Bula Fiji!

Five days on the ocean heading West and next thing we know, we're on the island of Vanua Levu, in the country of Fiji. THe crossing was full of extremes,
ranging from hours of 50kt gusts and side ways rain, to days of lake like sea conditions, with absolutely NO wind. Overall, beautiful sail though!

We are here in Savu Savu, a small city that has one street full of Indian trinket shops, delicious and cheap bakeries, and a couple REAl supermarkets. The land
is beautiful with it's steep and jagged tropical mountains, much different from Tonga that basically had no elevation. We took one of the local busses over the island
to a town called Lambasa. After a two hour drive up and over the mountains, we got off the bus only long enough to get two icecream cones before we had
to board the last returning bus back to Savu Savu! We didn't mind our short stay in Lambasa though, because the view out the bus windows over the land is what we went for
anyway. We were amazed at how user friendly the bus ride was, making bathroom stops, and snack breaks along the way:-) It was great too because at various stops, there
would be vendors who would come right up to the bus windows selling curry burritos, peanuts, juices, ect...Not a bad way to go:-)

Fiday night we managed to get an invite to the reopening of a bar/restaurant called The Decked Out Cafe thanks to our friends off of Spectacle.
After the original building burnt to the ground last year 2007, the owner rebuilt the restaurant which was also her home, from scratch through
the help of the community. It was an incredible party and We almost had to be rolled out of there after eating so many of the fancy appetizers!
We are waiting for our Fiji cruising permit now and once we recieve that we'll be heading down to the big island of Viti Levu.