01 June 2015
We received another round of greetings in Raviravi and were told to sit outside the church to await the service. As we sat waiting one of the village leaders invited us to join everyone for lunch after the service. We sat and sat, and were finally later ushered into the church at 11:00. The service began with a sermon and singing, and then a series of performances by groups from the surrounding villages. Realizing that our sojourn to shore was ending up being much longer than we anticipated, we began thinking about the tides, and our long journey back to Navatu... would we be able to cross the shallows before low tide? The service continued with a very enthusiastic f sermon by a visiting minister (a special occasion for the village we found out later!). By now we were getting really concerned about tides. It was impossible to slip out of Church discreetly and we didn't want to insult our hosts, so we sat patiently through even further rounds of singing. 3 1/2 hours is a long time on a wooded pew.
One of the islanders from the first village caught Kim's nervous glances out the church window and whispered to us just as the service was ending. He suggested that we go to shore immediately, as he shared our concern about tides. When we got to the inlet we found our dinghies high and dry with the reef exposed in the background. We weren't going anywhere until the tide came back in. In actual fact to get across the reef and though the cut in the mangroves requires a high tide that would not occur until well after dark. Obviously this presented a bit of a dilemma.