Nanuku Island

While staying at Maqai we took an overnight trip to Nanuku Island. It's really small and takes about 3 hours to get there from Maqai by a small speedboat. On the way there, we stopped at one of the nearby villages to pick up Meli, the son of the chief of Maqai and Nanuku. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to walk much around the village as there was a big meeting with all the chiefs from surrounding villages and islands. Five guests went including us, Dan and Fiona from Jersey and Isabel from Switzerland with six staff, Meli, Simon, Do, Lucy, John and Pela.

The island is so small that it couldn't be seen until we were almost there, and as we approached we realised just how small it was. The tiny sand island takes ten minutes to walk around the outside and is surrounded by crystal clear waters with coral.

All around the island there were various turtle tracks heading from the sea up into the bush in the middle. So during the night, Do, Simon, Dan and I went for a walk to see if we could find some, we didn't see any so it turned into a hunt for coconut crabs. We climbed through the bush barefeet looking for piles of coconuts that the crabs had been eating. Both Simon and Do caught one each, but neither me or Dan fancied grabbing one barehand as they use their strong claws to open coconuts for food.

The next day while we spent a bit of time snorkelling on the one of the reefs. The visibility was incredible, I thought it was good when we had snorkelled Australia and Thailand but Fiji was far better. We were in the water for around 20 minutes when Do swam up to the surface shouting for Meli to bring the boat over, and Pela (who was on a kayak) was shouting at us to swim to the shallow water over the coral, although I wasn't sure why until Isabel from Switzerland screamed shark! I looked under the water but I couldn't see anything and quickly swam towards the shallow coral. We did see plenty of reef sharks though.

While out snorkelling, Lucy and John prepared the coconut crabs for lunch before a quick rest and heading back to Maqai in the afternoon.