Santa Monica Bay - Now At Higher Risk of a "Stealth Tsunami" - 2012

 

Santa Monica Bay - Now At Higher Risk of a "Stealth Tsunami"

In the 1950’s, prior to the California surfing craze, riding an inflatable raft in Pacific Ocean surf was more fun than anything else I could imagine. However, growing up in Burbank, California at that time implied a landlocked existence. Luckily, our own natural water park, at Sorrento Beach in Santa Monica was only an hour away by car. Several times each week of summer vacation, my mother drove us to the shore of that crescent shaped bay.

In later years, polluted runoff entering Santa Monica Bay contributed to rising cancer rates among L.A. County Lifeguards. The statistics were enough to deter swimming at Southern California beaches. Even though my visits to the shore were rare, I often dreamed about Santa Monica Bay. In those dreams, I stood ashore as an unseen tsunami approached from the west. After the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004, I wondered about the tsunami threat in Santa Monica Bay. When the March 2011 tsunami hit the east coast of Japan, some of the heaviest damage occurred in and near Sendai.

Sendai, Japan stands at the head of a crescent shaped bay similar to Santa Monica Bay. While reviewing maps and pictures, I could see a tsunamical signature in the creation of Matsushima Bay, just north of Sendai. That “bay within a bay” is an archipelago of small, but towering islands, most having little or no beach. Lost in prehistory, a cataclysmic tsunami struck the coast at Matsushima. That huge series of waves quickly inundated and eroded the land, sweeping most of it out to sea. Today, those small, towering islands are all that remains of headlands that once overlooked the Pacific Ocean.

Earth scientists have long known that crescent shaped bays amplify wave action by focusing it at the head of such landforms. Within the city limits of Crescent City, California, Crescent Bay is one of half a dozen crescent shaped inlets. From the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011, Crescent City often takes the brunt of Northern California tsunami activity. According to researchers at nearby Humboldt State University, the city experienced tsunami conditions more than thirty times between 1933 and 2011.

With the help of satellite mapping and paleo-flood surveys, there is sufficient data to prove that crescent shaped bays do more than amplify tsunami. It is my thesis that tsunami help to create crescent shaped bays, both large and small. As sea levels rise annually at a rate between 1.7 mm and 3.3 mm, the threat of destructive tsunami also rises. Each cubic foot of water weighs over sixty-two pounds. Even a small rise in sea level places staggering extra inertia behind waves concentrated by a crescent bay. In Japanese, tsunami means, “harbor wave”.

Reflecting on my dreams of Santa Monica Bay tsunami, I now pay closer attention to crescent shaped bays that I visit. Three of my favorite Pacific Ocean bays are Natewa Bay, Catalina Harbor and Hanalei Bay. Each of the three bays is unique and beautiful. Their common heritage includes both tsunamical creation and vulnerability to future tsunami.

In 2001, I visited Natewa Bay, Vanua Levu, Fiji. Immediately, I was struck by its size. Throughout the South Pacific, it is second in size only to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Our buree at Lomalagi Resort overlooked the head of Natewa Bay. Each day, we watched as the tides emptied and then refilled the bay. Stripped down to old coral and bedrock, the long, narrowing bay magnifies any tidal action. If not actually created by tsunami, Natewa Bay appears to have hosted many such events. Around 2005, some development wags proposed building human made islands in the upper reaches of Natewa Bay. Although the development website still exists, we see no sign of actual development. With high tsunami risk at Natewa Bay, near shore development makes no sense.

The small town of Two Harbors is located at Isthmus Cove, Santa Catalina Island, California. Facing the Southern California coast, Isthmus Cove is a reliable anchorage for pleasure craft. On the far side of the isthmus is Catalina Harbor. Similar to Natewa Bay, “Cat Harbor”, features a south facing underwater canyon. The isthmus, a gently tapered mound of earth, rises only sixty-two at its high point. If a thirty-foot tsunami arrived from the south, the isthmus at Two Harbors could easily become a “tsunami sweep”. It is easy to visualize a tsunami-induced flood topping the low isthmus and spilling into Isthmus Cove, on the far side.

Hanalei Bay, on Kauai, Hawaii is a classic tsunamical bay. Lying at the foot of the Hanalei River Valley, there is no deep canyon beneath the bay. The mouth of the almost circular bay opens to the northwest. Rather than sediment from the river extending into the Pacific Ocean as a delta, exposure to tsunami and other extreme wave action has carved out a semicircular bay. Within the gentle sloping river valley, great tracts of farmland remain vulnerable to future tsunami.

In my recurring tsunami dream about Santa Monica Bay, I stand onshore. As I look out to sea, the ocean water recedes. Then, with no warning, I see a large tsunami racing toward me. I turn, as if to run from the approaching wave. As the towering tsunami overwhelms me, I find that it is made of cloudy foam. At the time of my inundation, the great wave evaporates and whisks away like a fog. In my dreams, the Great Tsunami of Santa Monica Bay causes no harm. In our real world of rising seas and continued earthquake activity, we may not be so lucky.

