It rained all morning, so we weren’t in a big hurry to go out. We love it when it rains right after we arrive from a passage. Then we don’t have to wash all the salt off the boat. We left around noon when the rain seemed to have stopped. Destination number one was food. We tried another café. The entire menu was: Hawaiian pizza slices, sausage rolls, quiche slices, chicken sandwich, ham sandwich. Christi opted for the chicken sandwich. It was huge, with lettuce, sprouts and grated carrot. Eric got some quiche and a sausage roll. Both were good. We commented on how good the food was and the chef said she made everything herself that morning, including the bread. This particular place is only open Mon thru Fri for lunch.

From there we went to an ice cream shop. There are two ice cream shops within a block of each other. It amazes us because it seems that there are not enough people on this island to support two shops. Actually, the amount of infrastructure in general amazes us. They have a lot for such a small population.

The next stop was the police station to get driver’s licenses so we can rent a car. The license is $10 and they give it to you on the spot. It is an official license and ID card, and you can drive with it in New Zealand. It lists our address as the m/v Kosmos. We debated about getting a car right then, but decided to wait until tomorrow in hopes of nicer weather.

We went back to the yacht club to visit with the boaters that were hanging out there. A couple people were having issues, and Eric helped out. Eric now has the reputation of computer guru. The yacht club is adjacent to the other ice cream shop. We got more ice cream. Hey, we walked an entire block. We needed to replenish the lost fluids. And who can resist New Zealand ice cream? It is the best in the world!

Then we went to the internet store to get the wifi working. We brought the laptop with us. We spent about a half hour trying to troubleshoot the problem before the lady manning the store apologized and gave us our money back. We plugged in to a cable and tried checking email and blog comments. The connection was painfully slow. We couldn’t check sail mail at all, and we could receive, but not send, from Liveflux. She was closing up for the day, so we headed out.

Every Tuesday night Jenna’s restaurant has a Niuan buffet dinner. Dinner was supposed to be at 1900, but the buffet opened a little after 2000. We were seated with some guys from New Zealand doing some work there. They informed us that Niue has a very small amount of bandwidth and that they have tight security. It turns out in the past some people were abusing the Internet and Niue had put quite a few restrictions on the Internet access including blocking many Internet ports off the island. Also only approved MAC addresses could connect to the Wifi infrastructure. Something was not right with the access control and the Kosmos laptop could only connect to one zone and not the one servicing the moorings.

The dinner was amazing. It is hands down the best authentic Polynesian food we have had, and this really surprised us from a buffet. Every single dish was good. The number of dishes they prepared was unbelievable. Most of the dishes we had already tried in French Polynesia, but there were some new ones, too. The national signature dish is taro and papaya in a coconut sauce, a new one for us. It is on the sweet side. It is pictured here in the front left. Behind it is boiled taro root, which is plain, like boiled potatoes, but with a slightly firmer and chewier texture. Next to the plain taro is a sweet coleslaw with crab, apple and pineapple. Christi loved it and she doesn’t like coleslaw. In the front right is a cucumber salad.

Pictured here is raw fish in coconut milk, always a party favorite. Next to it is kumala salad. Kumala is a type of sweet potato. The dish is basically potato salad with eggs, but kumala tastes better than potatos. In the back are baked plantains that tasted like bananas. Barely visible to the right is seared ahi with a pepper crust and sauce that were both out of this world.

There was coconut crab, which is definitely really darn good. There were breadfruit chips, which look like big potato chips, and are lighter and not quite as crisp as potato chips. There was chicken with taro leaves.

There was a ton more not photographed. There were small pork meatballs. There was fried fish and baked fish. There was curry chicken. There were regular French fries and white bread and focaccia bread. Then the desserts came out. There were the Tahitian cakes (called something different here) in both banana and pumpkin. There was banana cake with a light creamy frosting. There was a cake that looked like it had a lemon filling, but the filling turned out to be more of a light papaya custard. There was fruit salad and three flavors of ice cream: Neapolitan, vanilla and orange chocolate chip.

We told the lady in charge (whose name we cannot remember and probably could not have spelled, anyway) that her food is the best we have eaten in all of Polynesia. She began telling us how the various dished are prepared. She said they make it all by hand, and she wasn’t kidding. For example, she sends her husband out the day before to pick all the coconuts, grate them all and make the coconut milk rather than using canned coconut milk. Cooking is already a lot of work with shortcuts like bread from the store and canned coconut milk. To make everything from raw ingredients must be an overwhelming amount of work. We have no idea how they could possibly prepare so many dishes when each dish is so labor intensive. Also, the restaurant has a regular house stove/oven combo unit, and only the smaller two burners work on the stove. We are so impressed with those chefs.