September 2008: South Pacific
Port Denarau Island, Viti Levu, Fiji pt2 (S 17.46.258 E 177.22.927)
One of the pleasurable aspects of this adventure is to rent a car and go on a road trip. We’ve had many discussions about driving one of these bigger Fiji islands and it just turns out that it happened to be at the end of our stay. The fine print states that compulsory insurance does not cover theft as well as many other items. Strike one. We rented a car and it was brought to us at the marina and that made life much easier. The very first priority was the other Dave reminding Bob to drive on the left and not even out of the parking lot Dave says, “Left side!” I admit, it takes getting used to and most intersections have circles making it even harder.
We had every intention of driving the southern coral coast and set out in a counter-clockwise direction. Immediately after getting away from downtown the roads and houses turn to rural country. Sugar is a common crop here but on a much smaller individual scale than say Hawaii. A very common site is a roadside produce stand although we had no need to stop and see. We traveled for an hour or so and sidetracked to what we thought was a coast side resort that we thought we had seen from Momi Bay. Turned out not to be the place and was actually a budget scuba resort. The food was great and Coke is Coke (although here it is made with sugar and not corn sugar). The buyer beware comes into play wherein the tides affect this shore. After lunch I meandered thru the restaurant/pool/scuba shack area and discovered that the dive boat parks about ¼ mile offshore due to the tide. There’s not much in the way of snorkeling here but I’m sure with some effort a mud creature can be found.
One of our sidetracks was to the Momi Bay Guns. These guns date back to WW1 and were placed here to guard against invasion in WW2. The road out to this part of the coast was gravel, desolate and pretty much looked like we were going the wrong way. This road is where we saw the guy on horseback. The attendant was a pretty mellow guy and gave us a brief tour and told us about the place. We previously anchored in this bay but did not see the guns from shore as you need to know where they are to pick them out. We also went thru the pass in the reef that these guns point at. From up here you can also see the outlying islands. These gun emplacements were at one time shadowed by a lookout post higher on the hill, a signal post and lots of barracks. In its day it was quite an operation.
We made it as far as Sigatoka and called it a day. The drive was monotonous as it was rolling hills and the same thing over and over again including bad pavement. Sigatoka was a seedy little downtown and I renamed it Seedytoka. Not much to write home about. On the drive back we cheated death again. Granted, we’re doing this sailing thing and there is a lot of risk involved. All the aspects of this adventure have some kind of risk. But, there is a disproportionate amount of risk involved with driving a car or traveling by car. We were minding our own business and tooling along with Bob at the wheel. We were doing 60-80 kilometers and within the speed limit when we approached a horse on the side of the road. Oh yeah, did I mention that the animals kind of run free here? Horses, cows, goats, etc. We even saw a goat run across the road and then out of the bushes on the side of the road comes someone chasing it. Okay, so we approach the horse at speed, slow down a bit and use some caution to see what it is going to do. It appears to be staying put so we keep going and at the worst time it decides to cross the road. We’re not talking dart across the road. We’re talking take a step and turn and saunter across the road. Bob laid on the brakes and made those tires sing. The horse never upped its pace and luckily for us it kept walking. By the time we were at it it was out of our lane. Anything different and we would have clothes-lined its legs and it would have fallen on the hood and windshield. The fact that all the animals here are skin and bones does not take away from the fact that it was still several hundred pounds and we were in a little 4-door.
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