Eric spent the entire day yesterday doing boat chores. He changed the pre-filter on the water maker and cleaned the sea strainer, and changed the generator impellor. He also did some good stuff like secure the toaster oven and dish drainer so they don’t go flying when we get hit by a side wave, re-running wires so we could move some of the computer gear to better locations, general reorganizing, and cleaning.

Yesterday was the last day of SCUBA class for Christi. She took her final exam and did three dives in other parts of the harbor. The other dive sites had more life than the site on Tuesday, but were still mostly dead. There were lots more of both starfish and a couple of sea anenomoies. Christi passed the class with flying colors. After three days of being in the sun with her mask on, she has stylish mask tan lines.

In the evening, our friends Julia and Simon came by to visit. Julia brought a carrot cake, which was really good. We all had at least two pieces of cake.

Our friend Adrienne arrived today from San Diego. She arrived earlier than anticipated to our rendezvous site at the Aquarium Cafe. Christi’s dive instructor saw Adrienne wandering around and brought her to Kosmos in his boat. We were awoken to “I’m here early!” Adrienne lucked out because she arrived just before the rain began. It poured most of the day.

We braved the rain and went out to eat for both lunch and dinner. We have noticed that every restaurant we have been to, except one, is run by a pelangi, not a Tongan. The menu choices are pretty much the same as at home, with no local dishes on the menus. Not counting Sails, the “nice” restaurant, the most exotic thing on the menus has been a lobster burger. Eric and Christi think the food here has been good, for the most part, but Adrienne’s reaction to the food made us realize that we have been away from home so long that we take the food for granted now. She kept oohing and aahing over the fresh fish and fresh baked rolls in her fish burger. Food out here tends to taste better than at home because the ingredients tend to be fresher.

Most of the tourist business in the area is Pelangi run, as well. It seems as if over the last five years, many foreigners have moved in and opened businesses. Vava’u seems to be an up and coming area.

On a side note, Christi has been jinxed. Everything she touches seems to break. A few days ago she picked up one of our cameras and saw the display was broken. Then her regulator broke in SCUBA class on Tuesday. On Tuesday night she noticed the lens on our other camera was broken. Yesterday she noticed her electric toothbrush is no longer accepting a charge. We know that electronics don’t have a long life on a boat, but everything dying after four months is kind of crazy. Fortunately, Eric thinks he fixed the regulator and Adrienne brought us a new camera that also works underwater to about 10 feet. Now we can take the camera snorkeling with us and get some underwater shots.