According to our cruising guide, the “mecca” for yachties is a place called Musket Cove, located on an island called Malolo Lailai just to the south west of Nadi. At the time the guide was written, 1992, it had some of the nicest facilities for cruisers, and thus attracted a lot of them. There is an annual race from Musket Cove to Port Vila, Vanuatu about this time each year. The week prior to the race there are festivities every day, including races around the local islands and silly competitions. Tons of boats gather at Musket Cove and it is a huge yachtie social event. Our understanding was that the events had just ended.

We knew we wouldn’t have enough time in Fiji to take Kosmos over to Musket Cove, so we took a ferry boat over to the island to check it out. As we pulled in, we could see a nice anchorage area teeming with boats. There are two islands very close together, which provide a lot of shelter The island on the left is called Malolo and has dry, rolling hills. The island to the right is called Malolo Lailai and is flat with a big sandy beach and lots of palm trees the prototypical looking South Sea island. There are two big resorts on the flat island that are side by side. (click on picture for larger version)

The yachties hang out at the Musket Cove resort, which has a small marina where boats were tightly Mediterranean moored. The dock also serves as a walkway from the main resort to a tiny island with a bar, beach, and reef to snorkel around. When we got off the ferry, we headed straight for the snorkeling area in Musket Cove. It looked like the yachties were just beginning a tug of war competition on the beach. We didn’t see anyone we knew and went straight for the water. The snorkeling too good compared to other places we have been. We didn’t see a lot of fish, but we did see three new species. One is a porcupinefish, and we couldn’t find the other two in our new fish book. The reef is long, but quite narrow, so we had a couple of near collisions with tourists heading the other way that were so engrossed in the sights below that they didn’t see us.

John decided he didn’t want to snorkel, so he just hung out and swam in the large, warm pool of shallow water near the shore that was created by the reef. At one point two Longfin Grouper began circling around him and both bit him, one on the stomach, one on the chest. For whatever reason, the grouper seemed convinced he was food. After the second bite, John got out of the water and didn’t want to get back in.

When Christi and Eric were done snorkeling, we went to the main resort restaurant for lunch. Christi and Eric insisted John order raw fish with coconut milk, and John was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Christi got an undercooked frittata. We have found that Fijians don’t cook eggs very well. Eggs have invariably been runny and raw at every restaurant we have ordered them at.

After lunch we hung out by the resort pool for a while, where we ran into a couple sets of cruisers we had met in Tonga. We also walked around for a bit. Musket Cove is crawling with tourists, and somehow did not feel right to us. We have gotten used to smaller gatherings of cruisers and less overtly touristy locations., We are glad we got to see Musket Cove, but have no regrets we did not bring Kosmos there

The washing/waxing crew finished up today and we have to say they did an excellent job. The cost was about 2/3 of what we normally paid in San Diego. We are overjoyed that we stumbled upon the work crew. We were dreading doing the job ourselves. It took 4 professionals two days. Imagine how long it would have taken the two of us!

For dinner we went to the pizza place in the mall. Like most of the pizza we have had in the South pacific, the crust was thin (just the way Eric likes it) and the toppings were on the sparse side. We had ordered a large and were amazed at the size. We have never seen a pizza so big! The pizza was really good.