Saioni Settlement

Another unscheduled stop for us, and it turned out to be one of our favorites. This is an “off the beaten path” island. Lush, green, craggy mountains surround the beautiful, calm bay.
The flora along the quiet roadside is vibrant and colorful, the people greet us with huge smiles and cry out “bula” as a welcome. We would even hear people say it from inside their houses as we walked by.

Jeff and I decided to be on our own today. We took a taxi a few miles to a beach and snorkeled and swam for a couple of hours. It was sunny and gorgeous out, with big, puffy clouds and crystal clear waters. We saw some nice coral and lots of colorful fish. We like to just hang in the water over a rock complex for quite a while. After a bit, the action starts to happen and all the fish come out, zipping around like people in town going about their business. Jeff and I agreed that our favorite fish are the brilliant cobalt blue fish that are about
2” long and their gloriously turquoise counterparts
that are just a little smaller. The colors and patterning of the fish are magnificent and it’s hard to tear yourself away from such special world.

After soaking up the quiet beauty of, basically, our own private beach, we decided to walk back to town along the quiet road to catch the tender back to the ship. This was just great until it started to rain. One thing that we’ve learned is that rain in the tropics is like no rain we have known. You can see it coming from a distance and it comes down in buckets! We were able to wait it out in a cute bus stop shelter and got back to the ship tired and happy and just a little wet.

One more stop in Fiji tomorrow before continuing on.Read more