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By James McGillis at 05:52 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Finding The Dream House - Vanua Levu, Fiji Islands - 2001

Finding The Dream House - Vanua Levu, Fiji Islands

Thursday, August 24, 2001

 

6:45 AM – The myna bird "alarm clock" started ringing, right on time.  I put the coffee on; went back to bed.

 

7:10 AM – Breakfast outside, in nature.

 

8:15 AM – The scuba diving gear is already at the dive shop, so our trip will be easier this morning.

 

8:40 AM – We arrive at the dive shop, but we find no dive boat.  The feeling is something like what you experience when you run out of gas in your car.  You are not sure if your plans are going to work out that day, but you know that they will be different from what you planned.  Luckily, we did not have to wait too long to start the next chapter in our adventure.  A filmmaker had chartered the dive boat for fishing and it was due back soon.

 

9:30 AM – We were running a little late, so we motored out the channel, past the first point, but still inside the reef line of the lagoon.  We dived the Dream House site, named for the lone house standing at the end of a nearby spit of land, which extends straight out into the lagoon.  On our dive, we saw oceanic whitetip sharks, which I am sure I don’t have to describe, other than to say that they really do have white tips on their dorsal and pectoral fins.  If you are painting these scenes in your mind, even the tips of their tails get a little splotch of white paint. 

 

In addition to the sharks, there were several other large fish hovering near their favorite underwater retreats.  It was like an underwater nature walk, with each species represented by only one or two of its kind, separated by enough space that it felt like walking from diorama to diorama at the Museum of Natural History.  Although there were no explanatory signs adjacent to each fish, that was all that appeared to be missing.

 

10:00 AM – I’ll digress.  I bet you didn’t expect me to do that.  The Dream House dive site is just offshore from The Dream House, itself.  It is an unpresupposing example of rectangular architecture, with a gabled roof running its length.  However, it could be your little piece of paradise, paid for by the day.  Sitting in the middle of the lagoon, you might find yourself living in a simple house, with all the amenities, but none of the pretensions associated with big-time resort living. 

 

As the afternoon wears on, the winds will pick up a bit and you will hear the waves crashing on the reef, half a mile offshore.  There is a small volcanic island toward the West.  It is eroded at the base and has no shore to speak of.  The waves undercut the edges of the island leaving it looking like a large green mushroom, with palm trees atop.  As the Sun sets, we Americans look to the South and West, in anticipation of where the Sun has set all our lives.  However, here the Sun swings North and West and sets behind the trees of Vuana Levu. 

 

Still, the Dream House beckons, inviting us set up household and live our daily lives on this island.  If I keep up this line of reasoning, we shall all soon be living fulltime in an island paradise.  They teach us to be more sensible than that, don’t they?

 

11:00 AM – Our second dive was at The Caves, with aptly eroded lava structures smoothed and punched full of holes by time and tide.  It reminded me of diving that we did along the Kona Coast of Hawaii, only there the island includes a live volcano and all the lava structures seem new, or at least recently installed.  Caves are fun, but there is usually a lot of sediment inside, thus only the first person through will have a clear view. 

 

Regardless of water clarity it is an amazing feeling to swim into a hole where the light does not penetrate, then swim through a lava tube, up and out at the other end.  As you rise and exit the tube, seeing the blue sky filtering down through the water, it is very birth-like.  At human birth, you have to struggle to get out of the womb and receive that first breath-of-life.  In your waterborne rebirth, your eyes are open and you have a pressure-regulated breathing device already in you mouth.  You are born from Mother Nature and sent up and out toward the sky, to freely breathe the clear air and to live your life again.  Looking back on it, it wasn’t such a boring dive site, after all. Those clever dive masters take you in from below, so you can gently ascend to your new life on the New Earth. 

 

1:00 PM – On the return trip to Lomalagi, we met an SUV at a bend in the road.  Driving fast, he must have been a local.  As the vehicle whizzed past us, Cagey commented, “That was Terry and his mother, Linda going towards town”.  The next day, we were talking to Terry down by the resort office and the subject turned to cars and trucks.  I was using all my best arguments, railing against oversized and wasteful SUV’s.  After a few minutes, Terry seemed to summon up his nerve to ask a question to which he intuitively knew the answer.  He asked, “What’s an SUV?”  With that honest question, I realized how much had changed in the twenty years since Terry had lived in the U.S.  After I answered his question, we both were a bit embarrassed.

 

3:00 PM –We relaxed and enjoyed the afternoon, watching as the puffy clouds in the sky drifted by at high altitude.  It was another stunningly beautiful day in paradise.

