Uepi Island Resort - Uepi News.

Welcome to Uepi Island Resort
Natural Beauty Harmony Excitement Indulgence

Uepi News

DIVE REPORT - UEPI ISLAND RESORT - MARCH 08

March is a great time of year, no doubt about that! When I grew up on Kangaroo Island, latitude 38 South, the autumn weather was often the best. Now at Uepi, 8 degrees below the equator, its more variable but every bit as good. Plenty of warm sun, brief cooling showers, the heaviest rain in short bursts thundering on the roof at night threatening to dislodge the roofing nails, thunder rolling like a 747 just overhead, lightening you need sunglasses for, then total calm & peace, relaxing breezes from various directions, dynamic cloud formations decorating the peaks of the main islands, sunrises & sunsets to remember.

And the local garden produce is at its best, sweetest pineapples, soothing pawpaw, aromatic jackfruit, the true taste of banana. 'Help yourself' tables loaded with coral trout and mudcrab & crayfish & squid are standard fare.

The social scene is good too. Those chilly winter months in Australia means a flurry of birthdays amongst our guests in March: Add in Jills, Wesleys & my birthdays plus our wedding anniversary! So Jonahs fabled decorated cakes keep dancing out of the kitchen to the sweet harmonies of "happy birthday happy birthday ....... how old are you now? ....... happy longlife to you" & assorted antics. From time to time, at the beckoning of the demon gods maybe, the staff drift into an ensemble after dinner & sing a few sweet enthusiastic harmonies, backed by the bamboo band & various instruments of opportunity (pick up some thing & shake, rattle or roll it). Usually ending with every guest displaying their dancing skills or lack of (much preferred by the staff who laugh unreservedly). It is very politically incorrect to not dance the "ipu leana” goodnight/goodbye song. People who have never danced in their life somehow throw their "Inhibition Hat" wildly into the starry sky & hold centre stage.

Dive report hmm! Well 'man cannot live on diving alone', not quite. But here goes.

Elbow is an outstanding dive site a la March 08. It just keeps producing good diving encounters, as well as being a brilliant deep dropoff with arrays of vivid coral fans feeding in the currents. Early in the month, the smaller hammers were about, sweeping up and past for an inquisitive look, then shyly going. Then a solitary big loner took residence & he just slowly drifts past, completely at ease, not in a hurry. He wanders from the Elbow to Uepi Point and turns up any time during a dive unlike the smaller hammers who usually rush up when you first get into the water. And at Elbow the eagle rays, pygmy manta and turtles are often about. March produces big schools of barracuda at many sites, but Elbow tends to get quite small schools of larger fish. Normally the yellow-tail cuda are placid but at Elbow we spotted the largest individual we have ever seen & he was snapping at all his mates & glancing at us. There have been plenty of dolphins (usually spinner dolphin) playing in the channel directly in front of the dining area on the deck, & much bow-riding when travelling to & from sites. Underwater you often hear the dolphin, knowing that they know who & where you are & are probably gossiping about you. This month the underwater encounters continued at Elbow. Sitting on the Elbow, watching the passing parade of fish, I heard some dolphin chatter, when along the wall from Elbow Caves came eight curious bottlenose. My antics held their interest for a sufficient time to for me to back off & shoot a couple of macro-shots (you never have the W/A when you really need it) as they circled a few times.

With good afternoon currents, especially at the end of March, the nearby Points of Uepi, Chara, Inside & Inside Inside all had lots of fish & action. During mid March we had a period of unusual northerly wind with bigger swell which restricted the outside dive opportunities, so these sheltered sites along with BOTCH , Shark Bommie & Fan City were dived more than normal. And we revisited Noette which we had not bothered with much before & wondered why we had ignored it as it produced some very nice dives.

Northerly winds meant that Bapita was well protected so almost everyone took this option & dived the Taiyo wreck, Penguin Reef, Bapita Sinkhole & the plane wrecks (P38 & SBD). It is nice to be at the diveshop when these trips return & listen to the comments; "that shipwreck is unbelievable", "the sinkhole knocked me out", "never seen corals like at Penguin - superb" , "have never liked wrecks but that P38 is great'; and the comment that says it all "the best days diving I have ever done"; to quote a few from this month. The scenery on the Bapita trip is beautiful, a mix of lagoon, ocean, exposed pinnacle reef, backwater, villages, cliffs, birds, and more. One group were on their last leg back into Marovo passing thru the last of the Canoe Passage when the way was blocked by a large mangrove tree collapsed across the channel. They had to return thru the backwater, out into the ocean, bypass Penguin Reef, pass back into the lagoon via a deep passage & return across Marovo. Thinking they might be a bit tired, even annoyed, I sympathised only to be told "no way, we would do it again right now if we could, we were lucky".

During March we finished replacing Vanua 1 (the original cabin) with a new facility. Built from various local timbers it is a spacious family style unit on the beachfront. It turned out better than we hoped & we think it will be popular. Along with the previously upgraded Vanua 2 (extended), Vanua 3 & Vanua 6 we are making some progress. The diveshop Jetty has been raised and the shoreline at the Diveshop foreshore raised to counter the effects of rising sea-levels.

Seghe airstrip was built by the USMC Sea-Bees in 1945. Over the last few years it has been subject to flooding which is very inconvenient for us. Despite repeated government promises the strip has still not been upgraded. Now some of the coconot trees buried during the initial construction have rotted away & a hole appeared in the runway. We have it on good authority that the strip should be graded & repaired by the end of June. My fingers are crossed. I find myself humming “there’s a hole in the aistrip Dear Minister of Aviation Dear Minister..." but to no avail. In the meantime we are using Ramata, a private airstrip on an island similar to Uepi but about 90 minutes away. Fortunately the trip is very scenic & our guests comment favourably on it. The advantage is it is good when it rains removing that doubt. So if you are coming please be aware that Ramata is the strip we are servicing even if the ticket says Seghe. Because of the extended distance we are forced to charge an increased transfer fee. We will resume using Seghe once it is repaired. Further details can be obtained from our website www.uepi.com. Meanwhile the arm wrestle for the international airline superiority continues between Solomon Airlines & the new kid on the block Sky Air World. Fares are the lowest ever. So it’s a good time to plan a Solomons holiday.

We now have 2 Hobie Cats available for hire to experienced sailors. These are good fun & should get plenty of use when the trade winds begin to blow in June.

Leana Via, Grant, Jill & the Uepi Staff

News Archives

We sincerely wish to thank the following people for use of their photographs in our website:

Peter Lange, Peter Pinnock, Oceania Films/Matt Guest, Eric Cheng, Fred Bavendam, Andy Belcher, Manuela Kirschner, Louise Murray, Roberto Rinaldi, Mark Strickland/Oceanic Impressions, Jill Kelly, Grant Kelly, Wes Kelly and Jason Kelly.