Ono Island, Fiji

We had a relaxing breakfast at Oneta and then got ourselves ready for the ridge walk. The past three days had been filled with water activities morning and afternoon. We wanted a more relaxing day, after all we were on vacation :)

The Oneta property is bounded by ridges on three sides (and the ocean on the fourth). The ridge walk forks at the one hour mark, with the option to return straight down to the resort, or carry on for the full circumnavigation of the property. The last bit is on the beach and needs to be timed for low tide. We weren’t sure how much get-up-and-go we’d have so deferred the decision to the fork.

The path is well-marked and you don’t need a guide but Oneta has someone accompany guests on all activities, with water, tea, biscuits and chips. 

Our guide was George, who’d also been our snorkeling guide the past few days. It actually turned out better with a guide, as George pointed out various types of trees and their uses. For example, when working in the bush, bats are a common food, barbecued. (Very bony like pigeon or rabbit, a lot of effort to eat). The bats like the fruit of particular tree (which is locally called a ‘bat tree’), and so to catch a bat they hang around the tree. 

Anyways the walk was quite enjoyable, with a nice breeze along the top of the ridge. There’s also good views of the surrounding islands and the Astrolabe Reef. 

At the fork we decided to do the full tour. The downhills were a bit challenging, a 45* slope down loose gravel. At least it hadn’t rained recently - otherwise we would have slid downhill several metres in places. 

George also related that the Oneta staff go on occasional garbage cleaning trips to the surrounding beaches, which is why the beaches look so pristine. This came up after I mistook a yellow crawling plant for discarded fishing net :) 

We reached back down to the beach and walked back to the resort. It took exactly 2.5 hours as advertised; although if we just walked it straight it’s probably 1.5 hours. But the stories and history were really interesting. 

Showered and then headed down for lunch, Thai beef noodles, excellent on a hot day. 

We had the afternoon off, so relaxed and watched the ocean. At some point we started packing up, tomorrow we had our journey back to Nadi. 

At 5pm we all met down at the dock for the sunset cruise and bird tour of Yabu Island. At dusk various sea-birds, including frigates, boobies, shearwaters and petrels all come to Yabu Island to nest for the night. 

The guests all went in one boat, accompanied by a second boat with resort staff who played guitar and sang traditional songs as the sun set. We had one or two sundowners, listened to the music and watched the birds. Unfortunately there was a lot of cloud cover on the horizon so no colour in the sunset. I tried to get pics of the birds, but it turns out a high zoom at low light from a boat isn’t ideal. Who knew? Anyways the whole experience was really fun. 

Chatted with everyone over dinner, and then waited up for the lunar eclipse. It was at a decent hour in this part of the world - totality was between 10:16pm - 11:41pm.  There was a slight hazy cloud cover earlier but over the window we did get some clear views and nice pics. So it was a nice finale to our time at Oneta :)