Survivor, the reality TV show, is still going. Who knew? We certainly didn’t. We probably watched it when it first came out but we haven’t watched it for years. We learned that it was still going when we got to Fiji. It’s filmed on several of the islands where we are sailing. We were told by some other sailors that they had finished filming for the season but this wasn’t the case. They had finished filming one season but they were on a two week break before filming another season. They use Mama Island as their primary film location and the main base for their various crews and general operations. Because we thought they were finished filming, we decided to stop at Mama Island.1
Mama is protected from the sea by a reef. There is one entrance to the anchorage through a shallow channel. The pass is about 650 meters long and 25 m wide with a dogleg to the right halfway through. For us, it’s best to navigate passes like this near high tide and in the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky. This makes it easier to see the reef on each side of the boat. In hindsight, navigating the pass was straightforward but it was a bit stressful going through it the first time.
Once inside the reef, we motored the half nautical mile across the lagoon dropping the hook near some other moored boats. As we tidied up the sails and lines a small boat approached us. There were three people on board. They came alongside and identified themselves as being members of the Survivor film crew. They gave us a document that outlined the official government diktat and a map showing all the places that were off limits to everyone but the Fijian Navy, their coastguard and Survivor. That’s when we learned we had anchored in their restricted space. They were very polite but they told us we needed to move about 100m from where we were. We complied.
Later, we dinghied over to the island but there wasn’t much to see. Most of the island was off limits. There were a couple of backpacker type places that were trying to eke out a living but they were pretty quiet. They only had a handful of guests between them. There are better places to hang out in Fiji.
The next morning, we negotiated our way through the pass and pointed our bow north. Mama Island was nice. It has potential but we didn’t feel welcome. We felt like we’d been voted off the island.
- Note: Unfortunately, we have no photos of our time on the island. It’s rare that we take no photos of a place but in this case, that’s what happened. ↩︎
Cormacks On Cambria 