At 8am I went ashore to pick up Aaroni who was going to travel with us to the seething island metropolis of Lomolomo. Once I had him aboard the dinghy we returned to Dignity to pick up Helen and then off to the next village around the coast. The wind was blowing from behind us so the trip was dry but it did not bode well for our return.<\/p>\n

We walked through the village to the truck stop where we sat upon cinder blocks to await the transport. While we waited, other villagers from Daliconi arrived having walked the distance. We felt lazy and wondered if we should have walked rather than take the dinghy.<\/p>\n

Soon the truck arrived. If the buses previously traveled upon were considered basic, this was more so. Our transport was essentially a large flatbed truck with a tarpaulin cover with a couple of slots to see through. The back was quickly filled with villagers and us and off we went to Lomolomo.<\/p>\n

Lomolomo comprised two stores, a school, a hospital, a post office and a bakery which had been closed for a month due to a problem with their generator. The place was bustling (we supposed) due to the fact that the monthly supply ship had arrived the previous day. Folks were collecting sacks of flour, sugar and rice for their villages and the shops were full (to the extent this word could be applied) with stuff.<\/p>\n

We took a short walk through the village to look around before returning to the shops to pick up some staples and some biscuits for today’s party\/feast. We snagged some fresh bread that had appeared from somewhere and ate some there and then.<\/p>\n

We eventually took the same truck back to the village where our dinghy was having spent an hour and a half in Lomolomo. More than enough to see the highlights. Our return trip back in the dinghy gave us all a thorough drenching confirming our thoughts that we should have walked to the truck stop.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

I’d been in two minds about the weather. The forecast called for overnight westerlies. Eroni had suggested the waves could pick up to 3ft which wouldn’t be fun in an anchorage. Our plan was to move the boat behind some nearby mangroves. However, when I spoke to some other villagers I learned that the expected waves were far lighter and a move I deemed was unnecessary. While we’d been away in Lomolomo another yacht had arrived, Da Capo, crewed by ex-Brits (now Kiwis) and their 3.5 children (one in the oven). We’d briefly met them before in the Bay of Islands and it was nice to meet them again and see their 3 small children playing with the locals.<\/p>\n

Back on the boat I chased UPS in Fiji to find out what has happened with our charger. It turned out they needed my approval to change the delivery address to the customs office in Savusavu so having given that it should now be on it’s way and should be there when we get there next week.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon I went back ashore to start work fixing a few more things. The DVD player that I’d fixed previously had failed again that evening and sadly I could not figure out why. I had thought that an intermittent problem would have been traceable and fixable but I was not successful. Another DVD player that had the front smashed in was fixable and that I managed to sort out. A third was beyond repair with what looked like salt water corrosion to the main circuit board.<\/p>\n

I was able to do all this work as someone had brought a portable generator into the village. Working during daylight is so much better. There were a couple of TVs left by the time it was getting dark. I’ll do these this morning.<\/p>\n

I took Samu and his wife Lakour back to Dignity as they’d missed out on the previous invitation last weekend. It was nice spending time with them and hearing them open up a little about goings on in the village. We gave them a few of the things we have aboard for the folks out here as well as the two fish I’d caught while we were in the bay.<\/p>\n

Helen and I finished the day with hot dogs and soup in keeping with July 4th celebrations back in the USA.<\/p>\n

Today, as mentioned before, we’ll go ashore so I can take a look at the TVs and whatever else is place our way. This evening is the party\/feast. We understand the villagers, including the school kids, have been practising their dancing and that Samu was planning to go out last night at midnight to collect sand crabs for us. We’re very much looking forward to this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 8am I went ashore to pick up Aaroni who was going to travel with us to the seething island metropolis of Lomolomo. Once I had him aboard the dinghy we returned to Dignity to pick up Helen and then off to the next village around the coast. The wind was blowing from behind us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiji","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4734,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions\/4734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}