Wainaloka Wildflower Wandering
A trip to Makogai, Wainaloka, and Suva from July and August 2024
A trip from Savusavu to Wianaloka and back. A reunion, a lost dinghy, and village life. We had about a month between Sam and Alison’s departure and the arrival of our next guests, our daughter Channing and her travel buddy Sarah.
We had not seen our good friends Adam, Jodi, and Caeleb on Wildflower since we left Fiji last year and we had a date to meet in Makogai, a nice day’s sail southwest of Savusavu. We stopped there last year with Pawsitive Latitude and Flite Deck and liked it a lot. Before we left we had some cruising life "hello"s and "goodbye"s to take care of. We said goodbye to Graham and Kerri on Pulsar, who had sold their yacht and were starting their journey home and to Maricx whom we had met in the Lau. We said hello to our new friends on Danika called Sabrina, Aron, Ocean, and Indigo, with whom we spent a lot of time since. Danika gave us a birthday present to bring with us to Wildflower and with the precious cargo onboard we headed off to Makogai.
We had a really nice sail from Savusavu and went right to shore and did Sevusevu and went for a tour. Makogai was a major leprosarium from 1911 to 1969 with as many as 700 patients in 1950. The patients came from many British colonies in the South Pacific. The current residents have a giant clam hatchery and nursery and a primary school and are very friendly. Wildflower arrived the following day and we joined them for sevusevu and a reunion hike to the school and village on the other side of the island. We had heaps to catch up on with stories about our cyclone season adventures in the Marshall Islands and New Zealand. We spent a few days exploring and snorkeling and getting a palm leaf basket making demonstration. On one of our snorkels, we watched an octopus win a battle with a very large eel. It turns out that the eel was likely going after the octopus and the octopus killed the eel in self defense (as opposed to for food). A couple days later, we woke up and found ourselves dinghy less.
The villagers and the Wildflower crew sprung into action to help and we all searched the few miles around the west side of Makogai all the way over to the next reef. It was to no avail. After a couple of hours of bashing around in some sloppy water, we called off the search and headed to an interesting anchorage on the north side of Naigani where we recovered emotionally from the loss of our dinghy. We also talked about what we were going to do until we had a dinghy again. Adam and Jodi were awesome and said they would stick with us until we had the dinghy sorted. Luckily, they were planning head to Savusavu anyway, so it was a little bit less inconvenient for them.
Wainaloka is a little-visited and wonderful village on a nice, big very well protected bay in the southwest corner of Ovalau. Ovalau was the site of the first capital of Fiji, Levuka. Wainaloka itself was settled by Solomon Islanders who were blackbirded (enslaved, more or less) by the British. The British eventually felt bad enough about this and set them up in a very pretty spot and gave them an Anglican church. Because the village does not have iTaukei status or heritage, there is no chief as such, so the local head of the church performs the sevusevu ritual. We were guided to the chief’s house by Fane, a Fijian woman who runs the village bakery. She comes from a chiefly family and knows the sevusevu ritual and asked if she could perform the ceremony. She did and it was a treat to hear her heartfelt rendition of the blessing and welcome ceremony.
The literal and figurative heart of the village is a very large, rugby pitch-sized field. Wildflower carries a quiver of flying discs which provided a great activity to attract the locals. The children were the first to join in and were followed by a handful of adults. Fijians all seem to be skilled athletes and they very quickly figured out how to throw and catch the discs. After a bit of ultimate frisbee, we joined in a pick up rugby game. The adults play touch rugby in the pick up games but the youth play full on tackle and quite enjoyed schooling and tackling us vulagi. Sunday we joined the village at church. It was a real blessing for us since we were brought up in the Episcopal church and we could follow along quite easily, even the bits that were in Fijian. After church the school teacher’s family invited us to enjoy some lemon tea and lunch and then took us on a tour of the village. We found out the school teacher’s husband’s father’s (follow that?) village needed a new battery for their solar energy set up. Luckily, we had brought our extra one hoping to give it away. It was great to see it go to a new home and to meet a real need.
Since we were only a dinghy ride, truck/bus ride on a dirt road, ferry boat passage, and bus ride from Suva, we decided that Mike should take advantage of the relative ease of getting there to get a broken tooth crown tended to and the Wildflower crew would look after Shelby. We found what sounded like a good dentist in Suva, the capital of and largest city in Fiji, and booked an appointment. The journey started at 5:00am and ended at 8:00pm that evening. It was a great Fijian travel adventure and Mike got to spend a couple nights in a hotel, with a proper shower. The bed wasn’t as nice as the ones on Calla Lily though. On the way there, Mike visited Levuka which was the first capital of Fiji. It is also the site of Fiji’s cession to British rule in 1874 and where independence was granted in 1970. There’s also a few good restaurants. It was great to be back in a proper city like Suva after about a year. That is if you consider Papeete a proper city of course.
The dentist had a very modern office in a swanky shopping mall and in just one half-hour visit in the morning and one in the afternoon of the same day Mike’s tooth was sorted. This was very nice since the crown had fallen off in the Marshall Islands 6 months previously. The cost? USD600. About a tenth of what it would have cost in America. (Later on in Savusavu, we spent USD50 between the 2 of us for a teeth cleaning and 3 fillings. Shelby had a couple USD20 doctor visits as well. Prescriptions ran us about USD10-20. We are always pleasantly surprised every time we seek medical care outside America.)
While on the trip to Suva, Mike located a dinghy and visited The Yacht Shop headquarters near Suva to seal the deal. Another shout out to the Yacht Shop for a job well done. The trip back was another fun Fijian travel adventure and Shelby and the Wildflower crew met Mike in Levuka for lunch and to get some groceries. We had a wonderfully awesome few weeks away from Savusavu thanks to Adam, Jodi, and Caeleb’s loving care. They are also a blast to cruise with and they are always up for an adventure.
Now it was time to head back to Savusavu and collect the new dinghy and motor and get Calla Lily and ourselves ready for our next guests, Channing and Sarah.
