Caqelai October 1, 2003
Forest and I hadn't spent any time on the beach yet - there were no sandy beaches on Ovalau, only muddy areas bristling with sharp black rocks. Since lounging around on the beach seemed like an essential part of any trip to Fiji, we decided to take a trip to Caqelai Island.
The Lonely Planet described Caqelai (pronounced THUNG-uh-lie) as a tiny white-sand island off the coast of Ovalau, owned and operated by the Methodist church. Accommodation was said to be "extrememly basic," with a handful of rustic bures, outhouses, and bucket showers. We would have been able to deal with all that, if alcohol hadn't been strictly prohibited. So we decided to just spend a day there, and come back to the comforts of the Homestay at night.
We caught a small motorboat out of the Levuka harbor, loaded down with other passengers. The tide was high, so we could stay inside the reef's protected waters, which made the ride to Caqelai very smooth. It was more like floating on a lake than being in the ocean.
When we reached Caqelai, Forest and I jumped ashore and went exploring. The island was quite small and we were able to circumnavigate it in less than half an hour. In some places the dense vegetation came right to the edge of the ocean and we had to wade out into the warm water. We came across only a few people baking in the sun, or lazily swinging in hammocks in front of their bures.
I peeked inside a few of the bures, which were built in the traditional style out of bamboo and woven palm fronds. They were as rustic as the Lonely Planet promised, with a single small bed inside on the sand floor and nothing else. We also came across some staff skillfully building a new bure.
We heard someone blowing a conch shell, signalling it was time for lunch. We joined the other visitors in the cafeteria area, which had a roof but was otherwise open to the elements, and ate a simple meal of steamed, unseasoned fish and boiled cassava. I got the fish tail. According to the other visitors, some who had been there for many days, the food was very much hit-or-miss: tasty fish curries alternated with plain boiled lentils served atop rice. An Irish girl said that one breakfast, they were served nothing but slightly stale yellow cake.
After lunch, Forest and I picked up a pair of snorkels and moved to a deserted part of the beach. I can't swim and I was nervous about submerging my face in water, but my desire to learn how to snorkel was more powerful than my fear of drowning. My snorkel were none too clean and had a funny taste, but I slowly convinced myself that I could breathe safely out of it. Better yet, once I had relaxed, I found that I could float effortlessly at the top of the water.
I snorkeled in the shallow, warm waters while Forest went further out to the deeper areas where the coral reefs began to grow. There were tons of fish even in the shallow waters, as well as dun-coloured seastars creeping almost invisibly against the sand. Brittle stars hiding in crevices waved their furry red legs at me. It only felt like I snorkeled for half an hour, but when I started to shake from cold I came up to discover that the sun was getting low on the horizon and it was almost time to leave.
Forest and I stretched out on the sand to warm up. After awhile, I wandered off the beach a little way and came across a Fijian man high in a coconut palm, throwing down ripe coconuts. I loitered hopefully and sure enough, he expertly husked a coconut, used a machete to whittle a drinking hole at the top, then handed it to me. After thanking him, I brought the coconut back to Forest, and we drank the sweet juice. It tasted a lot different than I was expecting - I think I was imagining more of a coconut milk taste, but this was more like sweet water with a subtle hint of coconut flavour.
On the boat ride back, the tide was too low for us to stay inside the waters sheltered by the coral reef, so we had to venture out into open ocean. This ride was extremely choppy and we were regularly sprayed with warm seawater. When we grew closer to Ovalau, we had to go through a small gap in the reef in order to reach the harbor. The man guiding the boat shut the motor off and he dragged us slowly along using a long pole. The water was so shallow that I could practically touch the spiny purple sea urchins that dotted the ocean bottom.
