SV Bob The Cat

“Haiahoieh, haiaho!” chant the men, stomping their feet on the ground, small clouds of black dust rising. “Haiahoieh, haiaho!”

They sway and shuffle in front of the giant, brightly-painted carved wooden statues backed by green jungle, expanding and contracting in a tightly-woven circle, their backs to the assembled crowd. One man beats the rhythm of the song on a traditional drum, and the beat quickens with each footstep, sweat beginning to appear on their near-naked bodies. “Haiahoieh, haiaho!”

Suddenly, from the right-hand side, a fearsome creature whirls into the clearing, brushing past the audience and spinning its way towards the dancers. It is a man clad in an extraordinary costume – a conical carved hardwood mask featuring heavy white eyelids and intricate designs in green, red and white shapes, creating a fearsome grimacing whole. The mask chin culminates in a long whitish beard and the top of the head is adorned with a series of light tufts which extend down the back of the head to form long, white hair. A feathery cloak of dried banana leaves covers the dancer’s entire body. Shrouded in the mask and cloak, brandishing an elongated hollow club, the wearer looks like a rare demon bird, twirling and whirling, stomping and singing, the feathery cloak swishing with the movements of the dance, fragile dried banana leaves extending like an elaborate golden tutu. A moment later another masked dancer joins from the right, and after that another and another, until the dancing group is complete: six men in the middle wearing the traditional costume of a small woven penis sheath attached to a belt flanked by five menacing mask-wearers.

We are witnessing the famous Rom dance on the black volcanic island of Ambrym.

The Rom dance is a coming-of-age and advancing-in-status ritual dance done by men in villages in northern Ambrym. When a man wants to move up in the village pecking order, he must buy access to a sacred mask design, for which he pays in pigs, roosters and cash. The masks represent spiritual aspects of the power of yam, the most important food crop on the island. Once he has secured a mask design he is initiated and learns the ancient art of mask making in a series of top-secret rituals which culminate in a performance for the village where the man and select invitees dance wearing the extraordinary and powerful masks.

The dance lasts for about 40 minutes, the men in the middle shuffling and stomping, the mask-wearing demons whirling and rushing, grandstanding one moment, huddling the next. The beat of the drum carries the rhythm, supporting the feverish chanting until suddenly the pace quickens until a crescendo is reached and the dancers utter a last ‘Ho!’ and stop, sweat pouring off them.

We are in awe of the performance and feel lucky to have witnessed a ritual which, although this one was performed for tourists, is still very much alive on the island. The Rom dance is held once or twice each year and the dancers are proud to display their traditions to the world.

The island of Ambrym is home to two volcanoes and a bunch of magic. According to Ni-Vanuatu, magic is strongest on islands featuring active volcanoes, and as Ambrym is home to two active volcanoes the island is Vanuatu’s sorcery capital. Sorcerers (man blong majik or man blong posen) abound on the island, casting spells and generally disrupting normal village life. The twin volcanoes are sacred and pleasing the mountain gods is essential for securing good and plentiful yam harvests.

When we approached Ambrym from the south the island was shrouded in clouds – heavy grey fog hung darkly over the volcanic peaks, wispy strands of mist encroaching on the dark green hillsides like odourless white smoke from a thousand jungle fires. We anchored in a bay on the north-western coastline in front of Ranon village which is scenically set back behind the long, soft, black sand beach.

The villages here are small and tidy. The small, rectangular houses have walls woven from bamboo, the weaving forming varying geometric patterns sometimes accentuated by dye. Pigs and chickens root around between the small houses. Adults sit talking on benches near houses and gangs of scantily clad children run about squealing with laughter. Heavy mango trees have just started to drop their fruity burden, providing ample food for foragers, and all children we see carry armfuls of the small green fruits, black eyes peering out at us over mouths full of yellow fruit, chins dripping with sticky juice.

The art of sand drawing is strong on Ambrym. Done on a clean-wiped piece of dirt, the art illustrates ancient oral traditions. The drawings are large, symmetrical, intricately patterned shapes drawn without the artist lifting the finger from the sand, representing birds, turtles or parts of the human body.

The village of Fanla still remembers when Captain Cook came to the island. In 1774, the Resolution was anchored where we are now. The first man to spot the large ship stood terrified on the beach, watching Cook come ashore with a small party in a rowing boat. As is the custom in Vanuatu, the local Big Man (chief) offered the visitors some yam, the traditional staple. As he proffered the yam, he said ‘Ham rim’, which means ‘here are some yam’ in the local Ranon language. Cook misunderstood, thinking that the man was telling him the name of the Island, and wrote down the name as Ambrym. (Cook seems to have made a habit of misunderstanding the natives of Vanuatu when he charted the area. He named Tanna Island in the south after meeting some locals and pointing to the ground. When they said ‘tanna’, the local name for ‘dirt’ he promptly wrote that down and went on his merry way to do more charting. Presumably, those sorts of misunderstandings were common job hazards for early cartographers. I guess the upside for Vanuatu of having talkative natives is that Cook named fewer places ‘Disappointment Bay’, ‘Cape Hopeless’, ‘Starvation Point’ and suchlike, names that abound in New Zealand and Australia. Although there are a few ‘Cannibal Coves’ found here…)

Cook gave the Big Man some iron nails and a smoking pipe, historical treasures that the villagers still hold in their possession. The gravesite of the man who first met Cook is still standing in a little clearing just outside Fanla Village.

