[password] forester11
[position] 18 51.996S 178 06.893E
[status]  KADAVU AND THE ASTROLABE REEF
Our friends Marilyn and Ken flew into Vanisea and experienced 2 nights of Kadavu village life at Cooksley's Homestay / Guesthouse before we arrived to pick them up. They also visited the market and arrived on board with beautiful lettuce, cucumbers and bokchoy - who knew that Ben would ever exclaim over the sight of a fresh lettuce! After exploring Vanisea village we headed to Kadavu Dive situated at the nearby Matana Resort. Ben & Ken and Kate & Steve from Blue Summit were keen to dive with manta rays but had to be content with an excellent reef dive using their own tanks as the compressor at the resort broke down!

Next stop was Naqara Bay on Ono Island- close to where you can snorkel with the manta rays....what a highlight to swim with these beautiful creatures! We also enjoyed time at the local village where we were made very welcome. We were only the fourth boat to visit this year. We were especially interested to see the scouts and guides off to their overnight camp in a longboat. When they knew we were scout leaders we were invited to go to the camp for their campfire but what was a quick trip in a longboat would have been a journey and a half in the dinghy!!! We could see the campfire on Buliya Island and it looked enormous! The scouts are the only children we have seen wearing life jackets- we have regularly seen the children going to school in the school bus-boat but never a life jacket in sight!

The village was also preparing for an Australian gold mining company- renovating a house and building toilets and showers. We hope that the village will benefit from their presence without the loss of their unique way of life.

Ken, Ben, Steve & Kate enjoyed great diving in the area with Mai Dive.

We were joined by several ICA boats and it was lovely to catch up with them before heading off again with Blue Summit to Beqa Lagoon.

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