Yes, there's something about Tonga. They practice their island pace and pronounce it to visitors and cruisers. I like it, but you change to their pace go bonkers. We need stamps. The postal person is out. No mail! None!

Last night, we were invited to have dinner with our LBO Australian friends, Peter and Veronica, and our Norwegian friends, Hans and Lif. We prepared ourselves, taking our first shower in the boat for a long time. We think that it's the way to go since we can stand! After motoring to the dinghy dock in front of the Aquarian Cafe, we enjoyed live music and a spectacular meal with cocktails, wine and excellent food. We had a great time talking boats, checking into and out of countries, and all of that cruiser talk of no interest to others. We had a wonderful evening. Tomorrow night, they're cooking

This morning, I traced down some electrical issues, then we motored to the same dinghy dock and we walked down town to drop off our dirty cloths at the Tropicana Cafe. We're both sitting here bent over a hot laptop keyboard communicating with the real world for the first time in a while. I'm also trying to get the photos posted from Niue since their Internet was SO SLOW! As Richard C noted, the text made it but the photos didn't. Shoot, I'd still be sitting there if I'd waited until the photos posted.

Here at the Tropicana, we've enjoyed an iced coffee and we're overlooking the tiny harbor where the biweekly freighter has arrived and is industriously offloading the containers of goods that keep the place alive.

We dropped by some grocery stores, the liquor store (duty free for only 24 hours), and the post office for stamps. No dice on stamps since the postal worker was not in. No one minded it, either.

Before jumping into the dinghy, we dropped by the Aquarian Cafe to pay for our garbage dumping: a few dollars for a medium bag. We also made arrangements to attend their BBQ beef dinner tomorrow night. Ummmmm! Can't wait.

On return, we both worked on boat chores, had a great meal in the cockpit, and ran that damned generator to charge batteries. It's just a fact of life, but it's an intrusion of noise and bad air.

Tomorrow's another day.