 

6:00 PM – As usual, we observed Sunset on the Lanai.

 

7:05 PM – After dinner, we gazed again at the setting of the crescent moon, seeming larger now and setting later than before.  Time was growing closer to the day of our departure, back to Los Angeles and away from our island paradise. 

 

This is Chapter Nine of ten chapters. To view the previous article in this series, click HERE.  To view the following article in this series, click HERE.

Email James McGillis

Taking a Dive - Fiji Style - 2001

Taking a Dive - Fiji Style

Wednesday, August 23, 2001

 

7:00 AM – Brrriing.  Is that the sound of the alarm clock?  No, because we did not pack one.  It is our friendly myna birds squawking away outside.  When the windows are open all night and it is quiet, the contrast of morning in Fiji will wake you up in a hurry.

 

7:15 AM – Our usual breakfast of fresh fruit, orange juice and baked goods arrives, just as the coffee pot finishes brewing.  Weather normal – beautiful.  They did not tear down our movie set overnight and cart it away to the prop shop.  The palm trees are all in their proper places and Natewa Bay forms its usual serene backdrop.  Only today, we are in a hurry.

 

8:15 AM – We drag our dive gear down the wooden walkway to the ever-faithful Suzuki Jimny.  We rattle away down the local road, only to find that the construction crew had added some fresh fill-dirt in certain places.  The only problem is that the “dirt” that was used has rocks the size of grapefruits strewn throughout.  We make it out to the Hibiscus Highway and “floor it” down the correct (left) side of the road.  That lasts about a half a minute until I get to the blind curves and the three-tracks, often shared by two oncoming vehicles.

 

8:30 AM – We slow down to go through our favorite local village.  It is a settlement that is about two hundred-fifty yards long, and has houses of varying quality and age on each side of the road.  The sign says, “Slow through Village” as many road signs say throughout Fiji.  We smile, wave and shout-out our usual “Bula” to the village folk.  They smile, wave back and give us the “Bula, Bula” (or was that an old college song?) in return.

 

Over the next four or five days, they would watch us roar off to go diving in the morning and roar back through on our way home for lunch.  They must have wondered what we were doing with that little car each day that kept us roaring back and forth.

 

8:50 AM  - After negotiating both the old part of the road and the ever-shifting detours of the new road, we almost sped right past the Koro Sun Resort, which is a bucolic hotel with bures for rooms and a coconut plantation for grounds.  Later, one local Fijian told us that if you stayed there, you got “free golf”, for just the price of the room.  What they do not tell you is that it is a “mountain course”, with more uphill and downhill than any championship course in the world.  Since a driving iron would send the ball straight into the nearest grassy knoll, it was a “wedges-only” course.

 

We pulled in to the hotel grounds and asked the native Fijian woman who was using a palm frond to sweep the driveway where the dive shop was.  Finally, she gave us discernable directions, or perhaps we just stumbled upon the dive shop.  It was the little freestanding storefront on the “beach side” of the highway.  Beaches, in the Caribbean sense of the word are very rare in Fiji.  At that time, some of the promotional materials from the Koro Sun showed sunbathers on wide, sandy beaches.  There is about six to twelve feet of sand at the edge of the lagoon, but so much for truth in advertising. 

 

The dive shop looked like saloon from the Old West.  It had a false front that made it look like it was two stories high, although it was not.  When we arrived, it was as deserted as a ghost town.  Of course, we forgot that we were on “island time”, which runs on a clock of its own.  Despite our anxiety over possibly “missing the boat”, since we were the only divers registered that day, the boat would not have left with out us.  We also discovered that this satellite location of the Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort was open only on demand. 

 

A previous dive company had built the rock jetty on which the dive shop sat, as well as building and outfitting the building.  They then carved a channel out of the coral to get the dive boat out to the deeper water of the lagoon.  In 2000, when everything was completed, the “Coup Plotters” tried to take over the Parliament Building on Viti Levu and put a total stop to all tourism in Fiji for months.  Needles to say, the dive shop went out of business before it really had a chance.

 

When we visited, in August of 2001, tourism was making a comeback throughout Fiji and the Cousteau people decided to “make another go” of the location.  We were among the first of the intrepid divers to try out these dive sites since Cousteau brought diving back to the east end of the island.  Since the unanticipated consequences of the 911 attacks in America were less than a month away, we were probably also among the last to dive these sites for some time to come.

 

9:00 AM – We placed our gear on the boat and our lead weights in the weight-pockets in our buoyancy control devices (BCD’s), so that we would sink properly once we were in the water.  Sam, the boat driver and sometimes dive master was ready to go. 

