Of course, we did eventually leave New Zealand. I was horribly seasick about 45 minutes out, as we left the harbor with a very big swell. I think some of it was a bit of stage fright to be heading out to open ocean again after our last terrible journey. Poor John was on his own for awhile. We were hoping to reach Fiji before my birthday. Someone was smiling down on us for this trip. Barely enough wind to sail, so we idled the engine along with the mainsail up. A calm, tranquil, soul-restoring voyage. On May 29th, my birthday, we glided by Koro Island just as the sun was coming up. Golden and sparkling rays from the early morning sun shining on the indigo blue sea as we coasted along the shoreline of Savusavu Bay in complete silence, taking in all the beautiful, tropical views. A new chapter had begun.
After picking up a mooring at the Copra Shed Marina and clearing customs, we headed ashore.
Our first thought was to check out the local real estate office as we were hoping to find a good deal on a piece of property. No sense wasting time! After lining up a few places to look at, we met Susan, an expat American living in Fiji and our first acquaintance and friend in our new home. She along with her husband Jeff are wonderful friends to this day. We have had many fun adventures and great parties with them in Fiji as well as with the many other expats, locals and business owners that live there.
Later our first evening after arrival, having not eaten since early morning, we were dying for a pizza and the Copra Shed just happened to have a pizza parlour. As we went to pay, we discovered that they didn’t take USD and we had not had time to get to the bank to exchange money yet. Margaret, the shop manager, just handed us our pizza and drinks with a smile and said “no problem, just come back in a day or two when you get some cash”!!
We ended up buying two lots of land from Ki-Maren Real Estate, Aren and Kim, who both became good friends. Each lot was about and acre and a half. The first one was my birthday present! Pretty great present don’t you think! Both lots had spectacular views of the Koro Sea and we got in on some great values just before all the prices started shooting up around 2003. Right about this time we met the managers of the Jean Michel Cousteau Resort, Greg and Karen Taylor. John ended up with a job filming underwater dive videos with their Dive Shop. We lived on Never Monday, moored right off the resort, John went to work by dinghy and on weekends we started building a house on the first lot. No Fear!
John having been a carpenter in another life, knew what he was doing, but it wasn’t quite the same building experience for him having me as his helper instead of some big, tough, burly guy! I designed, John drew up house plans, we got approvals, work permits, set up a video-photography company for work, we paid all the fees, bought materials, cleared coconut trees and all in the first six months. Things were moving very quickly. Just the two of us, John doing most of the major lifting, me learning to hammer and nail, cut boards with the chopsaw and walk on floor joists 3 feet above ground with my arms full, attach hurricane straps, stain, paint, tile floors… It really was an adventure, but pretty hard on both of us.
There is a LOT of heavy lifting in a house build.
So it begins….removing 18 coconut palms from the house site.
Pilings are in, ready for the bearer joists.
The first cut!
The first bearer joist!
Just about ready for floor joists…
Floor joists in….a very tired boy.
Getting ready for decking on the front and rear patio decks.
One deck down, one to go, using Fijian Vesi wood, so hard that you have to drill the holes and screw it down…
Starting the walls…
Hurricane strapping on…
Starting to take shape…
Deck beams going up…
Imagine the finished view from the front deck and bedrooms…
Hip roof time…
The gorgeous, finished house at Maravu Estates. We were both (especially me) pretty proud of ourselves after this build. I had never done anything like it in my life and it was a real eye opener. But what an amazing feeling of accomplishment to have done it with just the two of us. We hired a digger to clear the coconut trees at the beginning, level the building site, put the initial pilings in the ground and help with the big vesi beams around the patio areas. Other than that it was all John and myself, with John doing way more heavy lifting than he should have done. But he really enjoyed doing all the inside finish work, not nearly as much heavy stuff! This house made our next upcoming project feel like a walk in the park!
Half way through the house build, when the house was closed up, but not finished on the inside, John got an offer to do some work in Oregon. I had been working in the boutique at the Cousteau Resort so I had something to keep me busy and off he went for 6 months to the States. I lived in the not quite finished house with plywood on the floors, a bed, a kitchen sink and countertop supported by two saw horses, a functioning bathroom and a sofa and chair. Not so bad, as our deck had the most incredible view to the sea and beyond! I spent every evening relaxing on that deck, glass of wine in hand, waiting anxiously for my guy to return.