Cultural tensions between the modern, western world and the old, traditional Vanuatu ways started that day on Ambrym, with Captain Cook gifting iron to islanders who were living a stone-age existence. Today, these tensions are as strong as ever, with traditional culture like the Rom dance, majik, and the sacred rituals involved with the yam planting and harvest threatened by a world of cell phones and the intrusion of the all-pervasive western culture. Nowadays, most young men leave the island after Year 10 of school, heading to Malekula, Port Vila or Luganville for further education. Many go on to work overseas; all people we speak to mention relatives that work seasonally as fruit pickers in New Zealand or Australia. In Fanla, the chief’s son worked for a season as a fruit picker in Australia; now he is building a concrete house right in the middle of the village, the incomplete foundations surrounded by traditional small, woven bamboo houses. It must be strange for a young man to move from a culture of magic masks and ritual dances to fruit picking in Australia and back again.

“It must be difficult to keep the traditions when the young people leave?” I comment to Freddy, a local man who is showing us around.

“Yes,” he admits. “We try to teach the young people our culture, tell them that they can make an income from our traditions – like wood carving, and the Rom dance. We hope we can keep our culture alive, it is important for us.”

One afternoon several young men paddle up in small outriggers to say hi. We invite them on board and chat for a while. They are 15-16 years old, and with their neatly groomed dreadlocks, their second-hand surf t-shirts, fashionable earrings and winter beanies they look like they could have come straight from the streets of Auckland.

“Will you live here when you are older?” I ask Christophe, one of the first guys to come on board.

“Yes, I will live here,” he says. “It is a good place. I will leave to do more school in Malekula. But I will come back here.”

From all over the island, they are boarders at the secondary school in Ranon. We discuss the Rom dance, and they explain that they have similar rituals in their villages – masks that are used in initiation rites, which they will earn the right to wear when they become grown men, at the age of 18-20. They say the dances are tricky and that there is much to learn about the masks and the kastom behind them. But they are looking forward to the day when they join the ranks of men in their village.

Rope is a precious commodity that is hard to come by, and several men approach us in the villages, asking if we want to trade rope for carvings. The rope is for tying up their cows, a job for which the natural fibres are not well suited. We find several decent second-hand ropes to swap for the beautiful carvings for which the island is famous.

We were hoping to climb the volcanoes, but as befits an island blong blak majik the dense, dark cloud cover that envelops the twin peaks never lifts during our time here, and our impression of the volcanoes remain a faint orange glow spreading above the hillside at night.

 

I’ve been wanting to see a dugong forever. I remember reading about them as a child in a Jaques Cousteau book we had lying around at home. Fascinated with their immense blubber, their hoover-like mouths, their docile grazing habits, I vowed when I was 10 years old that one day I would see one.

Now that we’re in Vanuatu I feel sure that the time has finally come. We’ve been in dugong territory before, in New Caledonia, but despite keeping vigorous lookout I never spotted one. The mistake we made was to assume they were like dolphins – that when they were about we would spot them, and that once we spotted them they would be interactive, frolicking around the boat, swimming up to us as we snorkelled.

Looking a bit more into dugong behaviour it seems I was naive. They are known to be incredibly shy of humans and have no desire whatsoever to play. Although they breathe fairly often (every 4-8 minutes) they don’t spend long on the surface at all, often just sticking their nostrils out of the water for a split second. Nor do they make any noise – no squeaking or clicking like dolphins or heavy breathing accompanied by clearly visible water spouts like whales. They spend almost all their time vacuuming the ocean floor, ingesting huge quantities of seagrass to keep up their well-padded appearance.

Dugongs are found in several areas of Vanuatu, and the mission when we leave Port Vila is to find one.

Our first stop is the northern end of Efate Island, where we spend a couple of days kitesurfing in high winds under moody skies. A private island offers a brilliant sandspit on which to launch; unfortunately, the absentee owner is not keen on us using it, so we launch in the water but the kids are still able to enjoy the flat water shallows.

There are meant to be dugongs in the area, but the windy conditions mean that it is almost impossible to see them – the water surface is broken by waves and they could be having a big meet-up right next to the boat without us noticing.

After Efate, we head to Lamen Bay in Epi Island where dugongs are sometimes seen. The elusive beasts are absent, but lots of very chilled green and hawksbill turtles inhabit the bay, providing for some great snorkelling.

From Epi Island, we head to Malekula Island. Malekula is famously the last place in Vanuatu where a human being was eaten, in 1969. It is also famous for the two inland tribes, the Big Nambas and the Little Nambas, named for the size of the men’s penis gourds. In addition to this interesting phallically-focused cultural division, they have dugongs.

We anchor in Gaspard Bay at the southern end of Malekula. The bay is a grey expanse of shallow water lined by lush islands bursting with green. The bottom is covered with seagrass, the preferred food of dugongs, and there is a resident population which is the target for many tours.