 

9:15 AM – Gary, a New Zealander who runs the main Cousteau Resort dive shop arrived and we took off.  He had come over to check us out and be sure that his satellite operation was adequate.  He made sure that he did not interfere with our diving, but it was nice to know that there was the safety and security of another set of eyes to make sure that everything was OK.  That morning, Leonard was our dive master.  He was the only Fijian that we met during our entire stay who seemed a little standoffish.  He was a rich kid, by their standards and wanted our undivided attention, even when we were not quite ready to give it to him.  Sam, on the other hand was a big bear of a man, and as kind and generous as could be.

 

9:30 AM – We arrived at the Fanfare Site, just a mile or two out of the alt="Exiting the lagoon, on the way to our dive site, Vanua Levu, Fiji, August 2001 - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)" />lagoon and around the point.  So there we were, ready to dive the fabled waters of Fiji.  Having dived the Kona Coast, Maui, Cozumel, Belize, Bonaire and Curacao, to name a few, we had high expectations for Fiji.  Once we were under the water, however, it all seemed a little ordinary.  The colors were drab and there were very few extraordinary sights.  The trip out in the boat was as interesting as the two dives. 

 

As the week went on, we discovered why the diving was not great.  Vanua Levu is mountainous and a lot of silt had washed down the streams, smothering the reefs in many areas.  Based on the large number of logging trucks we met on the roads, I can only imagine what is really happening in the highlands.  My gut tells me that they are taking too much timber.  With the land deforested, the silt is sweeping down the streams and into the lagoons, where there the lack of circulation allows it to settle near shore. 

 

During our dives along that coast, we found whole coconuts rolling along the bottom and lots of coconut fronds and smaller pieces of plant life strewn about.  Since the area is not dived that much, there is a lot of undisturbed material along the bottom.  I found a large, dead clam that still had both halves attached at its hinge.  It was almost one foot across at its widest point.  The fact that such a large and relatively sensitive animal could have thrived there recently told a tale that I did not want to consider.  It is sad to say that much of the siltation damage had probably happened during the very recent past.

 

11:00 AM – Our second dive was at a site called The Thumb, where you could dive around and through a volcanic reef formation.  It was interesting, but not spectacular.  Still, it was great to be out on, in and under the ocean that morning, even if we were learning a lesson in forest and reef management that we had not expected.  When we returned to the dock, we found that I had not secured one of my weight pouches to my BCD and a weight pouch was now missing.  I did not look forward to finding out what the replacement pouch would cost.

 

12:00 PM – We motored slowly back through the narrow channel to the dive shop.  It was so shallow at low tide that Sam had to use the hydraulic lift on the two outboard motors to keep them from scrapping bottom.  When we got back, Sam found an old brown and dried coconut and cut it open for us.  He told us that the big green ones are for drinking and the little brown ones, which have shed most of their husky skin, are for eating.  The meat of the coconut is copra, which they pronounce “KOP-ruh”, but we Americans tend to pronounce “COPE-ruh”.  Sam seemed amused that we thought it was a bit of a delicacy.  The coconuts lay around like so much trash on the ground over much of the island.  Each day that we dived, thereafter, Sam took a machete and opened another coconut for our refreshment.

 

12:30 PM – We were on the road Lomalagi Resort again, retracing what would soon become familiar territory.  We no longer turned at the wrong places or wondered where we were.  Like an old horse returning to its stable, the Jimny could practically find its own way home.

 

1:15 PM – Collin waited lunch for us, which was nice.

 

3:30 PM – 6:00 PM – It was time to plan the balance of our stay in Fiji, including our various side trips, and to do nothing at all (worth mentioning) for a few hours.

 

6:00 PM – A beautiful tropical sunset awaited us on our Lanai.

 

7:05 PM – Dinner, with time afterward to gaze at the crescent moon going down and to see the Milky Way light up as the sky rapidly darkened.  Looking up at the Southern Cross and the stars of the southern sky, one could get a sore neck craning to see the new and wonderful sights.  Fittingly, to end our evening, a meteor streaked across the sky.

 

9:45 PM – A few minutes after we returned to the room each night, the walkway lights would go out.  With the Moon down, darkness was all around.  The only human made lights emanated from our bure and a couple of fishing lanterns, down on Natewa Bay.  As the moon grew larger each night, fewer fishing families would appear, until the last few nights, when we saw none.

 

This is Chapter Eight of ten chapters. To view the previous article in this series, click HERE.  To view the following article in this series, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 04:30 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

In Vanua Levu, Fiji - Hot or Cold, It's The Water - 2001

 

In Vanua Levu, Fiji - Hot or Cold,

It's The Water

Tuesday August 21, 2001

12:00 PM – The gates to Lomalagi (Fijian for Heaven) Resort were not actually “pearly”.  They were the same washed green color that my aunt and uncle had painted their company house in Oildale, California in about 1951.  That was my first trip away from home that I remember.  I was allowed to be away from my parents view for the first time in my life.  I ran with my brother, sister and cousins around the hot, hard and dusty yard.  There were no plants there at all, but there was freedom, sweet freedom from all cares and worries.  We ran shirtless and felt the Sun on our bodies.  We were safe and free.  What more could we ask for?

