Thursday 27th September

Suva
Fiji

18 07.331 S
178 25.470 E

We woke today expecting this to be our last day here, With a couple of things still to be done we set off in the dinghy as soon as we had finished breakfast. As we no longer had a car we caught a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a place that Gerry had heard of- he wanted to buy a bilge blower and the "marine store" at the yacht club didn't have one. The bilge blower was to put into the exhaust system for the generator to help cool it down faster and hopefully to extend the life of the generator by allowing it to run at a cooler rate. We spent the next hour chasing all over town for this bilge blower, going from one recommendation to the next, in the end we were unsuccessful, nowhere had one and most places had never even heard of them! West Marine- all is forgiven! At the final stop we paid off the taxi driver and went and bought some new fishing hooks and trace to beef up the lures that we have got in the hope of landing one of these monster fish that keep slipping the hook. We then detoured to the internet cafe and wasted half an hour there answering mail and I tried to type yesterday's blog- not very sucessfully as the computer shut down before I had finished it- I gave up! Next it was a stop at the Indian resturant for our last curry before leaving Fiji, the place was packed but we did manage to eat. We thought we would have a last look around town and as we did so we stumbled across a free music and dance show being performed in the park, we watched for a while but stupidly had not taken the camera ashore so there are no pictures. next stop was the handcraft market where we perused the locally made carvings and basket ware- we didn't buy a ,thing they appear to be mass producedalthough each stall owner professes to make them! Our final stop was the pot authority; we needed to check out before leaving the place. After filling out numerous forms(in triplicate) we were finished with immigration and just had customs to go; there came the stumbling block-all the officers were in a meeting-"come back tomorrow". What can you do?
We got a taxi back to the dock and went for a drink at the bar followed by dinner in the Wok on the water-our last Chinese meal here.