A big fire is burning on the beach. We have cleared half a square kilometre of the island’s primeval forest of undergrowth. A few fence posts may also have been involved. Coconuts exploding in the fire are nice jokes for existential pyromaniacs. From the laptop comes “Ring of Fire” and “Fire Water Burn”. The beer is cool and the stars shine brighter than anywhere else in the world.
The ferry to Vanua Levu on Thursday has also been cancelled. The last four days here have been wonderful. I’m winning more and more beer at poker. Nice new people are arriving. I’m super senior with 16 days. Travelling? I’m still travelling. In my head and on the water.
Sometimes you probably experience more if you just stay in one place. I still have no desire whatsoever to revive my USA travelling pace. If the ferry hadn’t been cancelled, I would probably have missed the best kite ride of my life.
Slightly underpowered, I go out with a 10 switchblade right on the beach in front of the Safari Lodge. Everything works out. And what doesn’t work: at least it goes in. Gusts are flattened, just like the 1 metre high waves in front of the outer reef. The tacks become more and more toxic and some of them are jumped in. Switch downwinders, chop hops and finally the right jumps.
Edging hard upwind until the break. With the huge depower of the Switchblade, it wouldn’t even be necessary to fly the kite backwards. Just pull tight and take off. The combination of pulling tight and flying backwards gives me some wonderful slow-motion flights. How high? At least a kilometre. Skydiving was much more boring.
Grant, a nice Australian, jumps over a kayak. Natalie does so many deadmans until the fish start nibbling at her. Formation kiting across the bay. And I fly through the sky over Fiji. Cries of joy reach the beach from the sea.
Evening. No fire, just stars. One flashes so brightly in red, white and blue that it projects a glow onto the water. The shooting stars fall every minute. Every tenth one trails a luminescent tail of fire behind it. At some point, I’m simply lost for words.
The next evening I find out that tomorrow’s ferry is also cancelled. So goodbye, Vanua Levu and Taveuni! Would have loved to come over. My journeys are getting shorter.
I travel to the other side of the island at two o’clock in the morning for the Rugby World Cup quarter-final. The only hotel with a 24-hour generator is easy to find. Fiji loses undeservedly and narrowly against South Africa. I lose the right path on the way back and spend an hour whispering “There’s a light” through the jungle.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.