Beez Neez now Chy Whella

To Korotoka

Big Bear and Pepe Millard

Sat 15 Aug 2015 22:57

To the Crow’s Nest, Korotogo

No sooner than we had got going this morning than we had passed a runway, a wonderful Berger home and a ‘one careful owner’.

A working pony and pig houses along the main road.

A glimpse of the sea, a pretty house and a very smart Police Station.

We stopped at the ‘beach’ and saw a massive expanse of reef in both directions.

Steve took this lovely picture of us on Fiji’s equivalent of Southend Pier.

Standing on the pier looking down into the clear, shallow water, we waited patiently for the blue starfish to climb onto the rock. On the other side was the three foot worm we had first seen in Musket Cove. The internet found a little bit about these strange creatures.

For the uninitiated, balolo is a kind of edible sea worm, scientifically known as Eunice viridis, which spends most of its time in the deep recesses of certain coral reefs. It rises in its millions to the surface for a few hours once or twice a year, at a certain phase of the moon, for the purpose of reproducing itself. Males are reddish-brown, females green. Strictly speaking, the balolo that rise are not the whole worm, but rather segments of it. The time when the Balolo rise may be termed the Fijian whitebait season. It is watched for with the greatest anxiety, and predicted with unerring certainty. We think eating this may be consigned with drinking kava and not available on Beez Neez.

I pointed to a sign and suggested a horse ride along the beach, ‘Choose a horse to ride and enjoy with a big smile’ - I vaguely heard primitive means of transport which I took as a refusal. Giggling, I tried again, what about the ‘Big Smile’ What about the sore nadgers......... The notice board, although in sad repair, did highlight areas of reef protection and the benefits of leaving fish to grow to full size.

After a quick stop to organise a tour of the Eco Park on the morrow, we headed for The Crow’s Nest. To say the path up to our room was steep.......... Our white hire car is just seen, that had already done an exquisitely steep bit to the car park. A very nice chap dragged my case and I got to the halfway point and had to stop, this is not a track to be taken midst the worst bout of bronchitis. Looking up didn’t make for a happy chest. Looking on Tripadvisor there are some extremely funny comments about our abode for the next two nights. Let’s just say it would be impossible here in a wheelchair.

Of the four apartments, built so far, ours was the only finished one, Beds soon settled in and I tried a louvre window – one of the slats immediately fell out and Bear came in to find me still trying to replace it. Next door had several important wires dangling about the place but a gardener had planted rows of flowers between each residence.

A couple of our blooms.

Our view was quite something. To the left of the pool is the restaurant, a little track leads to the ‘beach’ – not the place to bring small people with buckets and spades – as soon as the tide goes out all that’s left is reef.

We piled back into the car and set off for the town, crossing the river next to a very ex-rail bridge.

Sigatoka boasts being a Rugby Town. Just think we could be staying in the Riverview Hotel mmm.

We found a Chicken Express for a late lunch and then Bear posed outside the local Rup’s Big Bear. The Bollywood music coming from the shop was enough to blow us off the pavement – must get used to this before we visit India.

Going back to the car we looked down to read several rugby players history on pavement plaques.......

Back over the river, we thought we would try for the hill fort. We saw the enormous Sri Radha Krishna Temple and drove through a village. Sadly, the fort gates were locked with no sign of opening times. So back to the Crow’s Nest for a swim.

On my slower ascent to our apartment, we had a good look at our surroundings. So much old rubbish was poked under and beside each villa – pity they didn’t use cheap trellis fencing to hide some of it.