The Cargo crew of the Yasawa Flyer had an ingenious method of unloading the double kayak that Joolee and I rented on the main island of Fiji (We paid nearly the New Zealand purchase price to rent it, much to Joolee’s chagrin–she owns a Feathercraft, but it’s in Alaska). They chucked it right over the rail. What the hell? It’s a boat, right? It should float.

The swells offered intermittent glimpses of the bright yellow hull that my credit card was securing, an I remember feeling impressed with how quickly the choppy seas drew it, empty and aimless, apart from the ferry. At this point I began to consider calling the day, my birthday in fact, an officially bad day.

Joolee had already been fighting seasickness on the ferry ride from the main island. Then as I had fought my way through the clots of seasick backpackers to get a below deck seat before the looming squall on the horizon exploded into tropical violence, the boat lurched into a swell and tossed me forward where I cracked my head on the video entertainment system. So when Joolee later conceded her perch in the fresh air and came down below to join me, I was nursing a scalp cut and she couldn’t find me anywhere on the boat. She concluded that I’d been tossed overboard.

We found each other right about the time the ferry was pulling into Kuata, the southernmost of the Yasawa group, where we were hoping to begin our 100km paddling trip that afternoon. A knot of people swarmed the back deck as a pod of launches from nearby resorts buzzed around the back of the boat in pelting rain and whipping winds. We tried in vain to ensure that we would be conveyed from the back of the ferry to the same place that our rented kayak would be deployed from the front, but no one could offer details of how they would accomplish this. It was at that point that Joolee’s attempts to enlist the crew in finding me finally bore fruit: I was being fervently paged over the intercom. But the launch was leaving so I took a leap of faith and I gave Joolee (who still had the mute and distant stare of the nauseated) a confident shrug and a smile and I got into the launch.

We were instantly soaked by sheets of rain. We nervously watched from the launch as a young Fijian guy tossed one of our paddles into the water. Apparently they had worked out that he was to paddle the kayak to shore and his method was to swim after it.

We’d reached that intercultural breaking point that is always the onus of the westerner: how long do you placidly standby to see how your new third-world friends will improvise at possible financial consequence to you? What is your tolerance for being judged up-tight and displaying the sin of lack of faith?

While our Fijian swimmer judged the right time to jump in, Joolee and I tried to stress that in our opinions, letting both our boat and our paddle drift away in a windstorm would have undesireable consequences for our plans, and that in our humble, but nevertheless inexperienced views, the kayak and the paddle had now drifted much too far apart to pull it off and we should motor to the paddle before we lost sight of it.

There was fervent talk in Fijian. Then, okay, the boat circled back for the paddle. The Fijian boy made a fantastically showy leap as we approximated the direction of the kayak, and then we were zooming toward the beach. We witnessed as his attempt to paddle the kayak alone were defeated by the waves and he finally conceded to a tow.

So the boat was safe, and we were wet. But after what we’d just seen, our lovely plans for a couple of weeks placid paddling seemed doomed. If I’d been forced to play my hand as we sat there at the Kuata Resort (where despite having no reservation they graciously served us lunch while the doors blew off of the place) it didn’t look good. We had some time to wait, but I was already longing for the pina coladas and pineapple burgers at the poolside bar at our hotel back on the big island. Some birthday this was turning out to be.

In the end the weather broke and our wanderlust won out. Nothing trumps the sense of discovery that traveling under your own power brings. Perhaps it was fortunate that on our first day, before we’d even paddled a stroke, the sea god gave us a little demonstration of what he could do. It gave us some healthy respect for the forces we were up against, and it gave us a measuring stick to size up the splendor of the ten days that followed.

It was the trip we’d dreamed of: Idling past creamy white beaches and emerald cloaked spires. Landing to doze in the shade and swim during the hot middle of the day. Paddling over teeming reefs and imponderably blue lagoons. Swimming in limestone caves. Marveling as boobies and frigatebirds swooped down to check us out.
The Yasawa Islands are a chain of over a dozen islands, none over about 50 square kilometers, that extend like an 80km string of emerald dribbles northwest of Viti Levu (the main island of Fiji). It took us just over seven days to paddle from Kuata at teh bottom, to the top of the chain, Yawini, a 100m comma of volcanic rock at the northeast tip of Yasawa Island. With one exception, we set our feet on every island.

We paddled in dead calm. On the windward side, we got used to paddling in some swells of about 1-2 meters. We discovered that could survive paddling through rainstorm. We made a four mile crossing between the largest gap in the chain. Dolphins swam with us one morning. We saw turtles. We camped when we could (one time when we had to when it got dark before we reached where we thought we were going). We spent many nights at resorts, where we drank Fiji Bitter in the evenings and quickly became minor celebrities among the circuit of beachgoing backpackers (Many times we pulled up to a beach to be greated by sunbathers who claimed they had heard about us from others).

Probably my favorite aspect of the trip, however, was our time with Fijians in the villages of the Yasawas. Before landing on an island to rest or camp or just fill up on fresh water, it’s proper to seek the chief’s permission to do so. And part of asking permission is offering sevusevu of kava roots. Fortunately as we talked to Fijians along the way, they prepared us. By the time we made it to the northern end of the chain where there are no resorts, we had a kayak compartment full of kava root and several letters of introduction written in Fijian from relatives we’d met.

Kava is the national drink of Fiji. It tastes like well-peppered dirt and it makes your lips numb, but it is part of the social fabric of Fijian life. So by offering sevusevu, we got to spend time in the villages. A man named Mali let us camp on a deserted island where he keeps his goats–so for a night we had a South Pacific island all to our selves. His son John took us to a seawater cave in the limestone mountain of Sawa-i-lau.

In a village called Bukama where we camped, Pita used a generator to watch DVDs in his modest house. What did he choos to show his two American visitors who were traveling in a small boat? Jaws II and Jaws III, of course.
Everywhere we went in the villages people were intrigued by our means of transport. People marveled at the flashiness of our boat (although as an experienced kayaker, Joolee pointed out its poorer features amd its tiredness). They whistled when we told them how far we’d come. I like to believe they weren’t just being polite, and maybe we impressed them. What I adored was this: no matter how non-chalant everyone appeared about our presence, no one missed our launch in the morning. Children and elderly materialized when it came time to put the skirts on and push the nose out into the surf and negotiate the reef. So with a great bunch of waving and lots of “vinaka vakalevu” and “moce” we paddling away from our new friends and into the wonder of a new day. After a chastening start, Fiji was very good to us. I’ve been browsing the Feathercraft website