We kayak the perimeter of the bay, keeping an eye out for dugongs and surveying the seemingly impenetrable hillside jungle beyond the mangrove fringe. As we get closer to the shore, the noise rises to a deafening buzz of cicadas and birdsong.

The dugongs are about but hard to sneak up on and to begin with we only snatch brief glimpses: a square, grey snout sticking vertically up the water, quickly vanishing when I approach in the kayak, the gentle arc of a finless back curving through the water just ahead of David on the paddleboard.

On our second morning, the show is finally on when a dugong mother and calf surface right next to the boat, treating us to a nice view of tailfins and blubbery brown shapes logging just under the surface and generally frolicking around. David jumps in the water and manages to snorkel with them briefly, watching the pair slowly dive down and vanish in the murky depths.

I would have liked crystal-clear waters and a throng of dugongs so thick I couldn’t swim through it but realise that Gaspard Bay is probably as good as it gets with dugongs here. So I pronounce myself satisfied and we are finally able to move on. Next stop: the black magic volcanic island of Ambrym.

Once upon a time, a beautiful princess, Yalewa-ni-Cagi-Bula (Lady of the Fair Wind) lived on a small island in Fiji. Of godly descent, she was the fairest of all women in Fiji; her beauty stunned all who beheld her, and any man who had set eyes on her was in awe and wanted her to become his wife.

Her home was an emerald green saltwater pool in a cave behind the ragged rocks that guard the western shores of Vatulele Island, over the seas from Viti Levu. Her beauty was so famous that chiefly warriors came from all over Fiji and beyond, from the whole of the Pacific, to ask for her hand in marriage. Each suitor brought a gift which they presented to the fair maiden, hoping that by bringing her earthly goods they could persuade her to marry them.

The princess was as picky as she was beautiful, and refused suitor after suitor, deeming them unworthy of her love.

The son of the highest chief in the north came bearing the tastiest fruit, asking for her hand. She asked him where the fruits were from, and when he spoke his home island, she refused him haughtily, saying that only fruits from heaven would be sweet enough to match her beauty.

The son of the highest chief in the south came bearing the shiniest pearls, asking for her hand. She asked him where the pearls were from, and when he spoke his home ocean, she refused him disdainfully, saying that only pearls from heaven would be shiny enough to match her lustre.

Finally, the son of the highest-ranking chief in the whole of Fiji came to ask for her hand, bringing a gift of succulent cooked prawns wrapped in banana leaf. She asked him where he was from, and he pointed just over the eastern horizon. She laughed scornfully and said that only a man from the heaven above would be supreme enough to match her divinity. Outraged, the chiefly warrior flung the prawns at the beauty, and when they scattered into the pond surrounding her they were restored to life. And that is how the prawns in the pond in the cave at Vatulele Island are red even when they are alive, unlike all other prawns who only turn red when they are cooked.

The ura mbuta, or ‘cooked prawns’ are rare, and to this day sacred to all Fijians. Visitors to the pond will sometimes see Yalewa-ni-Cagi-Bula at the cave but to locals she remains hidden. If the goddess is unhappy with you – if you haven’t presented your gifts to the chief of the island – no prawns will show themselves to you. If she is happy with you, the prawns will be out in great number.

Mele smiles and takes a step back from Korolamalama Cave. We stand beside him, surveying the crystal-clear water and the red dots of prawns scurrying hurriedly around. There are plenty, so we must have followed good protocol when we did our sevusevu in the village. The pool is enclosed by vertical limestone rock, beyond which the coastal forest stretches, intercepted here and there by sharp rocky outcrops. The trees are big and tall, with thick, heavy roots spreading and rising far above the ground into a tangled mess of thick vertical branches. Behind the cave, a steep limestone wall rises perhaps 25 m from the ground. Trees poke out of the rock at the top, clinging to the limestone cliff with their roots stretching all the way down the side of the cliff to the bottom.

The cave is not far from where we are anchored alongside a beautiful white beach on the western side of Vatulele island. Flanking the beach is an abandoned resort, complete with 19 bure (Fijian-style huts used in tourist accommodation), a white clifftop mansion, and several unfinished buildings on the foreshore. And a huge ferry wreck, a rusty death trap measuring 60 metres in length, which is parked on the sand at the southern end of the beach, just in front of the resort’s pink honeymoon suite.

It is a stunning location. The outer reef is not far from the beach, the glassy lagoon providing calm waters for safe swimming and snorkelling on the many coral outcrops. The resort faces west which makes for spectacular water sunsets. White tropicbirds fly from the bush, their long tails clearly outlined against the deep blue sky. Whales pass on the outside of the reef, large black lumps passing by, clearly seen from the beach.

Forsaken since 2015, the resort has had four different owners since it first opened in 1998. The exclusive holiday accommodation was built at great expense by two Australians in a New Mexico – Fijian fusion style and for years the five-star resort was the most expensive destination in Fiji. The current owner, the multi-millionaire French-Australian Albert Bertini, closed down the resort when he ran into cash-flow problems after spending in excess of A$20M on building additions which now stand half finished on the foreshore.

