In this exciting vlog, Mike and I climb Navatu Rock with the Narewa village headman, Josateki. Navatu Rock is a place of great importance to ancient Fijian life and culture. The following extracts of nineteenth-century visitors give some idea:
**Miss C.F.Gordon-Cumming, a Scottish explorer visited Navatu, which she describes in a letter written from there on October 10, 1876:
"This place is well described by its name. It is really Na Vatu (The Rock), being a huge rock mass, quite detached from the great Kauvandra range of mountains, and standing alone on a level shore. The village in which I am living is on the sea-level, but a steep path up the beautiful crag leads to a lovely village, called Nai Songoliko, which consists of a number of small houses perched wherever they can find room all over the cliff, almost hidden by bread-fruit and other bowering trees, which cling to the rock as if by magic.
From this point, a narrow spur runs inland, and the view from there is quite beautiful -- the bluest sea, dotted with isles and tinted by patches of coral reef, lying outspread to right and left of the cliff. Each of these villages has a tidy well-built church. I think I have explored every corner of the great rock, and many of the tiny homes which lie so quaintly niched among the rocky boulders."
**Another account is that of one Mr. Maudslay who visited with a party of the Governor of Fiji in 1876.
"We [the Governor of Fiji and party] dropped anchor in Raki Raki bay opposite to Na Vatu .... we determined to land the next morning at Na Vatu, a large pile of rock rising boldly from the water's edge .... it was so late when we landed that there was only time to visit hastily the village at the foot of the rock, have a bathe, and get back to the steamer as quickly as possible. I was sorry not to see more of the place. Its position is curious. A range of bare-looking mountains follows the line of the bay some distance inland, -- bare, that is, of trees, but grass-covered nearly to their rocky summits. A plain lies between these mountains and the sea, broken only where Na Vatu rises abruptly at the water's edge. Though not many hundred feet high, the rock is imposing and picturesque, both from its position and shape. It held a high place in the old mythological stories of Fiji, as one of the jumping-off places into the world of spirits. Now there are three villages on the rock, the one we visited at the bottom, one halfway up on the land-side, and one perched almost on the top."
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