Sunsets from the deck of the house…..incredible…peaceful…mesmerizing…
While John was gone someone asked me if I could shoot a wedding for them. We already had our company set up and had been discussing going into wedding photography and video after doing an occasional wedding here and there previously. It was much more lucrative than the scuba diving videos. So, Barefoot Island Video and Photography became a full fledged wedding business while John was in Oregon. My first wedding by myself went great, I managed to get it all edited and mailed off with only a few panicked skype calls to John for computer assistance. Several more bookings trickled in over the next month or two and before you knew it, John was back home and we were smack dab in the middle of a wedding photography business! The next 10 years seemed to fly by with one stunning resort after another…
Some of our favorite Resorts on our Island of Savusavu and nearby Taveuni, Qamea and Matangi!
Raiwasa Private Resort, Taveuni
We made great friends at the Jean Michel Cousteau Resort and still would help them out from time to time, but the weddings were booking up rapidly and soon consumed all our time. From then on for the next 10 years we worked non-stop flying from one stunning resort to another around Fiji. We were booking, making travel arrangements, filming, shooting, editing and mailing destination weddings. At the time, there were only one or two other local people doing weddings in Fiji, so the timing was perfect and we were very, very busy.
Fiji is a jaw dropping, beautiful tropical paradise with an abundance of secluded bays, crystal blue water, fantastic scuba diving sites and wonderful resorts. The people are friendly and the pace is slow and easy. We were so fortunate to be able to travel all over Fiji for many years, shooting weddings, staying at some of the most fantastic Resorts and experiencing so much of what makes Fiji so very special.
A few years into Fiji we sold Never Monday, a sad day for us but also full of promise for the future. Friends of ours in Savusavu decided they wanted a smaller boat to live on than their large catamaran and we were quite ready for solid ground after 13 years aboard.
We also sold our first house that we so painstakingly built. It was only a year after completion, but we then built a small block and stucco building on the second lot that we had bought. It was a one room, kitchen, living room, office, bedroom and bathroom with a very high ceiling. The shower was outside…..it was always warm there. Our plans were to live in it while we built the grand house and pool. We painted it a lovely antique yellow and dubbed it “The Winery”. Spending the next 6 years flying all over Fiji, booking weddings, shooting weddings, editing and processing weddings, crazy boat rides and 3 cyclones…the years sped by quickly. But what a beautiful and calming place to put in such hard work!
The entrance to “the Winery” and the incredible view!
“The Winery” hidden down in the palms with the main house site up above.
Our pineapples grew like crazy!
The name, “The Winery”, was precipitated by the fact that I was obsessed with someday seeing Italy and all those beautiful old buildings and vineyards. That day came sooner than we thought, as a good sailing friend of ours went to Italy to look for a property to retire on someday. While she stopped for a few months in Sicily, we took a vacation to visit her and fulfil my lifelong dream of seeing Italy. We fell in love with Sicily, the food, the people, the land, the history, the ancient ruins! So much to take in and there wasn’t near enough time! When our vacation was drawing to an end, John and I took the train from Sicily to Rome and stayed for a few days to see all the sights before heading back to Fiji. I was in total culture shock and totally hooked. By the time we were back in Fiji I knew where our next adventure would take us…now to convince John! We ended up spending 6 years in “The Winery” as we schemed and planned our escape to Sicily while still shooting weddings. We went through 3 major cyclones during our stay in Fiji. With such a small house, everything that could blow away had to come inside with us.
We had made big 4 foot wide double doors on the little yellow stucco house and we were able to drive the pickup right on in during the cyclones! Pop the coffee table in the back of the pickup, secure the windows and doors, open a bottle of wine and there you have it, cyclones Fiji style! We lost a lot of trees and had major clean-up, but no damage to the buildings, truck or ourselves. We never did build that grand house and pool.
Our happy hour view from “The Winery” stone wall…magic!