 

My emotions were mixed.  As we drove under the Lomalagi arch; the tropical setting made it all seem old.  The walls leading away from either side of the entry arch were made from long-dead coral reef material stacked in like building blocks.  A single-track causeway, wide enough only for our Jimny’s wheels led us to a motor court and the office, also painted green.  There we met Collin, our hostess and Terry, our host. 

 

They were hard at work at their computers, communications for which go out over an old-fashioned radiotelephone modem, then link up with a land-line somewhere back in town.  From there the link is to the Southern Cross fiber optic cable that runs from New Zealand, straight through Savu, Fiji and then on to Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.  At that time, the resort’s internet service was available only in the office and ran at about the speed of a 14.4 KB modem, if you can remember how slow that was.  Still, it was their window on the world. 

 

12:05 PM – We checked in, which consisted of saying hello in person and getting a key to our bure.  Cagey and Collin (the proprietor) had been emailing for weeks regarding our visit, so we felt like we already knew her.  We drove the car along another path, which led across the rolling grounds until we parked beneath a huge tree, whcih was planted in a raised rock planter, perhaps 60 years ago. Not waiting for any help with the luggage, we dragged it up some wooden stairs and along a raised wooden walkway, all the way to our new home away from home.  Of course, the walkway and the bure were painted… green.

 

When you look around the grounds, you notice that almost everything is green.  There are darks and the lights and shades in between.  There are pale greens that dazzle the senses; some so light that they reminded me of the burst of spring in Michigan, where I lived a decade before.  After getting out on the water, we realized that the resort could not be seen from a mile out on Natewa Bay.  It appeared to just be part of the green.

 

Our bure was simple in concept.  The outside had a (green) cyclone-proof roof and a lanai facing the bay.  Inside there was a great-room, with a bed and a closet to one side, and a living room space to the other.  Ahead was the bathroom, with its room-sized shower and tub, all in tile.  The kitchen was along the bay side, with its own views toward the head of Natewa Bay.  The floor was of  hardwood, with rag rugs that mopped up the dust like magnets.

 

12:30 PM – Time for lunch.  We worked our way back along the green wooden walkway to the center of the complex.  There, rising from the central hill stood the dining room with its high ceiling and skylights all around.  Nearby was the saltwater pool, in a lava rock setting.  When we arrived inside, there was a guest at the table.  He was a man in his early sixties; a New Zealander, by his accent.  With Collin, Terry (co-proprietor) and Terry’s mother, Linda (who was there from Seattle) we enjoyed our meal.  Over lunch, I told the story of our Air Pacific flight ordeal, including the venerable 747 playing the roll of a "flying baggage car".  Only later did I learn that the lunch guest was the chief pilot for Air Pacific Airlines.

 

1:30 PM – Back to our room for what seemed like a minute. 

 

3:30 PM – Two hours later, our time-warp ended and we found our selves alone in the saltwater pool.  In order to keep the saltwater fresh, a pump brought seawater up from Natewa Bay and directly into the pool. An overflow pipe returned the excess to the Pacific Ocean. In the buoyant saltwater we swirled around and around its lava-rock center island. Soon, we realized that we were the only guests that day at Lomalagi Resort.  We had our own private resort in our own tropical paradise.  Now what are the odds of that happening… really?

 

4:30 PM – We returned to our bure, looking forward to a hot shower.  We turned the faucet and felt the cold fresh artesian water splashing down.  We wondered if here in the Southern Hemisphere perhaps the faucets were reversed.  Maybe here water ran uphill and the hot water was falling behind in the race.  We finally realized that no matter what we tried, there was no hot water.  I put my clothes on and trekked back to the office, where I told Terry of our plight.  He said something about having turned off the pilot light to save fuel. There was, he said, a tankless (thankless?), on-demand water heater beneath our bure and that he would get someone out to relight it.  Being in a tropical zone, I had the feeling that if we were lucky, we might feel hot water sometime before dinner.  So I indicated that we were really looking forward to a shower, NOW.  Ten minutes later it was up and running.  What a glorious feeling.

 

4:45 PM - Now, it is time to write a few words about Fijian water.  When we arrived, there was a glass pitcher in our fridge, filled with ice-cold water.  Upon using it, we would refill it from the tap, which might be a risky thing back home in Santa Monica, California.  At Lomalagi they have an artesian well on the property, which they filter and send direct to your tap, for your pleasure.  The real pleasure was to see the water run out of the faucet and form tiny bubbles as it hit the water in the pitcher.  Each time I performed this act, I was amazed to see water as clear, clean and bubbly as the type that Adam & Eve had available in the Garden of Eden.  This was excellent, pure water.  Where else can filling a pitcher with water be so entertaining?