Bertini, 50, was holidaying at the resort in 2011 when he decided on a whim to get married to his 24-year-old girlfriend and to buy the resort they married in to boot. The resort was in receivership at the time, and shortly after Bertini took over in 2012 he started renovating and building. A property tycoon worth an estimated A$400 million, Bertini started developing at full pace. It was around this time that he declared bankruptcy in Australia and fled the country leaving a string of creditors in his wake.

He began renovating the existing bure and started a string of new building projects, including a second floor on the white honeymoon villa to house his extensive wardrobe; more holiday accommodation at the back of the site; a stone-clad indoor garden sporting a Grecian design with 200 glassed windows hemming in a small grove of coconuts behind a swimming pool facing the beach; and a bunker-like protrusion on the foreshore, entirely clad in black mirrors, a building used as a storage facility for materials for the many building projects. His vision was to turn the resort into a paparazzi-free party venue for the rich and famous, a vision which he successfully persuaded a number of celebrities to invest in.

According to the villagers, he would tear the new buildings down as fast as he erected them, finding faults and changing his mind, leading to an endless cycle of building where nothing was ever completed.

The rusty ferry was his final touch, a departing gift to the site. Intended to be reconfigured to become a nightclub, he pulled it ashore at great expense, only to abandon the entire resort not long after.

The resort is still beautiful, although neglect and the weather have taken their toll. Discrete from the outside, the insides of the bure are amazing with exquisite tapa cloth covering the ceilings entirely.

Horrible damage was done to the resort by Cyclone Keni in April this year, which resulted in standing waves higher than 15 m and flooding of the forward row of bure, carrying sand and debris into the beautiful buildings. The cyclone winds blew off roofs and smashed the mirrors lining the concrete bunker on the beach, leaving a devastation of broken glass, wrecked concrete and huge boulders strewn across the foreshore. The cyclone also smashed the ferry apart and moved it further along the beach where it now lies blocking the views from the honeymoon suite. All over the western side of the island, trees were uprooted, and because nobody has bothered cleaning up the site, the carnage is still clearly visible.

Mele works at the site as a security guard. He doesn’t know when the resort will be reopened but knows that Bertini is looking for buyers, and a few have come looking in the years it has been closed. Bertini is in and out of Fiji, where he has several court cases on the go, the charges including fraud and assault. Until the resort reopens, Mele is employed to keep the villagers from plundering wood, roofing, pipes and other goods. He’s from the village himself, the cousin of the chief, but lives onsite where he takes care of the two lovely dogs that Bertini abandoned.

On our last day on the island, Bertini turns up with a mate to pick up some clothes. I bump into him deep in the forest where I’m looking for rare birds. A short, wiry man clad in a white singlet, vertically striped pants, a bandana underneath a torn cap worn back to front and handmade Italian loafers, he resembles an eccentric trapeze artist on the run from Cirque du Soleil. Around his neck is a bolt tied into a leather string. On his left shoulder is a tattoo of a dark-haired woman, her hair running down his wiry arm, almost reaching his elbow. He speaks fast with a lot of hand movements and very intense eye contact.

“You should never do business in this country, never. The government will just fleece you, as soon as they discover you have money, they will just ask for fee after fee, charging you for everything, asking you to renew licences and pay more and more, until you have nothing left. What they want is for you to develop the place and then run out of money, and then they can take it over.” He takes his cap off, adjusts the bandana, and puts the cap back on.

His speech is littered with celebrity name dropping and references to all the money he’s lost, what the resort is worth, so many million-dollar figures that I have problems keeping track of it all. He reckons that the place is worth US$28 million, or perhaps it was US$32 million. He’s lost a lot of money, perhaps US$7 million a year, for at least the first two years, although that may have just been to the Fijian banks, or perhaps the Fijian government.

He loves Vatulele and has spent long periods, or perhaps 18 months or maybe just a month, here on his own, a time where he really got to know the rhythm of the place, learning when the turtles swim and the birds fly. He’s been awake at night when the moon is as bright as daylight. He’s explored everywhere and has found amazing stuff. Lost cities, with columns and carved head statues resembling those found at Easter Island. Blue holes and caves that nobody knows about. He has a deep spiritual connection to the site, the villagers, and the whole island. He really wanted the villagers to benefit from the resort, wanted them to run it, and he has helped them lots, building many houses, and looking after the old chief after he got a stroke.

His friend thinks that Fijians are just lazy and that the Indian-run government is ruining the country, taking it away from the indigenous Fijians. Bertini thinks that the laziness is partly the kava, that it’s like in the US where they drug their citizens, turning them into fat blobs that just sit and watch TV. In Fiji, it’s the kava drugging them all.

Now, reluctantly, he is giving up on the resort. He has subdivided his lease (the land is owned by a local on the island, but Bertini holds a 99-year lease) and is having it all valued, and it is worth perhaps US$24 million or maybe it was $34 million.

When I mention that I like the dogs he left behind, he offers that we can take one of them with us.

“Take her, you can take her with you, she loves boats,” he offers generously.

