Blue Lagoon 7 night Cruise 30 March 2018
“Jane! there is a shark underneath you” I am urgently advised by the pretty blonde Carolyn from Sydney. “I know( I shout back), but I have to fix my mask” We had just dived into the shark feeding reef and I was well aware where I was and had been the first off the boat to be greeted by 3 white-tipped reef sharks circling around me. How magnificent I thought, just as majestic as the big Mantarays I had seen near this area a couple of years before. Silently and gracefully gliding around both. But the mask that fitted me perfectly yesterday was leaking, one of the new ones where you can breathe through your nose and mouth and have a 180-degree view, which should have been perfect for today, as I had used it on an hour reef snorkel the day before. Now I had caught the attention of a smaller shark just when my mask started filling up. Oh well, yes I know he is there, but he is just curious, he doesn’t want to hurt me, he is just fascinated by my flippers or maybe he thinks I am a mermaid!
“Jane! there is an eel underneath you! Look down with your mask, I will put the torch on it” Of course I think, why shouldn’t there be. I seem to be the one that creatures are attracted to. I wasn’t freaked out although he was black and large and caught my Fiji guide’s attention for a long time.
I was more fascinated by the white & grey owl with the huge black eyes looking down at us from the very top of the limestone cave we were in. History has it that it was the hiding place for a Fijiian princess pledged to her betrothed that was going to be married off to a rival chief had hidden in the cave and was fed by her beloved until they escaped to another island and lived happily ever after. ….The cave then led to another where you had to dive for 3 seconds underneath the rock to go into a completely dark cave which when you found your way through the pregnancy cave (apparently if you are pregnant you can never get through) to a third cave called the spitting cave where the end had a small blowhole letting light in and where the natives spit into the ancient cave.
So here is the other fascinating thing that I found in researching the history of the Sawa-i-Lau. The island is a distinct limestone rock rising 1000 feet above sea level and located off Nabukeru Village. It is owned by the people of Takatoka Koro and the mataqali Koro of Nabukeru.
The Sawa-i-Lau Island is a mystic spiritual place. There are in fact over 200 caves on this island steeped in history of hidden scrolls and a treasure chest of the first Fijiians who travelled from Lake Tanganyika the third largest freshwater lake in the world. There are ancient encryptions carved on the entrance to the cave that is said to be ancient Hebrew. The locals here say that Sawa i Lau is the heart of the Yasawa and Fiji. It is where the mana, the magic of this country, is hidden they