Our last view of Vanua Levu til next time.

We were so lucky on the day we flew back to Nadi and then onto NZ as it was a perfectly clear day so the whole 1 hour flight we got amazingly beautiful views of the lagoon and reef and then the mountains on Nadi.  It was a nice reward for arriving at Savusavu airport at 11.30am for our 12.30pm flight, only to be told that the plane had broken down and we might get to fly out at about 2pm.  As 3pm approached and the engineer still hadn’t arrived from the neighbouring island to repair the plane, we had to start bargaining with the airport staff to let us on the next plane so that we didn’t miss our flight to NZ.  After about half an hour of him calculating baggage weights, he informed us that we could go on the plane but that our luggage couldn’t.  In the end we managed to bump some other people off the domestic flight, who had a later international flight than us, and we flew out of Savusavu just after 4pm and had the most beautiful flight of our lives.

On NYE we went into town and had a mega seafood feast, where Dre ate 6 lobsters, several fish and crabs, sea snails, kokoda (raw fish marinated in lime), and Karen managed much smaller portions of all of the above.  We partied with the locals, mainly our new-found friends Adi (pronounced Andy) and her partner Geoff.  Needless to say, Savusavu isn’t much of a happening place at the best of times, here is a pic of the only street just after midnight.

 

We still had a ball though and welcomed in 2009 in a great little town.  It was quite special to be here and we have been so lucky to meet some amazing people and experience the wonderful culture here.

We have moved to our second accomodation now which is a private home on a coconut plantation.  It’s quite a novelty to have electricity again (before we had solar power) and huge leather sofas and chairs and a huge house.  The house is about 20 metres to the beach, with a few coconut palms between the house and the beach.  It is situated on a snorkelling and a swimming lagoon.

This is Dre’s last photo while he is in his 20’s… tomorrow he enters his 4th decade when he turns 30 so we will party in town.

The sun setting over the coconut palms was really beautiful on our first night here, and we were really pleased we chose this as our second place to stay.

The view of our beach bure and the view from the house.