Toberua Island Weekend

After returning from New Zealand, I had two more excruciatingly long lovely weeks of quality time with the kids before school started. Luckily, MLK weekend fell during that so Richard had a long weekend to partake in the fun too. Having made multiple drives to and from Nadi over the term break, when I mentioned going to a resort for the weekend Clarissa immediately said she didn't want to go anywhere far that would be a long drive in the car. Given the kids and I had just been to Leleuvia with my in-laws, I wasn't feeling the cold showers so soon. I recalled someone telling us about another nearby island similar to Leleuvia, but nicer after our first trip....so I dug through my old emails, found the link, and we set about contacting them. It took a couple days of emails and phone calls to get everything lined up. Given we were "locals", our boat transfer to the Toberua Island had to coordinate with another guest's arrival/departure.

On Saturday, we had to be at the boat landing at 9am. Given we had no clue where it was (and google maps was no help), we had our driver contact pick us up (which was a good thing....we would have totally missed the "landing"....it was a bus stop on the river edge that had two steps going down to the water). The boat ride was quicker than heading out to Leleuvia, about 15 minutes down a river and another 15 minutes across open water to the island. It was a bit overcast when we arrived...but still beautiful!

We got checked into our bure. We had our own private bathroom and the back wall completely opened up (I'll show you in a video in a bit!). The lovely view out the back....with the traditional hammock by the water.....

The kids were super excited about the pool....so they wanted to swim immediately....so I piddled around the island with the camera while Richard kept an eye on them......note Richard "watching" under the poolside bure.

You can also see in the above photo the tree that lost it's fronds to TC Winston.....
Below, the trail to the boat landing.....

My, what pretty prop roots you have there.....oops....is my inner botanist showing again?

I have a thing for palm tree shadows....they are almost more interesting to photograph than the trees sometimes.....

School of Diamondscale Mullet, Liza vaigiensis....the water is so clear you can see their perfect shadows below them.

The jellyfish I saved that had washed up at low tide....this is it undulating away...

Back at the pool....sigh...tweens and their face making!

Super sweet smile....

Toberua Island offered several excursions per day. Given we were coming from Suva....we just wanted to chillax on the island...something we can't do at home, but I can see where some of the excursions would be enjoyable for someone spending a week at the resort. One that did peak my interest was a trip to Bird Island. It is a uninhabited island that several species of sea birds nest on, including the red-footed booby. Since my marine biology days, I have wanted to see the blue-footed booby....but a red-footed booby would do in the mean time....sigh but no one wanted to go with me...We catch did a frigate bird circling overheard.

Modeling the hat she stole from daddy....

So after swimming, we had lunch. We then headed out to go snorkeling. We had decided to wait till after lunch to snorkel (there are set meal times), as we did not bring a watch and didn't want to end up having to rush back (and the kids really wanted to get in the pool...which we have one at home?!?!). It was now low tide, so we had to kayak out to small dock, tie up the kayaks, and then drop in right on top of the reef. The resort has some floats marking the reef and we had to paddle outside of them so as not to damage the reef with our oars. 

Don't mind the giant black menacing clouds coming towards us.....

As you saw a few weeks back.....the family that snorkels together, gets stung by cnidarians together! Back in my marine bio days, we learned that cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, etc...your stinging cell organisms) will synchronize spawning around light and water temperature conditions....so a full moon in the middle of summer....prime spawning time.....so the water was full of little baby stinging critters....(and lots of grown-up jellyfish like the above one I "saved"). There was also a ton of fishes, everywhere we looked! The most adorable fish must have thought Richard was a Hollywood movie scout and was trying to get a part in the next Finding Nemo/Dory series movie.....I think it might be a Golden trevally (Gnathanodon speciosus) which will commonly swim with groupers and other big fish (so in all likelihood, it thought Richard was a grouper if I'm not doing any personification). It is just a super tiny juvenile!!

So between the constant stinging and the occasional boom of thunder from the clouds from over the mainland heading towards us....we didn't end up snorkeling all that long. We paddled back to shore and big drops of rain started falling as got out of the kayaks. So we headed back to our bure and got showered and dried off. It ended up raining pretty much the rest of the afternoon and evening. Richard and I had scheduled massages so that helped to pass the time. We headed up towards the bar area and played some pool, table tennis and board games. It was real nice in that each bure had an umbrella outside it's door to use, so we didn't get soaked again. The kids were served an early dinner. Mason opted to then hang out in the bure after dinner and Clarissa joined us at our table (and helped herself to a second dinner off my plate...lol). That Saturday night happened to be a barbecue meal....Richard said it was the best tenderloin he has had since we've been in Fiji...it was tasty! We went to sleep listening to the sound of rain coming down and the ocean. The next morning....well you will have to watch the movie!

