Sunday, August 28, 2016

27 August - Savusavu

Fijian Immigration requires all visitors to have a round trip ticket in hand before they will let you board a plane to Fiji. There are three of us that will be flying in to help Clay sail Jambalaya to New Zealand in October, so we won't have the required tickets. To get aboard our flights, we will need individual letters of authorization from Fiji immigration. Poor Clay has been running the gauntlet with immigration for a few days now trying to get the letters. Every time he goes up there they tell him something different. I think the bureaucrats just like to jerk our chains. It ended up taking 12 trips before he triumphantly returned with the letters this afternoon. Fortunately the immigration office is only a couple hundred yards from the boat. You can imagine the additional frustration for anybody who has to conduct similar business via taxi. The story is the same with the bureaucrats in all of these South Pacific countries. It's part of the price of visiting paradise.

Jambalaya has been in Savusavu for almost a month now. Gail flew back to Seattle a couple of weeks ago to spend some time with her daughter, Grace, who is expecting her first child. Gail arrived back in Savusavu two days after our arrival.

We had a chance to do some exploring by land before heading off cruising. We took a taxi ride to a beautiful waterfall, went hiking to the top of the ridge overlooking the town, and explored the eclectic Indian shops along Savusavu's main road.

No comments:

Post a Comment