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On Monday we met the people of Naboulawalu village on Ono Island and did sevusevu with the chief. Like other places we have visited in the Kadavu area, visiting yachts are quite rare - it is quite a novelty for "valagi" to come into the village here (compared to the Yasawas where tourists are common). "Valagi" is pronounced "Parlangi" the same as it is in Tonga, and means the same thing,"foreigner". Heather finds this quite amusing as her maiden name was Parlane and when she was a child, the pacific island children at her school used to tease her about her name and call her "Parlangi" but at the time she never knew what it meant! Now as we walk through villages the little children all rush out calling "Valagi, Valagi!" to announce the arrival of visitors to the village. Everyone has been so welcoming and friendly here, there is a real warmhearted feel to the place. As we walked through the village, many folk came out of their houses to meet us with a smile and "Bula". They were all k een to find out about us, where we came from and how long we were going to stay. One of the locals, Malina, gave us some papaya and the chief, Miti and his wife Raijieli, invited us for dinner. Yesterday we went for a 4km hike over to the other side of Ono, to visit the school at Naqara (pronounced Nagara). There are 6 villages on Ono Island and all the children travel to the primary school on a Sunday evening and return to their village on Friday afternoon. The trail across the island is sometimes steep and rocky, it crosses several streams and is very pretty. Scores of skinks skittered away from our advancing feet, while numerous colourful butterflies flitted around our shoulders. Part of the trail is in rain forest and part is in pine forest which has been planted to provide timber for their houses. It is a little arduous in places, and the 4km walk took us almost 1 1/2 hours! On the way we met a few local men, one with dogs to hunt for wild pigs and a few with machetes for plant ing or harvesting crops they grow in the mountains, such as Taro and Yam. We got to the school at lunch time and heard the cries of "Valagi, Valagi" go up from the playground. Suddenly we were swamped with children all wanting to hold our hands and talk to us. After a bit of a rest we started the trek back - and quickly realised that we are not as fit as we thought we were! Simultaneously feeling good about getting some exercise and scolding ourselves for being unfit for rugged terrain, we arrived back about 3pm. Malina was waiting for us with some hot buns she had baked in a pot over the fire. They were delicious! Dinner with the chief was an interesting experience. We were asked to arrive at 5.30pm and dinner was already set out on the "table cloth" on the floor. Places were set for us to sit on the floor and eat. Boiled taro, yams and breadfruit took up much of the floor space, along with taro leaves baked in coconut milk and 2 very small but whole barracuda poached in coconut mi lk. We were also treated to a load of small local shrimps in noodles. There would have been enough food for 10 people, far too much for the four of us. We were ordered to eat with the chief, but his wife waited until we were finished before she ate anything. The chief kept right on eating! The floor was covered in hundreds, perhaps thousands of teeny tiny ants and these marched right over the food, crawling amongst everything. We were carefully trying to pick out pieces of food that were in the clear, but our hosts just grabbed large portions of food and ate it, not seeming to even notice all the ants! We were then served tea, which is boiled water poured over a couple of leaves from the lemon tree. We are not tea drinkers at all, but it would not have been polite to refuse. Karl did decline sugar in his tea however, because the ants had got to the sugar bowl first! When we got back to the boat, under cover of darkness and before climbing on board, we stripped off all of our clothes and shook them out, fearing the ants might be trapped in our clothing and infest the boat. It would be terrible to live with ants sharing all our meals. Today so far has been a baking day. More "William" cake has just emerged from the oven. This simple to make fruit cake is superb at any time, and especially great to nibble on when on passage. Two loaves of "Corcaigh" bread have just gone in to the oven, to give us fresh bread for lunch. The weather forecast is still "crappy" as David would say (must be a meteorological term), for the next couple of days. So we won't be venturing far, but we will enjoy more village experiences and continue our passage preparation.

