Tri-island ‘cruise’ Part One = Nukufetau

I am using the word cruise very loosely in this context… Yes we were on a boat for an extended period of time and yes we did sleep on the boat and yes there were stop-offs where we visited outer islands and had a look around, so in some ways I can understand how it may appear it was a cruise but this is what it was actually like…

 

That was the busiest and final day but needless to say there was not a lot of space and everyone sits and sleeps on the floor on their mats! It was amazing… but most of you reading this would have hated it - I'm not even going to tell you about the toilet/shower facilities!

I’ll start at the beginning.  Tuvalu is made up of nine islands, which are divided in logistical terms into three groups: northern, southern and central.  Funafuti is the main island, where I have been living, the capital, for lack of a better term and it is in the southern group.  Sandra, my very good friend, decided that she was going to visit the central group of islands and as the boat before the Royal visit was as close to certain to be coming back as it was carrying the chiefs from the 3 central islands and gifts for the royal couple it was a pretty safe bet that she wouldn’t get stuck out on the islands – which is a bigger concern than you might think.  As Sandra had obviously put more thought into it than I had, I thought she’d be a pretty safe bet to tag along with! And thus Sacy’s Tri-Island cruise began!!! (That really is an in-joke but suffice to say there was a lot of the time on a boat with little to do and I thought that the adventure needed a name – so I smushed our names together!)

First stop Nukufetau…

 

This was one of the first spots of the island which is one of the smallest islands in Tuvalu, but similarly to Funafuti it is an atoll and therefore has a lagoon.  This was a view from our “cabin” which we only slept in one night – it didn’t have a lock on the doors, either to the cabin or the bathroom and on the second day we saw a huge rat in there so we slept on the roof of the boat instead!

First challenge on arriving at our first stop was getting off the Nivaga (boat's name!) into smaller boats to be taken to the wharf… it was always a challenge and the sights and near misses we both experienced and witnessed will be with us for some time… the rickety steps down from the Nivaga to the waiting boats were incredibly unstable combined with moving sea and overloading, it was an adventure in itself every time!!

But when we eventually got to the island itself it was STUNNING!! We walked from one end to the other in about 30 minutes, and it was so peaceful!

 

They had immaculately swept, straight smooth ‘roads’ and ‘pathways’, traditional boats,

 

Pig sties with sea views, and one of the best sunsets I’ve seen in a long time!

 

 

 

After sunset we had to get back on the boat for our first and only night sleep in the cabin, which was surprisingly ok!  But before that we had a hilarious dinner of baked beans cold from the can and bread! “We came, we saw, we ate beans”!!!

Boat didn’t move over night as they were still loading cargo but in the morning we started off… Next Stop Nui… or so we thought!