The Kirks

Fiji part 2.

Unfortunately, no wireless access in this part of Fiji so there are no pictures in this blog entry.

We’re still island hopping in the south pacific. We’ve been doing a lot of travelling by seaplane which has got to be the best way to travel. In the Coustea resort, we learned to dive but also, the kids got involved in a number of “eco-projects” and found out lots about island living. We did some work with the Savu Savu foundation’s Giant Clam restocking project. The Giant Clam has been massively overfished throughout the Pacific but by growing the clams in cages, the marine biologists can ensure that enough of the small ones survive predation to restock the coral reefs. We’ve been doing a lot of snorkelling and diving around the reef and we’ve all become very proficient at identifying the many different species of fish which inhabit the reef. We even saw a reef shark prowling around yesterday!

Isabelle and Hannah have also been doing things which help them understand the challenges of island life. Most of the islands have a very delicate ecology and recycling and reuse is very important. They’ve also learned to climb coconut trees, weave baskets, print textiles in the traditional way and fish. The hermit crab racing was a lot of fun too.

We spent a day at a pearl farm. We had never really realised how hard it is to culture pearls. They gave us a tour round the farm and Isabelle dived down to see the oysters growing on lines at 5m. They then told us all about the implantation techniques and the lifecycle of the oyster. We even got a small cultured pearl to take away. Although the cultured pearl market is totally controlled by the Japanese (Japanese scientists do all of the implantation in Fiji) the Fijians are hoping that the pearl industry will become important to the economy.

We’re in Castaway Resort at the moment. It’s very close to where the Tom Hanks movie was shot. It’s definitely not as nice as the Cousteau resort but we’ve got a Bure on the beach looking out over the startlingly blue Pacific with great snorkelling right outside our door so it’s not that bad…

We were going to stop island hopping tomorrow (the 26th) and fly to LA but we’ve decided that we’re having a great time here and so we’ll stay another week and “hop on” to Kula Bay and spend a week there. It means we’ll miss Santa Ynez, San Francisco, Yosemite and Death Valley but it’ll be fun. Hopefully they’ll have better internet access there and we’ll post some pictures.