The lovely people in the village of Gasele adopted us into their family on Friday. There are about 35 houses in Gasele and another dozen or so in the next village. We joined in with their family reunion celebrations and they helped us celebrate the birthday of Heather's Mum and Niece. At the Kava party, Heather had her first ever drink of Kava. This is a root of the Yacona (pepper) tree, which is pound into a mash and squeezed into water. The drink tastes like muddy socks - or at least what you might imagine muddy socks to taste like - this has not been verified! There is a whole ceremony that goes with the kava drinking and the whole room shouted "Bula" for Mum's birthday when Heather had her first bowl of Kava. The neighbouring village also joined in the festivities and the chief took us to his house. The neighbouring village can only be reached by boat, or by crossing the "Mogili" bridge. Crossing the bridge was fun - it is straight out of Jungle Book! Trunks of coconut trees lie horizontally across the water, supported underneath by sticks coming up out of the water at opposing angles to form a V. Everything is lashed together with vines so that the tops of the upright supporting sticks come up past the horizontal trunk, to about waist height. More sticks are lashed horizontally between the upright V sticks to form a sort of handrail. It still requires a balancing act to cross it and the handrail is not really a support - it would give way if you put all your weight on it, so it is there just to guide and steady. Good fun! The feast itself was interesting. The men cooked the "lovo" which is like the hangi we have in NZ. Stones are cooked in a fire until hot, then placed in a pit in the ground. Root vegetables such as taro and cassava are placed in baskets woven from coconut leaves. Pieces of pork are wrapped in banana leaves. The food is placed in the pit with the hot stones, covered and cooked for a long time. Meanwhile the ladies in the village prepare yu mmy chicken dishes with onions and garlic and ginger and rosemary that they grow themselves. Karl gave pieces of chocolate to the children and quickly made many friends! The "lunch" we had been invited to lasted the whole day - we didn't need dinner. We were given fresh coconuts and breadfruit to take back to the boat and reminded several times to send best wishes from both villages to Mum for her birthday. A truly wonderful day. It is interesting to watch the children after school - they borrow one of the local boats, complete with 75hp outboard motors and zip around the bay. One boatload of kids stopped near us, threw a concrete block tied to a rope over the side as an anchor and all jumped in for a swim. Yesterday we went for a sail for several hours in a stiff breeze to try out the auto pilot (Raymond). He behaved well on both tacks, even with full sails up and heeling over considerably - so perhaps we have fixed him! It was also a good time to do some "hove-to" practice. During our sailing around we caught a rather large Mahimahi. Enough for 6 nights worth of meals! Dinner was Coconut battered fish and breadfruit chips. We ate like little piglets! Now at Ono Island, have been snorkeling amongst pretty coral and starting to prepare for our return to NZ. A few passage meals now in the freezer and some maintenance jobs done, plus a "to-do list" of other little items that will need our attention in the next couple of weeks before we head back to NZ.

The island of Kadavu is south of the main island of Fiji and if you keep heading south, this is the last major lump of land on the chart before NZ. Becasue of this, the locals call Kadavu, "little NZ" or "New Zealand Lai lai". The island is covered in lush green tropical rain forest and has some unique bird life, found only in Kadavu. They have their own Kadavu fantail, Kadavu honeyeater, Kadavu musk parrot and the velvet fruit dove. Sitting in the bay, the jungle-like bird calls can be heard from time to time - a pretty sound. The Namalata reefs on the northern side of Kadavu are fabulous dive spots and we have had a couple of wonderful dives. Visibility of more than 25m. On one dive we were treated to vast walls of coral, sporting many bright yellow corals. The next dive was a kaleidoscope of colourful soft corals. Brilliant purple, pink, bright yellow, rich reds, deep red-browns - all softly swaying on the rock faces. Throngs of blue and yellow fusiliers, a wide variety of other fish and a turtle kept us entertained. So beautiful. We have also done a bit of walking, through the "town" of Vunisea, the village of Namalata and now the village of Gasele. In Vunisea there is a small hospital, post office, dept of agriculture and 55 houses. There is a small produce market in Vunisea and a few small "supermarkets" like tiny corner dairy/kiosk stores. Apart from locally grown items, like cabbage, papaya and pumpkins, they also sell NZ onions and carrots (Ohakune carrots). Vunisea also has a tiny airport, with a runway that stretches on the only bit of flat land, from the north shore to the south shore. The plane holds a capacity of 19 people, but usually less passengers and lands once per day. This is the way most tourists arrive into Kadavu, by plane from Nadi. From Vunisea, tourists then have to travel about an hour by local boat to one of the 4 resorts on Kadavu, or to one of the two resorts at Ono Island nearby. The drought broke on Sunday night, with a thunder storm. Our first thunderstorm in the whole trip since leaving NZ. This is the first rain here for a couple of months. Since then we have seen misty rain hanging in the tops of the mountains each day, but hardly anything that reaches sea level. Over the last couple of days we have also been trying to fix our Automatic Pilot (we call him Raymond). He started misbehaving a few weeks ago and has been getting worse and worse - especially under sail, though not too bad when motoring. Perhaps he doesn't like heeling over? We think we have followed the instructions correctly to bleed air out of the system and hopefully that works. Yesterday we motor sailed from Namalata bay to Gasele bay and Raymond was working well, so fingers crossed. We will try him out on a more challenging sail tomorrow. Today we did sevusevu in Gasele village, about 64 people live here. There is no cell phone coverage in the village, so we asked for advice on where to find signal so we call Heather's Mum in NZ for her Birthday. They advised us to go out of the bay into open sea to find a signal, which we did - just two bars in a very small spot in the middle of watery nowhere! The locals are having a "lovo" feast today to celebrate a family reunion. When they heard it was Mum's Birthday they said we must join them for the feast and the whole village will celebrate Mum's Birthday too!

