I awoke at about 5:00 am to what I thought was lightening. I registered that the wind was indeed blowing and it was raining. I was about to roll over and continue my sleep when the lightening happened again (no thunder). Hummmm, better look out the window and see how bad this storm is! The good news is that the storm is not so bad, the bad news is that one of the sail boats is dragging anchor and is headed right toward us. "All Hands on Deck!" We rush around making preparations for impact which luckily doesn't happen – all the shouting and flashing of lights woke the fellow and he managed to get hooked in solid again. Now there are three of us all huddled in very close anchorage vicinity. When day finally breaks, the sail boat moves back to his earlier location and because the swing of the other fellow beside us is a little too close for comfort we decide to move also. Two moves later, we have secured ourselves where we are comfortable and NOBODY is going to bother us. This was the bad fun.
We have a taxi booked on the main island of Viti Levu for 10:00 am so off we head for the boat basin at the Wananuka Resort – a short five minute boat ride. Our taxi ride to Rakiraki (the town) was 15 minutes through sugar cane fields and farms on a very, very bumpy road. We only really needed to go to the bank for some cash to feed our diving habit, so once that was done we toured the town – all four streets – it is actually a big square. It is always mandatory to see the local market and there we found Glen's coveted radishes and his necessary watermelon. He has such fun chatting up the selling ladies. After only an hour we have the place covered so we ask at a furniture store (we were getting "top up" cards for our airstick – go figure) where the best place in town was for lunch. The helpful young man directed us to Raj's Wine and Dine. Wine and Dine turns out to be a clean, if spare place on the second floor above the trucking terminal office, we are the only patrons. In normal "safe" tourist mode, we order beer for our drinks and are slightly surprised when they show up in quart bottles – liquid lunch? As we are waiting for our lunches to arrive, the maitre 'd asks if we would like a lesson in making roti – our lunch roti. He traipsed us all back to the kitchen where a smiling young Indian woman (it is an Indian restaurant) showed us the finer points of making roti. We laughed and giggled and took pictures and we think we know how to make roti now. Lunch was very delicious. One final stop was made before we called our taxi for home – I am now the proud owner of a roti board and rolling pin - $6.00 Fijian. This was good fun.
We whizzed all of our goodies back to the big boat, hung out for a bit, cleaned our grubby little boat person selves up and sped back to the Wananuka Resort for a night out and a fantastic "lovo" (traditional dinner). We stopped to talk to their dive shop guys and were shocked to hear that they were going to be putting 44 divers in the water the next day. Boy, are we ever glad we didn't call them for our dive experience – what a gong show that will be. Our way back to the big boat in the dark (3/4 moon – so not too dark) the water is like smooth like oil and the air is a warm caress as we glide almost noiselessly along. Beautiful. This was also good fun.
