Pitufa.at

Like everywhere on the islands of Fiji it’s obligatory here in Fulanga to visit the village to introduce yourself and to bring a sevusevu (kava bundle as a gift), so we wandered across the island to the main village (that sounds serious, but it’s just a twenty minute walk on a well-cleared path) to ask for the Turanga ni Koro (headman) who then introduced us to the chief. We gave him our present and were welcomed to the village, had to pay a fee of 50 FJD (flat rate for every small boat) and given a host family. Fulanga’s a very popular place and the chief showed us the entries of the other yachts in his visitor’s book–120 were here this year!
They are also more interested in paperwork than other islands, so we showed them our clearance and cruising permit. Apparently another yachtie who arrived in May had neither of those and was picked up by a Navy boat and his yacht is still tied up in the lagoon–weird story, we’ll try to find out more. Pebbles, a German registered boat apparently with a Bulgarian singlehander on board…
Despite the many visitors the people in the village are really friendly and we bought some nicely done carvings from the three carvers here we were casually introduced to
We had lunch with our host family, Christian promised to look into a cable issue at another house -the dwellings are very basic here, just corrugated iron, but the little houses still look neat and the gardens are lovingly decorated. There are some solar panels, but usually just for a few LEDs, not many have a fridge or TV. Apparently some sort of internet will be installed this week (maybe a wifi router, we’ll find out), so maybe smartphones, facebook and Co. will soon arrive…