Monday 24th September

Suva
Fiji.

18 07.331 S
178 25.470 E

Another wet day – who would believe it? We began our day with checking on the progress of our frame for the generator, only to be told to come back in the afternoon and it might be done – yeah right! Our camera decided that it was going to play up and not zoom in and out so we thought we would try and find a service place to see if we could get it looked at. The camera, a Sony Cyber-shot is only a year old; we had bought it in Perth especially for this trip. Anyway we headed into town and made our way to the largest store we could find advertising Sony cameras, we asked the sales clerk about servicing and she gave us an address where Sony equipment is sent, it was pretty close to the yacht club so we drove there and Gerry went in to ask the questions. It was only a few minutes before he reappeared – not a good sign; sure enough we had the right place but they didn’t service cameras there, all the cameras were sent to a different place near the airport. We gave up; the problem seems to be intermittent so hopefully we will still be able to take pictures of the rest of our trip. Having gone through this wasted exercise we thought we deserved a cup of coffee so we found the nearest Republic of Cappuccino, which turned out to be the local version of Starbucks. We ordered coffee and cake at the counter (the biggest difference was that we didn’t get asked if we wanted Tall, Grande or frigging gigantic – it only came in one size, imagine that!) and were directed to sit down – ah a soft fairly comfortable chair, bliss! The coffee and cake was bought to our table and we wallowed in the comfortable chairs whilst slowly polishing off these frothy, cream topped, freshly ground beans made over into unpronounceable beverages and decadent chunks of gateaux. That was lunch out of the way for the day! Our next stop was the internet café where we checked our email, answered the ones that we really couldn’t ignore and posted the latest blogs. By the time we had finished there it was absolutely pouring down and it was not going to be any fun wandering around the shops as we had planned, we did try to chase down a new camera – just in case but didn’t actually find one in the end, all the duty free shops must be at the airports as we didn’t find any in town. We did however manage to find the jewelers and bought me a new wedding ring to replace the one that I managed to loose overboard just as we were leaving Tahiti. I’m happy with the replacement but it still feels a little strange and after 29 years of the old one I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise. We thought we would test the camera to its limits and then drove out to the parliament building gates so that I could get a photo of the guard in a skirt. I had to jump out of the car for the picture as there was no parking in front of the gates and I took a couple of photos from the far side of the road, I then crossed over to take a closer photo and was hailed by the 2nd guard – in combat fatigues hiding in the sentry box. I politely replied and invited him to stand along side his traditionally dressed counterpart for a photo; he was obviously pleased to be asked and stood to attention next to his mate for the photo – see the traditional and contemporary guards in the photo! Having got my photos we decided that it was a perfect afternoon to spend at the museum – out of the rain. We drove there and spent the next couple of hours wandering around the exhibits, learning all sorts of interesting stuff about Fiji and its inhabitants; it was definitely worth the visit.
We also did a quick tour around Thurston Gardens, in which the museum is set; they are quite lovely gardens and I think that in dry weather they would be a great place to spend some time.
With a couple of hours left until it was dinner time we headed first to the machine shop – there is progress but the frame isn’t ready yet and then back to the boat so that we could run the engine and top up the batteries and run the fridge (it will be so nice to have the generator back in working order so that we don’t have to keep doing this). Between rain showers we returned to the club and had a drink before setting off to an Indian restaurant that we had seen and fancied trying. The food was very good and we made pigs of ourselves with a banquet style meal. Full to bursting we returned to the boat for the night.