Commodore
October 14, 2024

Tuesday 15 October – 9km walk to Champagne beach

The forecast was for the rain to stop and be cloudy all day, so an excellent cooler day for a good walk. We headed into the village and tied JeldiJeldi up to the very smart jetty that was built for a cruise ship. Sadly for the village the ship no longer comes, so their investment is a bit of a white elephant. I think the odd big boat still uses it. Handy for us as leaving JeldiJeldi on the beach for half a day with the tide and wind movement is not ideal. This village really has one of the nicest beaches of all the villages we have visited. It is also very well kept, a lot of civic pride with lawns all mown between the houses (no fences) and lots of frangipani and hibiscus trees. We went back to the chief’s house where we did sevusevu last week. We had some more empty bottles for them and a shackle that the chief had asked for. They were so friendly inviting us in again, she was sitting in her same place on the kitchen floor grating coconuts.

The chief showed us to the track that leads out the village and down the whole island. We decided to walk as far as we could. It was a lovely walk with a huge variety of butterflies flitting around us the whole way, with the occasional grasshopper flapping across the road. We walked all the way to Champagne beach, up and down the rolling terrain. we climbed up to the higest point and could see the sea on both sides of the island. The windward side was howling, made us realise how protected we are in our bay. We had a wonderful viewing of what I think was two Swamp Harriers, had thought they might be Osprey but they are not really seen here according to google searches. Some little birds were trying hard to chase them away as they soared up and over the grassland from one side of the island to the other. On our way back about a kilometre out of the village we passed a big building, a very friendly guy was planting in a garden next door. It turned out he was the pastor for the church, the big building. Ever so friendly he came over to talk to us, he was planting cassava, we asked him about the acacia trees everywhere. He said they were brought over on diggers that built the road (track) 20 years ago. He said the only good thing is that it is good for firewood. Areas are completely taken over by it, the road is almost a tunnel of acacias in places.

JeldiJeldi was safely there to meet us at the end of the walk, however the tide had come in and the metal girder that we had tied and locked her onto was way under water. Luckily Rowan had his swimming trunks on, he had to get right in to unlock the padlock. It was great to have such a good walk and climb, we definitely deserved supper and bed. I made a fruit salad of pawpaw and mango for pudding and left it sitting on the kitchen counter. When Rowan got up to fetch it he found our stowaway gecko in the bowl helping herself to our pudding as if it had been made for her. She fled into the fruit bowl, which I then craftily covered with one of my elasticated cotton covers. So we have her trapped! Remember males are extremely rare, these little ladies don’t need men to procreate. So funny as I made the trap Hannah suggested last night and put a couple of dead flies in it, but this gecko obviously prefers fruit! Now we just need a safe place to release her! Good timing as it looks like a weather window is forming for us to leave for NZ on Monday. The woman who runs the kiwi rally we are on, was crewing on a boat which left last Monday, after a day and a half they returned as conditions were so unpleasant. She is also looking to leave next Monday, it sounds like it will be an armada of boats heading down to NZ.