Having been here for a few days, we know that she loves boats – as soon as she sees us on anything that floats (paddleboard, kayak, dinghy), she swims out excitedly and tries to jump on board. If we refuse her advances she swims after us desolately for hundreds of metres, puffing for breath and guilting us with her big brown eyes.

The villagers allege that Bertini had a drug problem, but that kind of goes with the territory if you are a multi-millionaire wanting to develop an island for celebrities to ‘party on’ unwatched. Many mention that they did not like the direction the resort was taking, and the friends he was bringing. But they also acknowledge that had it worked out, they would have thought of him as a genius.

“If it works, he is brilliant,” comments one man. “If it doesn’t, he is a fool.”

It didn’t work, and now he is not much liked in the island’s main village.

We got all the gossip the first day when we went to the village to do our sevusevu.

“Everybody used to work in the resort,” explained Oona, the chief’s wife. “Then when it closed, suddenly there was no more work. We all want the resort to reopen, it was good for the village, good for the island. Now all we have is tapa.”

Tapa is the cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and Vatulele is famous for the fine quality of the tapa they produce. The rhythmic beating of wood on wood can be heard miles away from the village, a loud, persistent dissonant banging pulsing out to sea and into the backland bush.

The banging comes from the production of tapa cloth. Each man on the island owns a stand of mulberry trees, and each woman works six days a week on the production of the valuable cloth. First, she strips the bark from the straight stem of the masi, as the tree is called in Fijian. Then she peels off the outer skin of the bark, leaving her with a white, pliable stretch of shiny bark. She next soaks it in seawater and then pounds the softened bark for hours until it forms a thin, white mat. The mat is dried in the sun, and once completely dry it is decorated with geometric patterns to make the coveted tapa cloth.

The cloth used to be used as clothing by chiefly persons but nowadays is used as decorative wall hangings, table mats, or as wrapping for important gifts.

It is a lot of work. All day the women thump wood on wood, gradually working the bark fibres into each other, thinning the bark by mercilessly beating it, spreading it out with blunt force.

It’s a world away from catering to hard-partying celebrities, but with the way things turned out it is good that tapa making survived on the island. By village standards, it’s a lucrative industry, and the village appears wealthy, with many concrete and brick houses although these were probably built by Bertini.

In addition to the ghost resort, the red prawns and the beautiful cloths made by the charming villagers, Vatulele sports ancient rock paintings along the steep western cliffside. According to Bertini, the paintings are 3000 years old, made by the Lapita. (Originally from Taiwan, the Lapita are named for the distinctive pottery that characterises the archaeological sites where their remains are found. They colonised the Pacific in progressive waves of eastward expansion and are thought to be the ancestors of modern Polynesians. The earliest humans to inhabit Fiji, the Lapita were mostly displaced in Fiji by a large influx of Melanesians originally from Papua New Guinea. Today’s indigenous Fijians are a unique mix of Polynesian and Melanesian heritage, in contrast to more eastward islands (like Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawai’i, and New Zealand) where there are only Polynesians, and more westward islands (like Vanuatu, the Solomons, Torres Strait Islands and Papua New Guinea) where there are only Melanesians.)

The rock paintings sit high on the steep cliffside. They depict chickens with long finger-drawn tails, handprints and round sun-like faces, immobile images looking out over the calm lagoon, providing a rare window into a past culture that left no written records. The paintings are faint in places, faded by the sun and rain, and I wonder how many have already faded out of existence, and how long the remainder will last in this exposed location. In one place, a large piece of rock has been cut out; apparently, a beautiful octopus used to be there, but someone removed it out to keep for themselves. The cliff face used to be behind a stand of trees, but Cyclone Kenny smashed the vegetation and now they are open to the elements.

On our last afternoon, at Bertini’s urging, we visit the crystal caves, a large inland underground system which is flooded with saltwater. The cave ceiling is made entirely of crystals spilling down in lumpy bouquets like the heavy petals of a succulent flower. When you shine a torch on them they sparkle and glitter, a brilliantly shiny contoured ceiling made from crystal chandeliers. The crystals extend underwater, and the cave looks like it goes on forever, stretching darkly under water in the direction of the sea.

Like at Yalewa-ni-Cagi-Bula’s pond, faces, figures and ethereal shapes appear everywhere in the limestone rock, and it is easy to see how such landscape could inspire a deep spirituality, giving rise to legends and the ancient sun-like faces painted on the rocks of the coastline and Bertini’s ties to the island alike. Hopefully, he’ll find a good buyer for the resort, someone with plans that align better with the villagers’ aspirations.

When we leave, the dog sits on the beach looking mornfully after our boat.

“Is something burning in the kitchen?” asks David. He’s leaning into the saloon from the cockpit, a dark shape backlit by the setting sun.

I look up from the steaming stove where I’m painstakingly stirfrying vegetables one small bunch at a time to ensure perfect crispness. “No,” I say. “Everything is fine here.”

“Are you sure?” he leans further in, sniffing the fragrant air. “There is, like, ash coming out of the kitchen side hatch. I’m pretty sure it’s from the kitchen.”