We loved having our visitors, Pieter and Sarah, come and stay with us for 10 days. They were great company and we had enough time (just) to get to the top of the Yasawas and back again, and see the highlights along the way. Heather, who loves getting creative with cooking, especially appreciated the inspiring meals whipped up by Sarah. More recipes have been jotted down in the "Aradonna Cookbook". After we waved them goodbye, we had every intention of heading back up to the Yasawas again for a more leisurely look. But having done the trip up and down twice now, we decided instead, to explore some new areas of Fiji. Realising that we might be away from "facilities" for a while we headed back into Nadi for some more provisions, did the last of the laundry and topped up the water tanks again before leaving Denarau just before the marina check out time of midday on Friday. As we had left our departure a little later than planned, we decided only to go as far as Momi Bay that afternoon. M omi Bay is on the western side of Vitu Levu and is the last bay as you head south before you have to get out of the "outer reef" system. Most of Fiji's 333 islands are on a large plateau, in relatively shallow water, surrounded by an outer reef. While the reef is not continuous, it does form a kind of barrier around the outside of the island group. In many places, like at Momi Bay, there are only small gaps in the reef. To venture south of Momi Bay we had to head out of this "outer reef" into deep blue water again. We left Momi Bay at 8.30am on Saturday, sure we would have enough time to head south down the western side of Vitu Levu and around the southern side to a sheltered bay. We were off to a great start as the tide was going out. As we headed between the gap in the reef we got a 1.4 knot push from the tide helping us along. The only problem was, there was no wind. We motored for 4 hours in glassy conditions before the wind came up. Then, our friend the wind decided to play tri cks on us again and was straight on the nose. We seem to have had this problem for the last few weeks - no matter which way we decide to head, the wind is going in the opposite direction! The waves got up with the wind and beating in to the waves slowed down our progress. Eventually we made it to Somosomo Bay in fading light at almost 5pm. Not ideal, but thankfully we still had enough visibility to get through the reef and into the bay. Being on the southern side of Viti Levu was like being in another world. Here the vegetation is lush and green and thriving. A stark contrast to the crisp, brown, bare hills of the northern side. This morning we decided to leave extra early for the 50 N mile crossing, South, to Kadavu, just in case the going was slow again. At 6am and still half asleep, the search for coffee revealed many soggy packets of provisions in the food locker. It seems we had been a little over enthusiastic about getting the water tanks really full and managed to overflow th em into the food locker! Out came packets of coffee, meusli bars, nuts, noodles, milk powder and crackers, forming soggy haphazard piles on the table and the seats. The inside of the boat looked like a corner dairy hit by a storm! We managed to mop up, giggle our way through a quick breakfast and then head out of the bay before 7am. At first it looked like there was no wind again, but to our delight, we had only just motored out of the bay when a whisper of a breeze came up - and it was in the right direction! The sails were up in no time and with smiles on our faces we had a wonderful sail in the sunshine. The island of Kadavu is not on the same plateau as the rest of the Fiji group, so once again we were sailing across deep blue water, over 2000 meters deep. This was the first time we had been really "at sea" since arriving in Fiji. The wind behaved itself for once, strengthening to a light but steady breeze, from the right direction - all day! We made 49 N miles in just 7 hours - a great average of 7 knots. In fact, we were going so well under sail it almost seemed a shame to bring the sails in when it was time to enter the harbour of Namalata Bay. We arrived in plenty of time for a snorkel - with loads of colourful soft coral, hard coral and fish to be seen. Some stunning blue coral caught our eye, standing out from all the rest! Thankfully, Heather was also able to wash her salty, windblown "haystack" and turn it in to something resembling hair again. Life is good!