Last night, after running our errands, we headed back to Kosmos to get ready for the Royal Suva Yacht Club’s 75th anniversary celebration, which was taking place all week. This night they were having a dinner and jazzmusic. We arrived at the yacht club shortly after 1800 (6:00 pm). We wandered around, in hopes of mingling.

Sadly no one spoke to us, beyond to tell us “those seats are probably taken”. In fact we felt quite awkward at the whole event. Interesting how everyone on the streets of Suva were so friendly, but in the yacht club, no one was. We thought there might be some other visiting cruisers around, but everyone appeared to be part of the yacht club. Too bad we did not ask about this when we got our tickets, and we wonder why they even sold us tickets without checking our membership.

Adrienne was very surprised by the demographic in the room. She had expected a room full of Fijians and was floored that it was mostly older white couples. We had told her that most of the yacht club people we met over the years we older white guys, but for some reason she was expecting a different demographic here in Fiji. We are guessing by the accents we heard most were from Australia and New Zealand.

After an hour, the program began. Being a “Royal” yacht club, one of the first things was to recognized the Queen of England. Then a a series of boring speeches about the history of the yacht club and thank you’s to all the people who had been instrumental over the years, food was served. We expected a formal meal, considering the price we paid. To our surprise, out came an aluminum pan of shrimp (with heads and beady little eyes), a pan of cold calamari, and a small plate of tuna sashimi. All was tossed in the middle of the table. We likewise were tossed a stack of paper plates and paper napkins and no silverware.

After the meal, the jazz band came on. They began with jazz version of Motown tunes. Not bad. Then they did several jazz versions of disco songs, including Donna Summer and the Bee Gees. Not terrible. Then they did a jazz version of “Achy Breaky Heart”. When the song started we all looked at each other with the “Is it time to go?” look. We decided to see what the next song was before making the decision. Maybe it would get better. After “Achy Breaky”, the band took a break. A yacht club member jumped on stage with a guitar and encouraged his drunk cohorts to come to the mic to sing while he played. By the second impromptu karaoke song we were out the door.

Yesterday there was an errand that we didn’t get to. We needed to pay entry fees, which we couldn’t do at check in yesterday because we didn’t have Fijian money. So this morning Kosmos Eric flagged down the offical’s boat and conveniently paid them the fees. They came back a few minutes later and returned part of the money. The “health fee” had to be paid at the heath ministry office. We headed to shore and hopped into a taxi, armed with an address the yacht club had given us We were delivered to a 4 story very official looking ministry of health building. The receptionist told us we were at the wrong building and told us where to go, which was actually in fine print on the form given to us in the first place. This time the taxi pulled into a less official looking building. We walked into the office, only to realize it was a vaccination clinic. We were confused until one of the nurses told us this was the place to pay, just up the stairs.

The officals asked us where we going next. Nadi, on the other side of Viti Levu, is where we will drop off Adrienne and pick up Christi’s dad. Much to our dismay, we found out were not permitted to stop in Nadi unless we checked out of Suva and checked in at Lautoka first! We were allowed to go crusing in the islands we had gotten permits for, but Nadi required the extra step. The town directly north of Nadi is Lautoka. You can check into/out of the country in Suva or Lautoka. We had opted for Suva because it was right on the way, anyway, and we wanted to go grocery shopping. Between the day lost with the customs boat breakdown, the limited grocery store, having to spend more than a day running from office to office to complete check in, and having to go to Lautoka anyway, we are sorry we opted to stop in Suva to check in.

So now the dance to check out of Suva.This is frustrating because usually you do not check out until you leave for another country. Checking out is much easier than checking in, and as such, the customs office is the only place we need to go toWe asked the taxi to take us to customs and we were dropped off in front of a nice looking building with a big logo for Fiji Customs. But this was the wrong office. Déjà vu. They pointed vaguely across the street to the correct office, which was a control tower looking building peeking out from vast field of highly stacked shipping containers. There was a very tall fence topped with barbed wire running the entire length of the street and blocked the quickest path to our goal. We followed the fence figuring there had to be a gate somewhere. We eventually got in and when we walked into the control tower office, we were greeted by three of the same people who had boarded the boat yesterday.

After we checked out, we went back to Kosmos and headed for sea. The ride started out windy, but got better as we entered more sheltered waters. We get occasional big side waves, but none are nearly as bad as what we have encountered on other passages. Adrienne asked if this was the roughest passage we had been in and we laughed at her, telling her it was a relatively nice ride.