“Nope.” I turn my back to him to fish the carrots out of the pan and place a small portion of carefully cut chicken strips in the hot oil. “No fire here. And I’ve had the hatch closed the whole time I’ve been cooking. So must be from somewhere else.”

“Weird. Maybe the villagers are burning rubbish or vegetation on the shore.” He lingers a moment longer in the doorway before heading back out into the cockpit.

“I hope it’s not another volcano!” I shout after him.

Last time there was ash on deck it was a volcanic eruption in Vanuatu, about two weeks ago just when we were getting ready to leave the Lau Group for Suva. We woke up one morning to find the boat covered in a substantial layer of fine ash, and after a little investigation discovered that the source was about 700 miles away, on Ambae island in Vanuatu, the huge ash cloud from which had been carried by winds to Fiji where it settled out over the sea, the land and our boat. The ash cloud disrupted Air Fiji flights for a couple of days, and one can only imagine how bad it must have been in Vanuatu.

Back then it took us days to clean up the mess, washing and wiping grey residue from our fine white deck, scrubbing black footprints from the cockpit flooring.

Now we’re at Ono Island, in the north Astrolabe reef by Kadavu, a large island 150 nautical miles south of Viti Levu, and I’m hoping this is not another volcano.

David comes back in as I’m draining the noodles. “I can see it now, there’s a fire on the shore, behind the palms. Probably just the villagers burning rubbish.”

“Great,” I say, wiping the hot steam from my brow with the back of my hand. “Well, dinner is ready, so can you please ask the boys to set the table?”

It is not until after the kids have gone to bed that we notice that the fire hasn’t gone out. It is now completely dark, and it is clear that the fire has spread: from the isolated spot behind the near-beach vegetation where David saw it, it has now conquered half the hillside. It is definitely out of control – the flames are licking up trees and as we watch it spreads rapidly, the red glow above the yellow flames lighting up the sky, the inferno reflected in the still water below. We can hear the roar and crackle as hundreds of trees combust, and the smoke is billowing over the boat as it moves out through the calm bay through the still night.

David and I sit watching it in horror for a while. I cough. He coughs. I rub my eyes – they are stinging from the smoke. He rubs his eyes. I cough again.

Thick smoke is now rising in a tall column off the hillside, visible against the fire-illuminated sky. We’re directly downwind and are getting the full fallout. The deck is covered in charred fragments of vegetation, piles of ash are nestling in against the steps at the stern.

Over the roar of the fire, we can faintly hear Matias cough from deep within the boat.

Finally, at 11:45 pm we stir. David says, “We better get out of here. We can’t stay in all this smoke, and it’s not getting better, there’s no sign of it abating.”

“But we can’t move the boat in the dark!”

“I think we’re going to have to.”

You need great visibility to move around in shallow bays with numerous uncharted coral reefs just below the water surface. Normally, we only move when the sun is out, and once out of open water one polaroid-sunglass-wearing person is always standing watch at the bow, pointing out the reefs that emerge as we draw closer to shore.

Now, it is midnight, the only light available the red glow of a raging bushfire.

I swallow in dread, and as David starts the engine I get the large torch out. We hoist the anchor and slowly creep around the coastline towards the bay where Naqara village is located, figuring that it is upwind from the fire and so unlikely to yield much smoke – and that if it does, the villagers will almost certainly need our help. Fish jump out of the water, startled by the torchlight I beam ahead of the bow, and every time I hear a splash I fear that it’s a reef, that we’re about to crash.

But in time we make it to the middle of the village bay and find what appears to be a flat, feature- and reef-less bottom. We put our anchor down with a sigh of relief. The village is completely quiet, only one light on, and no people can be seen moving even though half the hillside beyond it is engulfed in flames.

After watching for a while, we go to bed and are lulled to sleep by the crackling fire, the smell of smoke lingering in our nostrils.

In the morning, smoke is still rising from beyond the village hills. Boats are buzzing to and from the village, but thankfully everybody is fine, no damage to any houses. Just another rubbish fire going out of control.

The bay that burned was one that is used for film sets from all over the world. Fiji is a choice location for Survivor Series and tropical movie-making alike. When we visited Naqara a couple of days earlier, Job the chief talked about how the village-owned bays are booked out for filming for the next five years.

“This year it is the Sweden Survivor movie,” he said as he was walking us back to the dinghy after the sevusevu. “They have already built all the things they need, and they will spend 40 days here filming.”

He gestured beyond the steep hill towards the bay beyond. “They will stay on that beach over there, and on that island there, and on that beach too.”

“Wow,” said David. “So you’re busy with that.”

“Yes.” Job wiped his brow as he was wading through the shallow water. “After the Sweden, we have the Survivor France, and then after that the Sweden again.”

He glanced out over the shallows. “And then the year after that it is the Poland Survivor, and then the France again, some Robinson Crusoe show. And then maybe the USA the year after that.” He smiled.

“Wow,” David said again. “That is great, everybody coming here to film their movies and Survivor series. Well, I guess it is not a bad place to survive…”

“Yes, it is very good for us,” says Job. “Very popular to come here, and the villagers get work from it.”

Now, we just hope that the fire hasn’t disrupted the busy filming schedule.