 

5:30 PM – Since it was winter in Fiji, sunset was a little after 6:00 PM each night. In keeping with its tropical location, twilight was brief, By 7:00 PM, it was dark.  That first evening, we began our tradition of sitting out on the lanai each evening and taking pictures. It was a spectacular sight to see the Sun make its way down behind the mountain across the head of Natewa Bay.  There was peace on the land and the sea.  The coconut palms planted forty or more years prior framed the bay.  Large-leaf vines clung to each trunk and the fronds looked like skyrocket bursts against the fading light.  Soon it would be time for the Kava Ceremony.

This is Chapter Four of ten chapters. To view the previous article in this series, click HERE.  To view the following article in this series, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 07:48 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

The Kava Bowl Connection - Fiji and the George Harrison Guitars

Tuesday August 21, 2001

 

6:00 PM – It was almost dark when we made our way along the wooden path leading to the pool area and the dining room at Lomalagi Resort, Vanua Levu, Fiji.  It was winter in the Southern Hemisphere and the air was cooling slightly. Even so, short sleeves and shorts were the perfect dress.  As we approached the pool, we could hear guitars playing and men singing softly.  Between our hosts, Collin and Terry, plus Terry’s Mom, Linda, Cagey and me, we became an audience of five. 

 

“The Boys”, as Collin calls them were about eight of the various native Fijian workers at the resort.  With them was one of their elders.  All of them sat near the lava rocks on several woven mats.  They sat facing in various directions, loosely making up two groups of four.  The elder sat facing us, with a large Kava bowl in front of him. 

 

Regarding Kava Bowls - The bowl is traditionally carved in one piece, from the trunk of a Raintree, or other forest hardwood.  Some of the bowls (such as the one in the picture above at the Tenoa Hotel, Viti Levu) were carved from truly massive trunks, none of which exist today in the forests of Fiji. Fir the tourist trade, locals offer moderate sized bowls for $10 – 12 USD.  Needless to say, I bought one, complete with a coconut shell scoop.

 

Back to our story - The elder’s assistant mixed the ground-up root of a native pepper plant with water and wrung it out, through fabric, into the ceremonial bowl.  A polished piece of a dried coconut shell became the communal cup.  Terry explained that the Kava Ceremony is the fabric that holds the Fijian social and spiritual community together.  The ceremony, conducted only among the men of the village, involves some simple but solemn rituals of offering and accepting one’s share of the slightly muddy looking liquid.  Its effects are described variously as mildly narcotic or as a slight natural sedative.  If you could call the affects a “buzz”, it is at a frequency that is well below the audible level.  You know you have experienced it, but you are not sure exactly what, if anything, has changed.

 

The assistant makes the rounds, offering a cup in turn to each of the guests and then to The Boys, as Colin called the band.  Then a song or two are sung before another round is offered.  In their traditional settings, the ceremony occurs when there is an event of significance to celebrate or deliberate.  If there is a conflict between neighbors or even enemies, the gift of a kilo or two of Kava will erase all conflict and peace and friendship will be immediately restored.  Powerful stuff, this Kava.

 

Between songs, Collin told the story of when George Harrison visited Lomalagi, soon after the resort had had opened.  As we now know, (but did not, at the time of this writing) doctors had diagnosed George Harrison with what turned out to be a life-ending illness.  However, those were happier times and he still had a measure of good health to enjoy.  He had been traveling between England and Australia, where I believe he had property.  On his visit to Lomalagi Resort, Harrison was scouting Fiji as a place to buy some property, kick back and enjoy life at a slower pace.

 

As George arrived at the Lomalagi Kava Ceremony, he immediately decided that his place was among The Boys.  So he sat among them and played guitar with them as they sang.  Noting that their instruments were of undetermined vintage and held together with tape and glue, he said that The Boys deserved better than the sorry instruments that they had.

 

Several months after his departure, unmarked crates arrived from England.  Inside were new guitars and a ukulele for The Boys.  From that time forward, the instruments have been known throughout the Fiji Islands as, “The George Harrison Guitars”. 

 

And a beautiful sound they made.  Sam, the dive master and guide to the dolphins always played his guitar a little flat. Even so, the bluesy influence of his playing fit right in.  Often there appeared to be no leader for a song, while individual tunes would diverge and converge in a lazy way.  Somehow they always came back together at the right moment.  Maybe it was the Kava and maybe it was the songs, but between the voices, words and guitar melodies, it was easy to let your mind drift and your body relax.

 

I just searched the Lomalagi website for the word to the Lomalagi Song, which was written by one of The Boys.  Alas, it was not posted there, but the “best line” from that song goes something like, “Lomalagi, where the views are brighter than you.”  By the end of the Kava Ceremony, it all made perfect sense.

