Sawa-I-Lau caves

Stardate Sept 2, 2023

“Someone will meet you at nine.”  So said the village representative at sevusevu when we inquired about these famous caves.  Ok, we’ll be there at nine.  “What is the cost?”  “About $35,” he replies.  Sounds reasonable.

We’re there at nine.  Nobody around.  Oh, well, Fiji time.  Longboats start coming into the cove with tourists.  They pile out and walk right past us toward the stairs leading up to the cave entrance.  We sort of thought that rude, but ok.  They’ve come from Blue Lagoon Resort and paid $150 for the privilege, so we’ll cut them some slack.  

But wait!  There’s more!  The boats just keep on coming laden with tourists.  So we jump in line up the stairs.

Finally the gatekeepers arrive.  “You are on yachts?”  Yeah, Sparky, does it show?  “Fifty dollars.”  Hey, wait - the guy in the village said $35.  “Village does not control caves.  $50.”  Back and forth, forth and back.  Finally we give in and fork over $50 each.  There better be beer in these caves.

So we go in with our swim fins.  Everyone else had a mask.  I didn’t.  Figured I could see underwater long enough to do the short traverse into the inner cave.  “Half-meter deep, one and a half meter long.”  His sense of measurement could use calibration.  And he forgot to mention the fact that there were pointy rocks above you the whole time.

We’re in the pool with the tourists, all of them teenagers.  When the guide shows them what they have to do to get into the inner cave, they screamed in unison.  “I will go in,” he said, holding up his waterproof flashlight.  “Swim toward the light.  I will press down on your head to help you avoid the rock then let you up.”  More screams from the teenagers.  “Nope, I can’t do this,” said one.  Still, one by one they mustered up the courage to dive down and just ‘swim toward the light.’  

I kept the camera on during my swim into the inner cave.  It doesn’t show much except black, but the audio is pretty clear.  (How does my camera pick up audio from inside its waterproof case?). I popped up into blackness; the flashlight went around and I recognized Jen in the middle of the inner pool.

Videoes available on Instagram:  dave.chesney.353

A lot of the video is black.  That’s what we saw, so its accurate.  I bobbled around awhile listening to the echoes and then swam back toward the guide at the entrance.  “Are you going to guide us out?” I asked.  “Yes!” he said and swam past me toward the opposite end of the pool.  He called for all of us to follow him, so I suspected there was a walk-out back door.

Oh, no, no back door.  Just more caves with lower ceilings.  Man, if anybody had claustrophobia, they were in trouble.  We swam back a good ways - hard to tell when you can’t see - following the light.  I had visions of him losing the light or the battery failing.  Finally we get to a chamber that had a high ceiling again.  The acoustics were such that they inspired Jen to start singing “Summertime.”  I joined in on the second line:  “Fish are jumping…and the river is high.”  We finished the verse.  The teenagers didn’t applaud.  Bastards.

We made our way back out (following the light) and regrouped outside.  Dennis and Nick had both missed the call to follow the guide deeper and got out themselves, Nick bashing his head pretty well on the rock in the process.  The group consensus:  Not worth $50.  Maybe worth $35.

Epilog:

On the beach later that day we met a German woman who had done the caves later than us that morning.  Her group of four was charged only $35 a head.  I was very tempted to take a can of spray paint over and paint ‘$35’ on the door to the caves.  Haven’t had an international incident yet on this trip.  Or maybe I’ll just have a beer.