The next morning we again headed out early as we wanted to make it all the way to Savusavu. Midway along the passage we had to navigate through the two mile relatively narrow Nasonisoni Passage between the two reefs off Savunia Point. But the morning was calm with good light and fairly low tide, so we could see the channel fairly well to correlate with our Navionics and Ovitalmap charts. We then proceeded on several miles off the charted reefs in our usual conservative manner across to Savusavu.
This was the largest town in on Vanua Levu, but was still rather small and very laid back. Most of our time here it was raining to one degree or another.
We picked up a somewhat decrepit mooring from the Waitui Marina and settled in. The marina office was in a quite rundown building with little to recommend it though the staff were very nice.
The island like most others here are volcanic in origin with lots of hot springs. The shore of the bay in Savusavu was interesting as there were springs along the shore which constantly put out clouds of steam.
We had several meals over at the Copra Shed Marina which had a nice restaurant. Our best dinner was down at the Surf and Turf restaurant where they had a highly recommended chef.
One day we taxied over to the Jean Cousteau Dive Resort which was gorgeous. Even the flower arrangements were beautiful.
We then proceeded to the nearby floral garden. This turned out to actually be a wonderful collection of palm trees from all over the world, many rare and endangered, growing in and around scattered areas of colorful flowers.
Our last stop was a visit to a local village for a more personalized sevusevu, the ritual presentation of Kava root to the main man or chief of the village which if accepted, as it virtually always is, allows you to wander through the village, greet the always friendly villagers, and take photos. The village was very similar to Soso which we had visited from the Manta Ray Resort. But we were on our own this time.
This was again a farming and fishing village. It rained lightly the entire time we were there, so we could not visit the muddier areas. But it had very much the same relaxed and friendly feeling of Soso. It had be partially destroyed by Cyclone Winston, but our guide was quite proud that he had helped to rebuild the church.
It was interesting to see one of the fishing rafts that the villagers take out into the bay to fish often with two or three fishermen on board. It was quite a different kind of craft than we are used to fishing from.
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