It's the beginning of year 3 for us in Fiji and we are still at our usual schedules. Yes, we are still alive, doing very well, and still living aboard SV Tanga in Fiji. During cyclone season, we did some upgrades to Tanga to make our lives a little bit easier and more comfortable.

The biggest and best addition we made is our spanking brand new electric flushing porcelin toilet; just push a button and everything goes away. We had a near Chernobyl incident with our house batteries, so a brand new set of Lifeline AGM batteries were ordered from New Zealand, put on a container ship and shipped to us. We now have 880 amp hours of power! A new barbeque grill has been installed, two new thru hulls were added to support our new toilet, new bottom paint done and a newly balanced propellor.

The second biggest upgrade we made was the use of our icebox. This is an ice box that was originally built into the boat, but we always used the big deep space for dry food storage. Tom asked me if I would like to empty it out and try using it as a ice chest. After he mentioned ice cold beer on demand, I was in! We've been using it consistantly and it has been great. Besides having ice cold beer all the time, we keep all our vegetables, meat and additional drinks in there.

Besides working on the boat during cyclone season, we have actually been out and had some fun. We went to an all organic all natural mud pools. The location is up in the Sleeping Giant Mountain range. It was a hot humid day, but after smearing mud on every inch of our bodies, we cooled down. Once the mud dried, we swam around in 3 different natural spring pools (temperatures anywhere from warm to hottub hot). Our bodies were loose and relaxed when we were done. Then we went down the road to go ziplining! We had a great time ziplining through the dense rain forest and then finishing up by swimming around in the cool natural spring water.

We also spent an afternoon/evening down the south coast of the main island at a backpackers resort called the Beach House; swimming, surfing and chatting with some local friends.

One other exceptional experience's we had was dining with 6 other people for a very private lunch at an Italian shop. Reservations have to be made in advance, for atleast 8 to 10 people. The meal is a bit pricey but so well worth it. The entire menu is chosen by the chef and cooked right in front of us. It was a continous flow of champagne, wine and food for several hours and we all left Flavio's very full and very happy!

This past Sunday, we were invited to a Traditional Fijian Lovo Feast. A Lovo feast is when the meat and vegetables are wrapped in palms, banana leaves, etc and cooked in a pit in the ground with very hot cooking stones. A few Fijians named Josie and her husband Sevu and Walter were our hosts and explained the process/preparations to us. The preparations took about an hour and the cooking took another hour and then we were all ready to feast on chicken, fish, pork, lamb and some traditional vegetable dishes that we can't remember the names of. It was an extremely windy day and sand was blowing everywhere but the food was delicious.

Where is Tanga now? We are back at our usual spot at Musket Cove and back to our usual life again of swimming, snorkeling, surfing, and grilling out! Life is good and we are happy!

We have added heaps of new pictures in the Fiji 2015 Gallery.