I think that was the best feature of the bure....the open doors let in the best breeze (the fear of sea kraits crawling in while we were sleeping and stepping on one if we had to get up was the only reason we closed them at night). We were off to a much better start the second day! We attempted snorkeling again, but the stinging cnidarians were out in full force and the kids lasted about 5 minutes. So Richard snorkeled a while and I took the kids to the pool. Next we tried our hand at another sport.....

No, not fishing silly! Kite flying!! They tied the kite string to fishing line. The breeze is so strong, it carries the kite WAY up high (see the tiny speck at the top of the picture.....this was after I made them bring it down so I could get the kids and the kite in the same shot). Seriously...one of the most ingenious ideas ever!!

Patiently waiting for her turn with the kite again while sitting on a tree stump.....

After lunch it was low tide again, so more mandatory fun....time to circumnavigate the island! We loaded up on the sunscreen, but all did managed to get a little pink.....first, let's meet Mr. Crab on a mangrove seed.

Clarissa loves picking unsuspecting sea cucumbers and watching them squirt water in self defense....

The previously mentioned Bird island in the distance, Two Tree island closer to us. When chatting with the property manager, she said if we were standing near Two Tree island we would be able to see Leleuvia Island.

One of many sea stars she picked up.

Big brother getting "revenge" on his little sister by not saving her when a giant clam pops up and tries to gobble her up.

Helping the black sponges tidy up by washing all the sediment off....

After our island circumnavigation, we cooled off in the pool and then showered (I forgot to bring aloe with me...oops). We then found a tern egg on the end of the dock. We noticed every time we walked out there, a tern would circle and squawk at us. It was probably our second or third trip out there we finally noticed the lone egg.

Our second day had the most beautiful sunset! The sky turned so many colors in every direction!

Recall, I even showed you the same sunset the other day with so many shades of pink. One criteria of the local rate on Toberua is a two night minimum. So thankfully, our second day there was no rain and it was immensely more enjoyable. After dinner, there was some cloud cover but it was relatively dark and I tried my hand at my first star photography....not the best....but I kept having clouds move in. If you click to enlarge the image, you will see Orion's belt at the top and a group of stars in the middle. I did get a shot of Mars (orange dot), but not many stars in that one...figured I'd go ahead and post the "bad" star photo so when I get a real good one it will really wow you all!

The next morning was nice and sunny again. The kids decided to completely pass on snorkeling. I headed out since Richard had gotten some time the prior day. I beelined to the floating dock (it was high tide so I didn't have to paddle out). As soon as I passed the dock, I saw two SQUID swim by! I was so excited....I have been a marine biologist for many years and those were the first squid I had ever seen in the wild. I'm bummed that I didn't get it on the GoPro (there must have been a power surge that first stormy night, our charger got fried so we could not charge any of our devices the rest of the trip). The squid I saw were Bigfin Reef Squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana)...I looked them up as soon as I got home! Richard had commented that the blue sea stars seemed exceptionally large, so while I was out snorkeling I dove down and field measured with my hand. One arm of the biggest one I saw was the size of my hand (so 7 in/18cm), so the whole sea star would have been over a foot (or close to 40 cm) in size.....that is big compared to the other ones we have seen!! By the time I got back, the kids were already showering. We cleaned up and packed up. We were headed back on the boat making a supply/linen run before lunch. The kids had a bit of time to do some more 'kite fishing' as we called it.

The staff brought out some day old bread to feed some fish as they loaded our luggage. The fish loved it! They also took our photo (and sent it to us with a thank you for visiting email, which was really sweet)....Clarissa couldn't be bothered to smile for a photo, she was busy feeding fish. In usual Fijian style, they sang 'Isa Lei' (the farewell song) as we left.

It was a fun relaxing MLK/last hurrah before the new school year weekend! The breeze thru the bure was wonderful during the day, but at night when we closed the sliding wall to keep sea kraits out it got a little too warm for Richard. So if we come back it will be during the winter (not near in a full moon, so hopefully nothing stinging will be spawning).

Current island tally: 1 Toberua Island visited, 326 Fijian Islands remaining