Sunday 23rd September

Suva
Fiji.

18 07.331 S
178 25.470 E

We woke today to a small amount of blue sky – hooray, we were beginning to think that it had all gone away for ever. The morning was spent doing nothing special, just relaxing and reading our books. We had planned to go to Yum Cha at the Capital Palace restaurant in town (it is apparently quite well known here for the weekend Yum Cha) as Gerry hadn’t been feeling too well when he went to bed last night I didn’t push to go but just before lunch he suggested that we go out, stopping for Yum Cha on the way. So we dinked ashore, drove to town and were lucky enough to find a parking spot right outside the Capital Palace. We made our way inside and sat down, the only white faces in the place, everyone else was oriental – a good sign in a Chinese restaurant we felt. The Yum Cha was unlike ones that I have been to in the past in that this was a buffet style where you had to go up to the table and decide what you wanted and they then bring it to your table; every other one I have been to you sit at your table and waiters bring out trays of food and circulate and you take what you want as they go around. Anyway we made our choices, the food arrived at the table and we pigged out on the food. It was very enjoyable and I was glad that we had got there. Once we had finished eating we thought we would have another try at finding the road that we missed yesterday and go for a drive. Map in hand (upside down and back to front to see if it made a difference) we headed up a side street, we found what we thought was the road and began traveling on it. Eventually we hit the first ‘big’ town; yes we were on the right road – yippee. The road was a little better than the one we had traveled on 2 days ago but it still didn’t seem like a major highway to us. The pot holes were less but we think this was because the road was less used than the one to Sigatoka. We continued to drive all the way to Korovou, about 50 kms; there was little to recommend the journey, no spectacular sights and pretty mundane scenery after the first few kms. Instead of driving alongside the ocean we were following the Waimanu river which turned into the Rewa river; there wasn’t even any river activity to keep us amused! When we reached Korovou we elected to return to base, we had had enough driving around. Back at the yacht club we dinked out to the boat and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon before heading ashore for dinner. Gerry although feeling a little better didn’t want to go far so we ate at the club again – we have almost gone through the menu once so it must be almost time for us to leave here! The good thing about eating at the club, well 2 things – it’s cheap and there are always other people to chat with and share sailing stories with. Then it was back to the boat to run the engine and charge the batteries before bed.