In Paradise "Again"
08 August 2015 | Paradise Taveuni
After three weeks in the remote Lau Group, we were up for some luxury.
We arrived in “Paradise” (Paradise Taveuni Resort that is) early morning around 7 am. After an uneventful night of sailing and motoring in light winds, we were ready to tie up to a mooring ball and relax. A VHF radio call to the resort was met with a prompt response and we were told that one of the staff would be out to help us with the mooring ball. Out he came right on cue. He handled our line, and we were settled. Well… almost. He suggested that we move to their newest and strongest mooring once the boat occupying it left. (We had heard a rumour that two mooring balls failed a couple of years ago, so we were more than happy to comply!). At this point it was still early morning and dead calm. But sure enough, by mid- afternoon the wind started howling and the swell picked up to 4-5 feet, just after the other boat had left the new mooring. We happened to be sipping tropical drinks on shore when the weather changed, and interestingly, the staff who had helped us earlier was no longer around!! But truthfully, while it would have been nice to have them give us a hand tying us up to the new mooring, we were fine doing it ourselves. The good news was that the mooring was free, as the owner said he liked the ambience of having a couple of “yachts” in front of the resort. Things were definitely looking up.
I had heard that the reef in front of the resort was good so once we were settled I grabbed my mask and flippers, lowered our swim grid and jumped in to check it out. The reports were right. There were an excellent variety of fish and coral right there. Hmmm… I might like this place.
For the next three days we relaxed, ate great meals at tables set on the lawn, overlooking the ocean and our boat. The grounds were certainly upscale to what we had recently seen and the staff were exceptional. We selected our own organic veggies from the resort’s onsite garden, took the resort taxi into Somosomo (the nearest village) for some provisioning, and were spoiled by our driver who pushed our grocery cart and provided us with advice on local brands. I even got two dives in with the onsite PADI dive shop, complete with a “cruisers discount”. The dive master took us to a reef aptly called the ‘Coral Garden’, which had a wide variety of soft and hard corals and a multitude of fish.
On day three the weather looked good for a short trip to Koro island where we planned to rendezvous with old friends from Canada on Sea Whisper. So early the next morning we untied our lines and headed west on the first leg of our trip to the West side of Fiji.