Monsoon Season again...

It is just typical of how slack my blogging got there that I hadn't even blogged about one cyclone before another is on its way! Or maybe that's just typical of this season.... who knows...

So while we sit and await cyclone Tomas who has been threatening the country since early Friday why not blog a quick run down of Mick....  Mick snuck up quickly and quietly in December, on our wedding anniversary actually! We watched it approaching as a tropical storm and monitored it overnight. The Fiji met was quite unconcerned, but GB decided it was a great opportunity to have a full cyclone drill "before cyclone season".... So shutters up, sky dishes down (a lot of grumbling from our house when they came and took ours down), guests briefed to assemble in the restaurant.... 

 

Imagine our surprise when around 1pm a cat 3 cyclone hit us! The kids and I peeped out the back door of our place in confusion, we had already seen a cat 2, and we knew it was stronger than that. We sneaked thru the back of the spa and thru the (leaky) kitchen where they were rinsing dishes under the rainfall to save water, and into the restaurant to join the others who were as gathered there as instructed. Well we had to -we had no food at our place and we were starving! 

After about 4 hours sitting in the damp of the restaurant (cyclone = lots of water + lots of wind so everywhere tends to be wet), the cyclone dropped back in intensity and we were allowed out to have a look around, a little photoshoot, and to go back to our bures before dinner.... and what do you know?! Something had trashed our resort!!!

 

 
 
 

 

Miraculously it completely cleared by the next day and was sunny and calm again! So all that was left was a clean up. A BIG clean up....

 

But first.... that same evening... ah! my sky dish is back up, good service (!); even though we didn't actually have contact with the rest of the world (due to our comms tower blowing over) for another 3-4 days...

So now here we go again, but this cyclone (Tomas) is approaching us in an entirely different manner. It has been hovering with its mate Ului north of us since Friday when they closed the schools at lunchtime thereby also forcing the postponement of Amy's birthday sleepover weekend... Now it's Monday, there are no plane flights, no boats running anywhere, and while Ului has luckily headed off the other way Tomas is just assaulting the north east of us around Cikobia and Udu where we hope they are all ok. 

 

Tomas did approach as a cat 4 which is scary, but it seems it will pass to the East of us here. So our guests are trapped here at the moment (well actually helicopters are still running), and as yet the only sign of the storm is all the storm shutters up around the resort, the info board in the reception tracking Tomas, and the twice daily briefings in the restaurant and bar and the fact we are missing Jane and Chris who were meant to fly in the am, but found their flight out of Auckland cancelled. Currently the resort looks like this:

and I kid you not... if you look closely you can see the maintenance crew pimping the storm shutters on the restaurant with extra 4x2's... There are a few less deck chairs now as any that won't take to being suddenly thrown in the other pool as a storm approach have been put away, but otherwise this is how is currently looks... Hopefully we wake up to find Tomas has headed further east without touching us, and that the north are cleaning up without too much serious damage... Well, we'll see! and our thoughts are with those of Cikobia and Vanua Levu....

Comments

[jonathan]

Just occurred to me that we never get invites to Treasure when Suva is threatened. ;)

I'm glad you guys appear to be escaping this storm, Meg.

[meg]

Best place to be Jon! only problem is when they stop all the boats you'd struggle to get here. We both need to build up a few more favours with Island Hoppers I think....

[Julieranee]

Thinking of you and praying all will be well.
Julie