Calypso's Journal: Budd Reef

At Budd Reef, we met up again with Auspice. They had arrived the day before and managed an invitation for us to the village the following day to (guess what) - watch the rugby. And to make this one very special, Fiji was playing again and this time it was against South Africa!

Here we met Will, a wonderful erudite Fijian, his wife, Betty and 10-month old son, Alex, as well as his father (the chief), mother and many others. What a delightful family and everyone is related in some shape or form.

The game was really exciting. Fiji was trounced by SA –sorry Fiji – and this time ‘when in Rome’ went out the window; Paul wore his SA rugby shirt and I waved the flag.

This was followed by dinner at Will’s house as Betty had prepared a smorgasbord of a feast for us, all traditional Fijian fare – ever so good. Fijian hospitality is definitely something to write home about.

Another fish caught on the way, this time a dog-toothed tuna, so

no sooner had we dropped anchor, when Auspice and Will joined us for some sashimi then a couple of days later had Auspice over again for sushi. We’re loving all this fresh fish and so does the freezer.

We have now been in Fiji for two months but, ‘til now, had not experienced a kava drinking ritual.

The English Oxford dictionary describes kava as such:

kava (/ka:və/

■n

(mass noun) a narcotic sedative drink made in Polynesia from the crushed roots of a plant of the pepper family.

In an earlier blog insertion, I had mentioned the sevusevu ceremony which is performed with each chief in the various locales. The kava root that we presented to the chief of this island was then pounded to a powder, placed into a cloth then soaked and squeezed to obtain a concoction that can only be described as mud. A bowl, or half coconut shell, is then deferentially passed around with lots of ceremony and hand clapping.

The first thing one feels (after getting over the shock of the repugnant taste of the stuff) is a slight tingling of the lips and tongue and, if sufficient is consumed, a very intoxicated and relaxed sensation. This is quite amusing as, in Fiji, alcoholic drinks are highly discouraged but kava is drunk in enormous quantities everywhere rendering those who consume vast amounts as written off from any meaningful work for the rest of the day - they simply get high then fall asleep. Verdict: leave me to my wine any day thank you very much.

This was one of those occasions where we, or rather Paul, was able to step in to help. Will’s boat was in desperate need of repair and Paul set about fixing the various holes with fibreglass. The boat is his livelihood so he was certainly very appreciative. While still in Qamea, Paul had spent a few days repairing old Oco’s dinghies as well so, all in all, there are a couple of Fijians with much safer vessels around now. Will gave us a huge lobster in thanks, along with a stalk of bananas and some papayas so we were thrilled.

Auspice’s Jim is a dentist so, despite the fact that, a couple of days later, we’d moved over to another island, Cobia, a few miles away, a boatload of villagers arrived at his stern all suffering from various stages of painful teeth. By the time a tooth gets to that stage in this part of the world, it’s usually beyond saving so the morning saw him pull four teeth and a much happier boatload returned. It’s wonderful that the guys are able to help out in this manner.

Cobia (pronounced Thombia - they really do have a strange way of enunciatiing things here) is an old volcanic ring of an island surrounding a large crater open to the sea on the northeast side. It’s only residents are wild goats. We had a fabulous hike to the top after a fairly scary start (for me anyway) as the rocks were steeply sloped with few good footholds. Someone had placed ropes in some areas but it seemed to me that those were just where they weren’t needed whilst there were none where they would have been rather helpful. Despite this, it was a great hike with magnificent cycads growing all over the rocky slopes and great views down into the crater and over to the islands and reefs beyond.

After a few more days, Auspice headed off in one direction and we in another. We're hoping to meet up again when we return to Savusavu which will have to be fairly shortly as we are getting exceedingly low on food and have had no beer or wine for over a week now - that, I may add, is devastating!

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