Mana Island

On Thursday, December 4th we boarded the boat to Mana. This was the same boat and crew we would be riding with to and from the islands for the next two weeks. It takes roughly five hours to go from Port Denaru on the mainland all the way up to the most northerly island in the Yasawa group so the boat just does a complete circuit of the Mamanucas and the Yasawas everyday. It stops in the ocean near each resort and each resort has its own little tin boat to bring people from the resort to the big boat. It took maybe an hour and a half to get from Port Denaru to Mana Island Lagoon where we spent our first four days on the islands. When our tin boat pulled up on shore we were greeted with a welcoming song, as they do on all the islands, and a warm “Bula” which is basically “Hello” in English. All Fijians are taught English in school at a young age so we had no problems communicating with everyone. Even the children are able to communicate in English quite well. I attempted to learn some Fijian while there but I don’t imagine I will retain much of it after leaving the country to be honest. Unfortunately I don’t have the memory of an elephant. Mana Island was a cool island and the resort we were staying at was especially cool because your dorm rooms and the resort itself are right in the village. I thought I got a much more authentic Fijian experience here then any of the other resorts on the Yasawas. Everyone was showing their classic Fijian hospitality and I got to know them all fairly quickly which gave it a homier kind of feel. It takes about 3 hours to walk around the entire island which I did one morning for something to do. There were 3 other resorts on this island which were much more posh than ours. We weren’t even allowed to set foot on the one resort. Even to use the Internet. We all got escorted out the one day when we tried. Brutal. I thought our backpackers lodge was great. It had all kinds of entertainment. They had crab races, fire dances, karva nights (which I will explain later), and great beaches to swim at both the front and back of the island. The beach at the back of the island was only maybe a 5 minute walk and there was barely ever anybody back there. It was a sheltered beach and this is where some country’s version of the TV reality show called “Survivor” was filmed a few years ago. The set from the show was simply abandoned after the show ended and is still in place today. You could see where they had “Tribal Council” to see who would be voted off the island that week. It was really cool to see something like that but I thought it was odd that a show would just move out leaving their set behind to rot. I suppose the Fijians may have asked them to leave it as a tourist attraction but I don’t know. Another bonus of Mana Island was its proximity to the small island where they filmed the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away.”