It is a beautiful place, perfect for tropical idyllic island moviemaking. In the quiet village bay the steep hillsides are reflected in the deep green water, the water so calm that it offers a perfect mirror image of the hills and the clouds. The beach in the bay they will film in is white, coconut palms in the background, and inland vegetation lush and dense. The bay is fringed by a coral reef teeming with fish. Birds swish through the sky everywhere, landing noisily in trees.

Now, the vegetation behind the palm trees is scorched, but the setting still looks nice, just a bit more mysterious and menacing. We think it’s the perfect setting for a survivor show and hope that the Swedes agree. It is lucky that they haven’t arrived yet – we’ve seen them scope the area, but they are not yet living there. Just as well – imagine the liability if a whole Survivor Series perished from on-set smoke inhalation.

It is great that Fiji can make money from the film industry. In 2017, 74 productions were shot in Fiji, which according to the Fiji Sun generated new economic activity of about FJ$350M. The USA Survivor show alone generates seasonal employment for 300 Fijians. It is a neat source of income for a developing country.

Sharpening wooden sticks ready for Orc attacks.It’s not just the international movie makers that want to survive outdoors in Fiji.

On our boat, the kids are increasingly keen to spend a night sleeping out by themselves on the shore. We have been trying to find them a deserted island to go to, and in the meantime, they’ve been camping out on the foredeck trampoline as a compromise.

It’s all part of the continued Lord of the Rings games. As they’re reading their way through the books it permeates everything we do, and presently they are deeply immersed in a game where the Elf Thamior (aka Lukas) and the Dwarf Thorin (Matias) find themselves in enemy territory, on a deserted beach backed by palm trees and steep bush-covered hills. Faced with such obstacles the two make plans to survive, collecting seashells, nuts, seeds and pieces of wood, all of which represents edible substances that will help them live through the night and face another day. Monsters lurk behind every corner, and as nightfall nears the two plan for a safe survival of the night, strategically storing their food, and identifying nearby cave-like shelters that might provide refuge should it rain.

The characters have evolved over time, and it is now clear that the Dwarf is rather foolhardy, recklessly tumbling headfirst into dicey situations, to the great frustration of the more reticent Elf, who deep down doesn’t really like risking his life that much. They are a good pair, though – without the Dwarf the Elf would never go anywhere, and without the Elf, the Dwarf would surely die within minutes.

And even though we encourage adventures and independence, we are very grateful that we didn’t let them sleep ashore by themselves on the night of the bushfire.

But Kadavu is not all surviving, smoke and movie sets.

 

The water between the islands just north of One Island teem with manta rays. The sea there is like manta soup, and everywhere we go we see them, huge black diamonds hanging just below the water surface, waving their fin tips out the water as if to warn us they are there.

At 2-4 m across they are incredible to see up close, gentle giants gracefully gyrating, twisting, twirling, looping, mouths gaping as they suck up plankton from the rich waters. When they are feeding they come across as hollow, just a cavernous mouth opening up into a rib cage, slatted gills clearly visible on their underside. We swim and dive with them and look on in amazement.

Further south, on Kadavu Island proper we anchor in steep-sided bays and hike to inland waterfalls, swimming in the crystal clear pools below the thundering cascade. We travel up long rivers through mangrove swamps, spotting colourful native parrots, birds of prey and the occasional bat.

Travelling along the Kadavu coast we see fires everywhere, steaming smoke coming out of every hillside. We’re not sure how many of them are intentional but know that the pine plantations on the island are often burned off after felling and that elsewhere wild yam are harvested through burning the vegetation. But wildfires are common too in the dry season, destroying vast swathes of Fijian land every year. It certainly is fire season: it seems that no matter where we anchor we accumulate ash on deck, and after a while we get used to it, brushing off the soot and washing the deck carefully every morning.

Tomorrow we will leave Kadavu for Vatulele, a small island on the way to Viti Levu. Hopefully, the fire risk will be less there.

“Arghh,” says David. “One pooed on me, look!” He points to a dark splatter on his white board shorts.

“Gross,” I squeal. “Urgh, wipe it off! I guess we’re sitting just under them. They’re like furry birds, with claws.”

“Or like binbag-wearing possums,” says David. “Hanging like flies caught in a spider web, all wrapped up.”

“And they look ridiculous when they fly, like surprised beavers suspended in the air. Look at the feet sticking out the back!”

We can ridicule, but shrill shrieks reverberate through the air, echoing in the tight bay. The trees on the hillside rustle and move, branches rebounding with lightening loads. Above us, the sky darkens prematurely as thousands of winged creatures take flight at once, leaving the safety of the trees, soaring to the skies, and scattering wide against the backdrop of the setting sun. The air is heavy with ammonia, a thick smell of crowded animals that burns the inside of our nostrils.

Wedged in between the mangrove roots, the dinghy cannot move, and we sit craning our necks just under the steep, forested hillside, taking in the sky as it comes alive with dark, menacing shapes. Never before have we been so close to so many large animals moving at once. It is like a huge colony of roosting birds all taking flight from the same tree, at the same time.