 

7:30 PM – With a couple of “stiff belts" of Kava under our belts (Is that a mixed metaphor?), it was time for an elegant dinner of Wallau, which is a light, not quite flaky local fish, along with all the best of accompaniments.  Hmm…that’s about all I remember regarding dinner, other than our friendly hosts and servers.  Could it have been the effects of the kava? As George Harrison, might intone, "My sweet Lord".

 

9:00 PM – We found our way back to our villa. 

 

10:00 PM – It is five hours earlier (as you will recall) in Fiji, but we were ready for bed at what would be 5:00 PM back home in California.  So that wrapped up what seemed like three days in one.  There were the two days in suspended animation in L.A., the overnight to Fiji and the long day’s journey into Lomalagi.  Soon,  we went to sleep on a moonless night.

This is Chapter Five of ten chapters. To view the previous article in this series, click HERE.  To view the following article in this series, click HERE.

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The Gates of Heaven - Arriving at Lomalagi Resort, Vanua Levu, Fiji - 2001

The Gates of Heaven - Arriving at Lomalagi Resort, Vanua Levu, Fiji

Tuesday August 21, 2001

 

10:00 AM – We needed a map of Vanua Levu, or so we thought.  So at the suggestion of the Budget Car Rental Agent we jumped into our Jimny and took off on the wrong side of the road, (well actually the right side of the road; no, let’s just call it the correct side of the road, so we all know what I’m talking about).  Now that we have that straight, we took the left side of the right road over the hill into the bustling little port town of Savusavu.  From the sea, you would sail north, around a headland, anchoring inside crescent of a sheltered bay. Cultural activity revolves around the sheltered marina and the adjacent old Copra Shed (copra being the flesh of the coconut). Inside there are many shops and there is a town-market along the shore.  At some time, storms had washed out one lane of the road over Savusavu Hill.  Wooden barriers had been hastily set up so that traffic would not end up the “new” gorge that had formed there.  Upon closer inspection, we notice that the barriers were so old that the Sun had bleached the unpainted wood and weeds and brush were growing in the little canyon.  The roads in the area alternated between asphalt and a unique mixture of dirt and rocks. We would find this pattern in the roadways repeated all over the island of Vanua Levu.

 

10:15 AM - We found the Post Office, where our treasured map was supposed to be, but when we asked to purchase a map from the young Indian woman behind the counter, she looked at us as if we were from Mars.  Neither she nor anyone else in the Post Office knew anything about a map of the island.  That being our first experience in Fiji of being treated as if we were from outer space, we found it a bit disconcerting.  Soon enough we would get used to the gaping jaws of local town and country folk as we whisked across the landscape in our traveling Budget billboard.  After a while, it became the norm and we actually began to enjoy it.

 

10:30 AM – we had had enough of Savusavu for that day and decided to push on to Lomalagi Resort.  It is said that in the U.S., Colorado bound settlers in the wagon trains could see Pike’s Peak from 100 miles away.  It stood out so clearly in the nineteenth century air that the travelers mistook its distance. As the mountain stood up against the flat horizon, settlers were sure that it was only a day or two away.  Each subsequent morning they would rise and say, “This is the day!  Pikes Peak or Bust!”  The following morning and on each morning for nearly a week, they would awaken and say the same thing.  For us, Lomalagi became the spiritual equivalent of a Fijian Pike’s Peak.  We knew the resort was out there somewhere, but it always seemed just outside of our reach, never within our version of 3-D time-space reality.

 

10:45 AM – We retraced our steps over Savusavu Hill and headed east along the Hibiscus Highway.  In those days, there was no Google Earth, let alone a mobile telephone that would work anywhere on the island. Telecommunications was then a government monopoly, and the Fijian government believed that they would make more money by restricting access and charging more for limited services. While looking at a map before traveling, Lomalagi had appeared to be twelve or thirteen miles from the airport.  That should be easy, we thought.  The road was good and stretched out before us.  If you have never seen a road stretch before your very eyes, let me assure you that the Hibiscus Highway stretches all the way to infinity.  Once we got going, the road surface changed every quarter to half a mile. Soon enough, we arrived at the Construction Zone (which took on many characteristics of Rod Serling’s old TV show, The Twilight Zone).

 

11:00 AM – The construction zone featured Chinese engineers, who under-bid this job in order to be allowed to massively underbid an even larger project on Viti Levu.  Had they too fallen under the spell of the Construction Zone?  They supervised Indians and Fijians who appeared to do the actual construction.  Mounds of rock and dirt did appear on the road from time to time over the next ten days.  Holes were also dug, but rarely filled. Individual workers could be seen from time to time using the corner point of their shovel to delicately push individual rocks back into the roadbed.  We saw this enough times to conclude that certain rocks just didn’t want to be a part of that road and had tried to escape while the workers were not paying attention.  Traffic lane barriers consisted of a line of slightly larger rocks arranged down the middle of the road.  Detours were common, but each day their locations seemed to change.  Was it us or was it the “CZ”?

