As Quest's crew prepared to visit the local village of Sawayake on Gau Island (pronounced "ngow") the local trading boat was offloading fuel. Without a constant supply of fuel villages have no electricity, no transportation (including both travel and fishing), and no communication (either for pleasure or emergency). This island had only one cruising boat visit last year and we were the only on so far this year (it's now June).

Without the help of these folks we would NOT have known where to bring our dinghy ashore.

As it was we could only bring our dinghy in so far and had to walk the rest of the way through shoe grabbing mud! Uriah was right there the led a hand to Lydia.

Anchoring anyplace in Fiji necessitates a visit to the local chief and the requisite gift of kava.

The young man to the right of Nancy was also visiting from a neighboring village and his visit also demanded a visit to the chief and his permission to walk around, visit friends and be in the surrounding waters. he cross-legged sitting is part of the ritual.

Uriah was our guide four our time in Gau Island. He showed us around the village.

Here you see Nancy & Lydia in their "village attire." Believe me, in the tropical heat it is a VERY BIG deal for us. The villagers don't realize how VERY HOT their winter climate is to us.

The Churches in the islands are always the pride and joy of the villagers - and rightly so!

The pastor's house is high on the hill. His wife checks out the additional rinse her laundry is receiving!

We run out of the rain in time for a kava ceremony.

And by the time it abates we run into the pastor who insists that we visit him!

The raising of children is definitely a village affair. We see children in many homes that are not necessarily their biological parents. Because this is so common in the islands no one seems to pay any attention. Their parents are in Suva earning a living.

Later, we're taken to a village museum. Artifacts there come from the time of cannibals. Local people constantly express appreciation for  Christian values that have dispensed with eating "long pig" and killing of neighboring villagers and other outsiders (such as one of the crew from The Bounty's survivors). These implements are NOT replicas. They are the real thing. There are stories of eating "long pig" as recently as post WWII!

It was still raining as we were ready to leave. We were also getting hungry and a trip to MacDonalds was out of the question. We were invited for tea and taro at this lady's place. She lived near the road in the middle of a huge mud puddle. We were a little afraid (of disease), but boiling hot tea and boiled taro seemed like a good choice and we were very grateful.

We had already overstayed our welcome, but the tide was still out. We were hoping to move the dinghy over to that little channel and then float her out to clear water.

Guess again! The channel wasn't deep enough and more water just made it harder to walk on this uneven muddy ground. We did have a lot of help, but it was still a heavy difficult job. We had been warned about the tide problem, but I don't know what we could have done differently - our choices were to leave sooner or much later.

 After we visited the village people came out to the Quest as we had some gifts for them from our Bible Mission!

Our last day on Gau Uriah and Sonu put together a small feast and very special day on the beach for us. You can se it all being prepared using just what is at hand on the island (including "wild" chicken).

Here's the finished earth oven (left).

Coconuts were all around us and everyone enjoyed the refreshing flavor.

When the meal was finally ready to eat we all sat around our natural table of palm fronds. As an aside, this whole day was surprisingly bug free. We had loaded ourselves with DEET before leaving the boat, but we didn't experience any problem with the bugs. Usually the odors of cooking well bring them out.

The cleanup crew waited in the background. (right)

It's hard to explain how special this day was. What I haven't shown you here is how Uriah made all the baskets and how the children decided to show us a little dance and how they collected over 100 shells for Nancy - counting each one! Nor have I included the shots of the children eating cookies in the cockpit of the Quest.