooking the ocean and the beach.

Joe used to work at the resort before moving to the mainland, so he got to give us a brief tour of the resort. The place only has room for a maximum of 40 guests, and has a ratio of 4 staff to every guest. They were in a bit of a lull in the tourism season, and we only saw 2 other guests that were lounging on the beach - Cliff said that he thought it was Brian Westbrook and his girlfriend but I don't believe him.

The sand here was super white, and pretty blinding to look at after coming out of the woods.

The side of the island that we were camping on was low lying and sandy, but past the resort it turned into sheer cliffs. Joe said that it was because the island tilted, sending one side up and spilling all of the dirt onto the other side of the island. This is a picture of me and Will after we scrambled up onto a ledge in the cliff.

These are petroglyphs, ancient rock paintings on the face of the cliffs. They aren't restricted or anything - you can walk right up to them. They're dated at about 3,000 years old. The logo for the resort looks like these faces.

From the beach, we hiked up to a rock pool. This pool is an anchialine habitat, which occurs when a freshwater lens is still influenced by the tides to form brackish water a while away from the coast. It's very clear, still, and framed in by the cliffs.

This is why the pool is so important: it contains sacred red prawns, or uradamudamu. They are bright red, looking like they've been cooked. The island legend says that a long time ago, a beautiful princess (Yalewa-Ni-Cagi-Bula) from one of the villages on Vatulele was being courted by a young chief from Viti Levu. He brought her a gift of cooked prawns, which she scorned and in return threw him and his prawns off of a cliff. The prawns landed in the pool at the base of the cliff, where they came alive and still live today. The villagers are afraid to kill or harm them, and believe that if anyone tries to take the prawns away from their pool then they will be killed in a shipwreck.

None of us could get over how clear and beautiful the water was - it looks like pool water.

After checking out the prawns, we hiked a little further inland to go swimming in a deep cave that was connected to the prawn pool. We were instructed not to step on any of the rocks in the cave, for fear of stepping and crushing any of the prawns. The water was very cold, and very clear.

We hiked back around to the resort, where Joe took us in a shortcut through the forest to another cave where some of the boys and Sam leapt off of a rock into a pool of water. We then piled back into the boat, and went out to another island called Nookinooki, which is used for a picnic spot for people at the resort. It's a tiny set of white sand and spiky volcanic rock, and we took a break to eat our pack of biscuits, watch the hundreds of white butterflies and hermit crabs, and go swimming in this little cove.

Nichole and I, getting ready to go swimming. We got back to our campsite, took a quick shower that consisted of dumping a bucket of rainwater over our heads, and cooked a whole bunch of instant noodles since everybody was starving. A lot of us napped.

Later that night, a couple of the boys went spearfishing with the locals. Girls aren't really allowed to do anything cool like that. They caught long skinny trumpetfish (the most delicious), as well as red snapper and parrotfish. These were gutted and tossed straight onto the coals of our fire, then taken out and picked at by everybody. Some of our group went to drink kava with the locals, but I was exhausted and passed out in the tent very early.

I woke up at dawn that morning and took some pictures of the sunrise on the beach by our campsite. As you can see our beach was covered with seagrass, but it was still beautiful. We went to the village in the morning to buy tapa cloth, which is only made on Vatulele. It's made by peeling off the bark from a paper mulberry tree, beating it until it's soft, and painting it with dyes made from mangrove trees. I got a whole bunch for decorating the apartment next year (I think we'll have an interesting apartment - Ty's bringing classy things from Sicily, while I've got a bunch of crazy tribal Fijian things) and for gifts. These are probably my most favorite souvenirs since they're so special.

On our boat transfer back, we lazed around and took in the island for the last time. Joe's son brought back a puppy from the island, which was pretty scared during the transfer so we took turns cuddling it. Here he is napping on my chest while I'm taking a nap. This was definitely my favorite place in Fiji so far - the combination of the strange things there, how ridiculously beautiful the beach and water was, and how very few people get to visit here. When we got back to Suva we were all relieved to take a cold shower, get into some clean clothes, and go eat a big meal. Right now we're all getting ready for our moped trip tomorrow morning, so we'll be gone from home for another couple of days.