Free Enterprise

0800 position 16-51S 177-28E. At anchor off Sawailau, Yasawa Islands, Fiji

Yesterday morning Rob went SUPping and ended up aboard one of the other boats in the anchorage. While he was socializing aboard "Scoots", a fifty foot sloop from San Francisco, he noticed some fruiting papaya trees on the beach to leeward. After returning to Van Diemen he decided to launch an assault on the beach to capture fruit. Our papaya supplies were getting low. The rest of the crew piled into the dinghy for the attack and I stayed behind to hold down the fort. They returned a couple of hours later having successfully taken a couple of prisoners. It looked like another cruiser had staged a similar raid a day or so earlier so our crew didn't find much semi-ripe fruit left hanging.

The next stop on our Yasawa itinerary was Sawailau just around the southern end of Yasawa Island. According to two of our cruising guides, Sawailau had some great caves to explore. The guides indicated that the caves were the property of an adjacent village, and a twenty year old guide stated that the village charged $2 per person to enter the caves. OK. We powered the three miles from our previous anchorage at Malakati Bay to Sawailau to find three large motor yachts and a sailboat already anchored there. We picked an empty spot away from the others and dropped the hook.

Eric and I dinghied over to the island to do the caves. We didn't find anybody on the beach but behind it were tables, chairs, and a stairway apparently leading to the caves. At the bottom of the stairs was a sign that said "Visit the caves, $55 per person". Hmm. That's a pretty steep rate of inflation in twenty years. I'm a firm believer in free enterprise, but I doubt the Fijians are maximizing their income from the caves at that price. We turned around and went exploring on the dinghy instead.

This anchorage is more exposed than the last two, and the trade winds came up overnight making it a bit uncomfortable. According to the forecast, the wind peaked earlier this morning and will start backing off soon. No problem. We will be moving shortly to a more sheltered anchorage on the leeward side of the next island to the south.

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