Photo shows the anchorage at Kavala Bay in Kadavu

We have been in and around the island of Kadavu for the last few days. It's Fiji's 3rd largest island, 40 km or so long and home to 10,000 people and a lot of endemic birds like the Kadavu musk parrot. Kadavu is actually pronounced Kandavu, a strange Fijian spelling anomaly (the nearby island of Beqa is pronounced Mbengga!).

Kadavu is very Fiijian. We haven't seen any Indo-Fijians here or any other ethnic group for that matter. The locals call their island "little New Zealand" and it certainly looks a lot like Great Barrier or the Sounds with the misty, bush covered hills. There are tree ferns in their hundreds here and it rains a lot, too! But to us it's a lot more like Papua New Guinea, especially the way people live.

There are 5 villages in the bay we are in (Kavala). All the houses are made of modern materials, but a bit shacky. When Geoff came here in 1973 most of the houses would have been bush materials. There are very few roads. In fact there aren't any around here. There is only one vehicle, a tractor belonging to the secondary school, which looks just like the first government secondary school we taught at in Papua New Guinea, Ihu High School. Even though there aren't any cars or roads, there are quite a few fibreglass banana boats. They have become the "family car" although not every family has one.



The Fijian family car in Kavala Bay

The villages here are served by a once weekly ferry cum cargo boat from Suva, 80 km to the North. There is an airstrip at Vunisea, the island "capital" and the odd store. There's a very good one near where we are anchored. It has a hell of a lot of stuff in it but everything is behind a grill so you can't tell what's for sale. You just have to ask. Of course like just about everywhere in the world these days there is cell phone and internet coverage, courtesy of a tower perched on a nearby hill top.



The Liohana II, Kavala's once a week link with the big smoke.

We did our "sevusevu" ceremony with the chief (turanga) of the nearest village. He is SDA, so doesn't drink kava (yaqona) but still accepted our gift and gave a speech in Fijian. He said he exchanges the yaqona sevusevu gifts he gets from visitors with the principal of the secondary school.



Vunivaivai, the village where we did our sevusevu. The village Methodist church is full to capacity on Sunday but the chief is not Methodist. He's Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) so has to walk several kilometres to his own church or hitch a ride on someone else's boat.


We've also been down to the East end of Kadavu to swim / snorkel the Naigoro Pass - one of the passes through the Astrolabe Lagoon's barrier reef. While in Kavala Bay we've walked for hours along village trails through the bush and looked for some of the island's unique birds - the Kadavu musk parrot which is red green and blue and very noisy and the barking pigeons.



The Kadavu musk parrot



Quiet anchorage near the Naigoro Pass

We are off to Suva, Fiji's capital, tomorrow and are mindful that the sailing season is beginning to fade. We still intend sailing to New Caledonia as the distance to North Cape is less from there than from Fiji, but there is still plenty to see in Fiji. Not for once in our later lives, we've realised we need another life time to see everything we want to see!