Our walk with Tooey was on Tuesday. On Tuesday night, heavy rain began that continued through the next day. Local custom requires that you tell the chief in person when you are leaving the anchorage. It was raining really hard and we figured the chief would understand if we didn’t trek out in the rain to say goodbye.

We wanted to check out on Thursday morning, so the plan was to anchor in Lautoka on Wednesday night so we could be at customs first thing in the morning, run some errands, and take off in the early afternoon. Taking off in the afternoon would put us in Port Vila right at dawn next Monday morning.

After much debate, we decided to go back to the marina in Denaru instead. Anchoring in Lautoka harbor was unappealing to start with, as it is rolly with all the cargo ship and other boat traffic. With the bad sea conditions thrown into the mix, we knew we would have an uncomfortable night. We really wanted a good sleep before heading off on our passage. There is a marina between Lautoka and Denaru, but  it sounded like space was tight. Visibility was terrible and winds were screaming at 30 knots, so we felt like the smart thing to do is to stick with what we know.

The ride back to Denaru wasn’t all that bad, considering the conditions. We pulled in late in the afternoon, then went to Chef’s for dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Check out the he pepper grinder they use.

This morning we took a taxi to Lautoka to check out. We knew we were supposed to bring Kosmos there, but we decided not to for two reasons. First, it was a two hour ride the wrong direction to go to Lautoka. It would save us 4 hours of sea time if we left from Denaru. Second, it takes us an hour to get our dinghy up and down, so between the sea time and dinghy time, it would really take us 6 extra hours to leave from Lautoka.

We were under the impression it would only take 20 minutes to get to Lautoka by car. It is actually a 45 minute drive, and our taxi driver was really slow, so it took closer to an hour. We passed through several farms and villages along the way. The ride north was much greener than the ride south to the Coral Coast 11 days prior. We mentioned it to the taxi driver, who told us that there had been very little rain prior to our arrival and that things green up fast in Fiji with the rain. The road was set inland, but we frequently saw glimpses of the ocean along the way.

Lautoka is a blue collar town. We passed several factories, a brewery, a sugar mill, and a couple of wood mills. One of the wood mills had a small mountain of pine chips piled up high. We were told Japan buys the wood chips. There were several car dealerships. We could see the wharf from the distance. It was littered with containers.

The taxi dropped us off at the wharf. We were surprised by the tight security. We needed to present our passports and prove we had official business on the wharf before they let us in. We went into customs and filled out the array of forms. Just as the customs agent was about to stamp our passports, he asked us where the boat was. Our plan was to lie and tell them it was in the Lautoka harbor, even though it wasn’t. But Eric just couldn’t lie and admitted the boat was at Denaru. The customs agent refused to check us out and insisted that we bring the boat to Lautoka. Sigh.

On the way back to Kosmos we got a giant Mama’s Pizza. Christi individually froze the slices for passage food. We also got some meat pies from the bakery and individually froze them.