Vuda Point, Fiji. Week 1

Oct 13-19, 2014  Vuda Point, Fiji

End of our first week in Fiji.  I love this country, even though the marina is not quite as pictured.  Their brochure and website talk about a hotel with swimming pool,  apartments for rent, extensive landscaping with fruit trees, supermarket, laundry, extensive repair facilities  a large, hurricane safe marina….   All is technically true, but more as a work in progress than a reality.  the supermarket is a small store.  Half of the marina is a mud flat although the completed half is fine.  The laundry is one machine that never seems to get my clothes clean.  But still, the people are wonderful.  The restaurant is very good, as is the breakfast cafe.  Wifi is impossible, slow and hard to connect on the boat.  We get 1 hour per day free and so far have not even been about to use that.

Now that we are tied into our space, we need to deal with getting on and off Rhapsody.  It is not a problem at mean tide but high and low tides are very difficult.  Rhapsody has a low freeboard but a high clipper bow.  This means that at high tide the bow is about 4 feet above the dock. To get on and off we have to go onto the bow pulpit, climb over the railing and step onto the small platform.  This is done while pulling on the dock line to get close enough to reach it with one foot.  Eventually we found a board which could be lashed across the bow to give us a bit of a toe hole on the outside of the railing.  So first climb over the rail and balance on a 1’6” bit of wood.  Then pull not the line to move the boat in.  Then quickly step onto the platform.  The minute you let go of the line the boat starts to move away again.   I finally found a big plastic bucker that I could use as a step stoop.  Getting back on is the reverse and low tide is a whole other problem  (Pictures will be on Facebook soon).  Of course this is even worse when you are carrying laundry, groceries, trash, computers or anything else. 

 Many of the boats here seem to be empty.  This is known to be a safe hurricane harbor so lots of people leave their boats here and fly home   All around the marina are boats which have been pulled out of the water and embedded into pits in the ground for hurricane safety.  We have opted to keep Rhapsody in the water and stay aboard.  If there is actually a hurricane, called cyclone here, we will go next door to the hotel for the duration.

Yes there is a nice hotel next door.  There used to be a connecting gate but something happened and now the gate is locked, so cruisers need to walk down the road about half a mile or climb around the rocks to get around the fence.   Other than the marina and the hotel, there is nothing here.  We are way out in the country.  A bus come by every few hours and goes into the next big town, Lautoka.  It is also possible to get to Nadi and Denerau by changing busses on the main highway.  Definitely a slow pace of life here.  The first trip to town was a delight.  The bus stopped at every driveway, even if they were only a hundred meters apart, to pick up school kids.  It wandered up and down the back roads, picking up and dropping off for almost an hour before we got to town, 7 miles away.

The town of Lautoka is small, packed with small stores mostly run by Indians.  This is Diwali season and there are sales everywhere; saris and jeweled skirts and wonderful fabrics and jewelry and fireworks and lights.  Prices are good, especially compared to Tahiti but the selection in the grocery stores is limited.  Once again it is hard to find ground coffee or old fashioned oatmeal or granola.  There is a huge vegetable market and a good meat market, but since we have no refrigeration it is hard to really take advantage of it. 

Mostly this week has been lazy.  We spent several days just reading and evenings in the bar.  Fiji has several brands of local beer for $3-$4.  Tuesday night is half price pizza night.  Wednesday and Saturday are movie nights.  Thursday is happy hour.  Friday and Sunday feature live music, quite good actually.  Interestingly enough, there is a different crowd in the bar and restaurant every night, not just cruisers.  Even though it seems like we are miles from anywhere, we must be close enough to town for the locals to come for dinner and to watch the gorgeous sunsets.