It is dusk, and we’re in the Bay of Islands in Fiji, which is located on the north-western side of Vanua Balavu, a large island in the northern Lau Group. We’re watching the local fruit bats taking off for a night of festive foraging.

 

As the name suggests, the area is full of islands – uplifted limestone reef islets and larger, volcanic outcrops. It is spectacular scenery. Dramatic vertical rock faces surrounded by bush, overlooking crystal-clear bays, the water changing from deep green depths to aquamarine shallows. The imposing limestone walls and islands are dark grey, severe and full of jagged edges and sharp outcrops, the sort of landscape that will wreck ships, puncture inflatables, and cut your feet to shreds if you venture ashore.

There are hundreds of islands here of all sizes and we explore for days on end, slowly making our way along the shoreline, discovering shallow passages leading to hidden turquoise swimming holes, sandy-bottomed inlets bordered by vertical green walls, overhanging vegetation touching the water. Crevices, caves and fragile limestone bridges are everywhere, hiding dark secrets and screeching animals. It’s a fairy-tale landscape, heavy and lush, and far from the tropical beachy feel of Fulaga. Here, rather than superyachts, one expects headhunters, King Kongs or similarly sinister creatures to appear at the top of each hilltop – surely such beauty must come at a price.

Underwater is beautiful too. Shallow rocky outcrops are home to coral reefs teeming with fish, turtles and baby blacktip reef sharks. Soft, colourful corals sway gently in the underwater currents. Octopi hide in numerous crevices, pretending to be rocks as we approach only to turn a deep dark red colour just before sliding back into their hole once they know we’ve spotted them.

It is peaceful here. Although in the more accessible part of the Lau Group, we at first share the anchorages with just a couple of boats, and later we are on our own for a few days before a few more yachts arrive.

So we paddleboard and kayak and swim, exploring every nook and cranny, whooping with delight as we discover more hidden treasures, life somehow feeling extra exciting against such a breathtaking backdrop.

The kids are reading Lord of the Rings and are deep into games wherein Matias is a stubby, brutish, heavyset dwarf named Thorin and Lukas a benevolent, charismatic Elf called Thamior. This odd pair travels together in far-flung mythical lands, retrieving treasures and fighting evil. The games are oddly fitting with the powerful scenery: one could easily imagine a longboat carrying Orc-fleeing Elves paddling by in search of a spider-ridden cave to hide in, the underwater part of which might just reveal the gleam of an ancient golden goblet with magical properties.

The fruit bats add to the sense of darkness within beauty. Although they’re cute there is nevertheless something a bit menacing about bats – perhaps it is the Dracula association of vampire bats, perhaps just their chilling combination of mammal, bird and insect features.

Their sleeping spot is not far from where we’re anchored, a hillside where black plump shapes hang from every tree like sinister overripened fruit, the branches bending under the load. A heavy musky scent hangs in the still air, the smell of thousands of mammals crowding a small space. They stir from their slumber whenever we approach, screeching and scratching, their sleep cocoons opening and faces and claws emerging. They stretch their umbrella wings, the shiny fabric tightening over the finger spokes. Beady black eyes fix us suspiciously, their ears erect, alert, twitching at every sound we make.

When we stay, they get more agitated and some take off like parachuting possums, strange furry fox faces and portly tummies attached to bird-like wings, tiny clawed spider feet sticking inelegantly out at back. Some have tears and holes in the wings through which we can see the sky behind. They circle and chatter and land on another branch, folding their wings, and clumsily climb through the trees using their feet, like giant grasshoppers navigating twigs and branches. Once in a suitable spot, they let themselves fall heavily, head down, their shiny black blanket wings tucked tightly around them.

I love watching their interactions – they squabble and bicker, scratch and twitch, bare their teeth and snap at their neighbours. Most look utterly exhausted, heavy with fatigue, and we feel guilty for approaching during their sleep time.

At dusk, the hillside brightens and the sky darkens as they take off in great swarms, squeaking bat cries resonating between the hills. They fly off in all directions, over hills and water, in search of fruit trees ripe for pillage. We’re not sure exactly where they find fruit in the quantities required to nourish such extensive numbers, but presumably, papaya is a staple.

Inside a large, partially submerged cave we find microbats, who click and squeal as they echolocate in the darkness above us. Much smaller than the fruit bats they are difficult to make out and at first we think they are birds, but when we shine a torch we can make out the jagged edges of their wings.

In addition to bats and bays, there are a few beaches which we explore with other boats, lighting fires in the evening to cook damper around a stick or fish on a rack. As soon as night falls we are attacked by sandflies and have to flee back to the safety of our boats, anchored far enough from shore to prevent insects.

After nine days in the Bay of Islands, we reluctantly leave. We’re low on cooking gas, and David is running out of beer, so we decide to go to Suva, Fiji’s capital, for a quick provision before heading to Kadavu south of Viti Levu.

We’ve had an incredible time in the Lau and are so happy we managed to get here – it is remote and different from anywhere else we’ve been, full of pleasant locals, amazing scenery and wonderful wildlife. One of Fiji’s hidden treasures, and how lucky we are to have seen it.