Cruising to Ovalau

It was only a short cruise down the east side of Ovalau until we arrived at Levuka, Wiki gives a good description of the island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovalau_%28Fiji%29, the mountains are amazing and as usual I hardly had time for breakfast. Love this prehistoric foot print on the rock















the early settlers lacked imagination if they thought they could build a future city at Levuka, the mountain prevents any building except along the narrow shore line. They are attempting to brighten up the old buildings and I did enjoy looking at the historical museum which also had a great collection of shells.
















Levuka is quiet town, there is a fish factory which gives employment to the locals, no doubt that encourages the birds when the effulent is just pumped into the sea.
















Four of us took an optional tour to have morning tea with a descendant of the last cannibal on the island. The Maoris were cannibals as well and I wonder if they needed more protein as these places would have only relied on fish as their protein source. The white settlers would have bought pigs, chicken and other protein sources with them. We had a Maori fisherman and his wife on the cruise, and they liked my theory. Ovalau is one of the islands my missionary forebear William Moore (1st cousin 5x removed)was living during his stay on the islands from 1850-1869. The lady said the names of all the ministers are on a board in the church but I didn't get time to look. On the way back from our visit we pulled up to get some fresh coconuts and the man scaled the palm for us, couldn't get much fresher than that.











I took a taxi ride to the cemetery, had to walk up about 80 steps to the top of the hill, the view was amazing. I wondered how they managed to dig the graves with so much rock. There were some other people also there, and I was staggered when one of the young girls said 'do you live in Suva' she had seen me there. My taxi waited for me to come back as the cemetery is a couple of miles from the centre of town, we then went looking for the Methodist church, there are two, the first one I went to was only built in 1869 so i knew that wasn't where William had preached, but this church is the first. It is quite tiny and just near the mission steps which lead further up the hill. I didn't do that walk to check out the view.












We had the day in Levuka and I really enjoyed it, but realised for $100 FJ and three hours driving a group of us could have had a taxi ride right around the island. with the $AU so good that would have been a bargain, but that will be a next time, there is a large vehicle ferry which goes to the island and hopefully I can talk Chris and Alex into a visit and we can drive ourselves.
Where to next, we cruised back to our night stop between Naigani and Ovalau and had a fun party after dinner with a 3 team challenge, I got the frozen parcel and had to put on a frozen t shirt, lucky the water in the pool was warm enough to allow the t-shirt to unwrap.