 

11:10 AM – The Kava Ceremony.  If you have ever heard about the islands of Fiji, then you have probably heard about the Kava Ceremony.  It consists of all the males of a tribe getting together and sitting in a close-knit array.  A slightly intoxicating root of a pepper plant is mixed with water and scooped up with a burnished piece of coconut shell.  It is offered to each of the men in turn and is drunk down in one big gulp.  Having later participated in two such ceremonies during our stay, I do not make light of the importance of Kava and the ceremony to the social, political and religious life of the Fijians.  So, you might have been as amazed as we were when we came across approximately twelve of the construction workers sitting in the middle of the road looking for all intents and purposes as if they were engaged in a Kava ceremony.  We slowed to a crawl so as not to disturb them in their ritual observance.  It was then that we noticed that they too were using some form of hand tool to push individual recalcitrant rocks back into the road.

 

11:15 AM – Jesus drives a road grader.  I would not have believed it either, if I had not seen him.  There is an ancient Chinese saying that “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”.  It sounds rather drastic, but I think the idea is that it cannot be the “real” Buddha and an imposter Buddha should not be tolerated.  As we slowed at another choke point (in more ways than one) on the road, we passed several pieces of large equipment.  One is what we commonly call a steamroller, although they haven’t been powered by steam in my lifetime.  We were already getting into the other national pastime in Fiji, which is to slow down, smile and say “Bula” (Fijian for “Hello, nice to see you”) to everyone with whom you cross-eyes.  To my great surprise, a man with long flowing hair and eyes with a depth and clarity not seen in Western lands smiled down on us from his earth-rolling machine.  His light shone brightly and time stood still for one brief moment.  We had received the blessings necessary to negotiate any Fijian road with safety (if not serenity).  This would come in handy during our road rally on the island of Viti Levu, but that is for another day.

 

11:20 AM – The "Bridge over the River Kwai", as we called it.  Actually, it was a new concrete bridge being built over a stream that came down from the mountains. For no apparent reason, it it had about forty Fijians sitting, hanging, walking on and around it.  They had enough time to stop (or were they already stopped?) and to wave to us and smile.  There I saw the Construction Worker character and I think I saw the Indian character from the pop group “Village People”. They appeared to be doing a bit of their “YMCA” arm signals as we passed.  The Fijians have an incredible way of not working, or working, as the case may be.

 

11:30 AM – We came to a fork in the road before the large bridge, which is where we were supposed to turn off the highway, heading for Lomalagi.  We were long past the Construction Zone and the highway and, at its wider parts, it had become a three-track dirt road.  That means that two cars cannot fit on the road going in opposite directions.  Did I tell you about the Fijian buses?  The Indians own them and I am sure that they wait until they hear a car coming around a curve or up a hill (or both) and then they accelerate so as to arrive at the narrowest spot on a tight curve exactly when you do.  We gladly turned up the side road (which was clearly unmarked by any sign, just as our written instructions said) and took a two-mile detour into the bush, ultimately arriving at the local agricultural experimentation station.  Later we learned that they were creating coconut trees that never grew tall.  It sounds like a plot to grow everything the wrong size on the islands, but I guess coconuts are easier to pick when you do not have to climb up high to get them.

 

11:45 AM – Once we determined that we were on the wrong road, we retraced our steps to try to get it right (again).  We shot up the road at fifteen to twenty miles per hour and found the nearly identical unmarked road that forked off just before a nearly identical bridge.  This had to be the right one!  The perfect symmetry of our trip was that each time we blew it; our real course was just waiting for us to find it.  Approaching or destination, we were willing to accept the path and so we took it. 

 

Immediately we found ourselves on the roughest approximation of a road imaginable.  The sharp rocks were the size of baseballs.  We rattled and clanked up this road; occasionally coming to a halt to allow the funny noise that Jimny tended to make when he was upset (that’s Jimny the car, not Jimmy the me).  Finally we approached a meadow.  Then we saw a profusion of coconut palms.  Just when we believed that our little car was making progress, it almost slid off a turn of the road.  Then we got to a steep part that I was not sure the car could climb.  We looked at each other and mumbled some things like, “Do you think this is really worth it?” and “Do you think we made a big mistake?”

 

All my Fiji stories have a happy ending and this is no exception. As Jimny lurched up the last steep hill to a rock wall and a green arch over an entrance way, our moment of despair passed. A quaint sign on the archway read, “Welcome to Heaven”.

 

As usual, a picture tells one thousand words.

 

This is Chapter Three of ten chapters. To view the previous article in this series, click HERE.  To view the following article in this series, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 05:47 PM | Travel | Comments (1) | Link