Niame Village Visit

We slowed down so me, Dave, and Erin went to a village to relax on the
Island of Renoka. Now Renoka has an interesting story here, it is
very different from the other islands because it has lots of stones.
That might sound odd, but it is different, and has black sand, not the
white sandy beaches we see on the other islands. It is a lush rain
forest and is known for its rare butterflies. The other interesting
thing is that it lays on the fault line that caused the 10th largest
earthquake ever recorded that resulted in a tsunami hitting my island
2 years ago. When this quake happened it actually lifted the island
4M higher, so now the reef is out of the water! If you look at the
photos you can see the coral heads that used to be under water.

All of us have been busy, and spending too much time in town so it was
good to get away, and pretty cheap. about $10 US for food and a room.
The room was in a typical leaf hut, but had mosquito nets and clean
linens. The food was great, the village are SDA's (Seventh Day
Adventist) they supposedly don't drink, smoke, or have caffeine.
While there they did not stay true to this. But because of that their
vice is generally food, the make lots of sweet cakes and puddings with
kasava an island root.

We did lots of interesting things. We did not let them know ahead of
time that we were coming, but were trying to find a friend of a friend
there. Not knowing exactly where the village was, and the island is
probably 10 miles long, we pulled up to the first village asked a guy
and a dug out canoe which way and he said North, he also asked what
surf website I had? When I learn to surf I'll let him know. We then
ran into a guy fishing in a small boat and asked him, his name was
Gaga, the friend of the friend. He was very welcoming and happy to
see us. He ran his boat in first and organized people for us to come
in next. They have no jetty or landing. they have some round foam on
ropes they throw down and you time the swell to break through the surf
with a large wave, you then drive fast at the beach and pull up the
motor real quick, jump out, pick up the boat and run out of the surf
before the motor gets swamped. It was a lot going on but they have
become experts! They pulled our 7M fiberglass boat out, with a 40 HP
OBM in seconds.

The rest of the time we spent hiking to waterfalls, bathing in rivers,
visiting some other villages and talking with people. It turned out
Dave had ordered some timber last week, and it just turned out ordered
it from the village we were staying in. We talked with Gaga our host,
and found out they had not cut down the tree yet. So one afternoon
Dave and I followed 4 guys, with one HUGE chainsaw through the bush to
the rosewood tree. It was about 3M around and giant. It took about
30 min to cut it down, and it was quite a rush to see, feel, and hear
a tree that big fall. So for you tree huggers out there take note
that together Dave and I watched a giant tree fall and killed a croc!
Now to be fair this was not logging, it is sustainable because this is
not a mass operation. They replant their trees, and it is like saving
in a bank, when you need money you cut down 1 tree and sell the
timber. It is not a commercial logging operation.

Coming back we had some bad weather and the 1 hour boat ride turned
into 3, with Dave bailing, me getting hit by everywave, and Erin
hunkered in her rain jacket. Eddie Dave's driver did a great job and
got everyone home safely.