Savu Savu Fiji

We are really enjoying this small Fijian town. We are on a mooring within easy rowing distance of the boat club wharf and the centre of Savu Savu is only 5 minutes walk away. There are plenty of supplies in the supermarket and an excellent and very cheap fruit and vegetable market where we bought bananas, paw paw etc and a huge avocado. This type of avocado is about 4 times as big as the ones available in NZ . We are very careful to wash all fruit coming onto the boat to make sure we are not bringing stowaway insects onboard. We have found that there is an insect which looks like an earwig, but much more loathesome, which hides in bunches of bananas. We first came across them in Samoa. What we now do is to suspend the bunch on a piece of line and leave it hanging off the back of the boat for a while in the sea. After a while a gasping earwig or two comes to the surface and floats away. I found one in today's bunch and rushed off to get my camera but it had gone by the time I got back! However we will try and get a picture of one soon and hopefully organise for some more photos to go onto the blog.

We lunched on vegetable samosas and cassava chips today washed down with a Fiji Bitter beer. There are quite a few small restaurants here, especially Indian ones. There is a high percentage of Indians here, descendants of the Indian workers brought in to work in the sugar cane industry about a hundred years ago. On Monday we will take the local bus across the island to Labasa which apparently is a spectacular ride across the highlands and is one important centre of sugar cane farming.

Last night we had a meal with a bunch of Yachties at the Marina where they put on a Fijian Feast of taro, cassava, breadfruit, taro leaves and coconut sauce, crab, plantains, fish and much more all for about 7 $NZ

We will be here at least a week. We want to see a lot more of this lush island. The creek where we are anchored is surrounded by mountains densely covered with tropical rain forest.

There is huge interest in the Rugby world cup here and we will be watching the All Black game against France on Saturday at the Savusavu Yacht club bar at the Copra Shed!

The long bearded American running the moorings here is a great character and he also is an expert in Led lights which he sells for boats, so we have bought an LED anchor light to hang off the forestay since we are awaiting our replacement tricolour and anchor light which failed at the mast head in Samoa. Crewman Ted will be bringing the new mast head light with him when he comes up from Auckland next month.
We will send another blog within a few days before we leave here.
Now let me see - what is for tea tonight - oh yes Wahoo!

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