Waya Lailai Island

This morning we had a lay in until about 8, which was nice as we've been getting up at 7 everyday on the trip. It started off really hot, then the wind picked up and it stated to rain. That's ok because we're still sunburnt anyway. After we had a lovely breakfast of cereal, pancakes, cake and fruit, there was a big group of 10 Japanese tourists that arrived. Half an hour later, a few more turned up, so it won't be so quiet anymore. We hung around waiting for our first activity of the day, feeding sharks, which should be fun.

Shark feeding

We took a boat ride and crammed in 10 people into a tiny little boat. We all sat on the floor. The sea was so rough the boat was rocking about everywhere. Water was splashing in the boat and all over us. Sai and Marco took us, Robin and the group of Japanese people out to snorkel while Sai would kill some fish using a spear to feed to the sharks, which is pretty cool. Some of the Japanese got seasick while travelling out to sea, it was pretty rough tho.

When we got further out to sea, we had to snorkel from the boat in really rough sea. I was a bit worried it would be too choppy for me, but I decided it would be fun to see this, so had to just get in the water to try it. Once in the water, it wasn't so bad, the waves just went over my head. Sai went off to catch some fish to feed the shark, while we all just went swimming around to find some reef sharks. Not long after going in the water, we did find 2 sharks swimming along underneath us. They don't bother humans, so I wasn't scared by seeing them so close up. John and Robin tried to follow the sharks and take pictures with his underwater camera by diving down near the sharks. I was happy to watch from above. Some of the Japanese couldn't swim so were really scared in the water, so Marco helped them.

Sai went to catch some fish so Robin followed and said to follow them. I didn't see him catch the fish to spear it, which is probably a good thing, but I saw he had a dead fish that he held in his hand. Lots of the little zebra fish were feeding from it. Then he gave it to Robin to feed them fish too. He offered me to feed them, but I prefer to watch them do it. These little fish swim right by you, so it must be because they think they are going to get fed. Then Sai dived down deeper to feed the reef shark with some fish. He coaxed fish to him and he literally was stroking the fish and there must have been around 20 fish surrounding him. It was amazing to watch how effortless it was for him. When the reef shark came to him, he grabbed hold of it, and brought it right to the surface. John and Robin stroked it, I couldn't stroke it as I got all panicky as it was right underneath me and I thought it would take a chunk off my bum! I swam to a safe distance to watch how Sai just has the right techniques under water to coax fish and sharks towards him. It was an amazing experience to have while here in Fiji.

We left on a high, and sailed back to the island, by now the other Japanese guy was laying on the floor trying to overcome his sea sickness. It was good to be back on dry land. Lunch was ready, so we all had that, which was a nice casserole type dish. Later we'll be having a Fiji cooking lesson, we get to cook what we eat for dinner, so i'm looking forward to that. The Fijian ladies asked me if I wanted to do some weaving with them. They can make bracelets, rings, napkin holders, bookmarks etc, and jewellery out of shells. I said yes please.

Weaving lesson

I had a lesson with a lady called Francis, she's been weaving for years and is an expert. She showed me some items that she made to give me an idea of what the patterns were. She asked if I wanted to make jewellery out of shells or weaved. I preferred the weaved look, so decided to make a bracelet. Francis took some white reeds and black ones and measured it around my wrist. She then started to weave one black, one white so it will make the shape of a diamond, which is the pattern I chose. After Francis showed me a few times, I had to take over making it. Francis made it look easy, but when I took over, it was much harder. It took me over an hour to complete the bracelet, Francis said don't worry 'Fiji time'. Once I finished it, she just tied up the ends and neatened it up. I was quite impressed with my creation. The may we sat on, the ladies made, it takes them 2 weeks to make one. Afterwards, john decided to make me a ring as a token for out engagement.

Fijian cooking lesson

After the weaving, we had to get ready to do our cooking lesson. We are cooking a fish dish with coconut sauce. Boo, the lady we did our cooking lesson with asked us to help peel a root vegetable from the potato family, tuva. We had to scrape off the skin and cut it into chunks to boil it on a fire. It's a huge vegetable so it was hard to cut it up and scrape it. Once that was cut we put it in a bowl and put it on the hand made stove, which was sticks, rocks and a metal grill. They just create a fire outside to cook with. While that was boiling, we had to prepare the fish. This was my least favourite bit, as I don't like touching whole fish. We basically had to de-scale them, cut them up into pieces. However the bit I could not do was up remove their guts inside. When we finished that, we had to prepare the coconut sauce. The tricky bit was actually trying to crack open the coconut. It takes force to do it and i'm not enough to do it. Boo did a demonstration, she made it look easy, but it wasn't for me. When it was cracked open, there was some type of machine that we had to use to get the coconut out of. The milk was poured into the mixture, then we had to scrape out the coconut. It actually takes a lot of preparation for cooking good here. I certainly won't take it for granted anymore. Next, I had to fry up all the fish. As we're coking for 20 people, there was a lot of fish I had to fry up on an open heat outside. The smoke was really stinging my eyes. After the fish was cooked, Boo prepared the coconut sauce, she had to sift out the coconut milk from the bits of coconut and mixed it with water to create the sauce. Then she added this to the fish and put this back on the fire. After that, we helped to set the table and we then served the food to the Japanese. The food was a hit with everyone. We just played a small part, but it was Boo and Francis who prepared the rest of the food. I even had some of the fish I prepared and really liked it, my favourite one so far. After dinner, Marco prepared a bonfire and we all sat on the beach for a few hours before bed. I've enjoyed my time here in Waya Lailu, it's certainly been different to our experience on Beachcomber island. I think we've met the true Fijians here.