Maqai day 1 (29th Dec): Paradise on a stick

Wow! That is what can be said to describe Maqai. We left the black sand of somewhere on Taveuni, took a small boat ride for half hour or so and got off to turquoise water and sparkling sand. It’s an eco resort on a small island with no roads. Basically, we sleep in buras, which is a bit like clamping – bit of wood either end with a deck, but the roof and sides are canvas. The bathroom is outside and the toilet door is the back door which can be looked in either direction. A big bed on the floor and not much else. Bit like a big beach hut really. We are about 10 metres to the beach/sea which we overlook – not too shabby for Katie. I think the place can take about 50 people – with the buras spread out all around in different enclaves. We have one set of neighbours, but are the last one along the beach.
There is a main, tented area which is where we eat and can relax – it is lovely and cool and basically has sand for carpet. There is a board of actives up, which includes ‘Crab racing’ – for the kids apparently – Mark and I were a bit gutted about that but the kids introduced us to all their crabs so we got to play . Also on the list is ‘Do nothing’. We are planning on spending some decent time on that activity.
So far, we’ve just had 1 lunch. It was a kind of cheeseless pizza, with a variety of local veg on top – including banana – I kid you not – I wasn’t convinced about that, but other than that, it was very tasty and the pure fruit juice was divine.

We have had a quick snorkel – there is a reef about 20 metres out which is supposed to be amazing, but so far we’ve just looked closer to shore as tide was wrong. Lots of interesting fish and I saw a blue starfish so was very excited about that.

There is no bar here, so we had to bring our own. We didn’t plan that out as well as we should have because we drunk loads of it at Tuvununu the night before. Oops. So we are on rations. Eek.