Soft re-opening of Fiji Waters Announced
25 April 2020 | Suva Harbor
Diane Brown | Rain and Lightening!
Fiji waters soft opening...
How bored are we??
So the Prime Minister has announced some relaxing of the COVID travel and curfew restrictions to start this week. We had been visited by the Harbor Police and some officials later last week and they had asked some questions and taken pictures of us and our boat with video running the entire time. I'd assumed we would hear about more stringent restrictions--certainly not re-opening. They gave us a phone hotline number to call if we needed anything or information so we will call once things calm down a bit to see if we can move around again. The intra- island ferries and air flights can now begin again but with distancing. Some of this is probably due to the extreme damage in the outer islands and the need to get critical construction and consultants out to prevent the post storm development of dengue fever, leptospirosis (Mom looked it up very scary) and diarrhea.
Once again this country of Fiji amazes me at their ability to respond, adapt and think outside the box. Their post office has expanded their services to include staple food supplies and got it all set up in the last three weeks using their existing delivery and payment systems. They hope this can also help the post office become profitable again. The post offices here are already the school book lending store.
The big excitement last week was our dinghy trip to the yacht club marina store for fuel and to feed the cats daily (and use their showers to conserve our water supply). Oh, and so exciting, was a walk along the sidewalk past the prison walls to the ferry docks to see what was available in the area as far as marine suppliers. Actually we found some very dark small grocery stores with a great selections of goods just off the ships. We may not need to take a taxi into Suva after all.
John was so bored he got to thinking about the disco ball we had stashed for someday to play with kids and has torn Susan's quarter berth (think tool and sail storage) up to hunt for it. Really we also had to put all my sewing machine supplies away which is normally a grueling job in this heat and humidity. Somehow the disco ball made it all worthwhile. It is now hanging to celebrate the opening of Fiji waterways tonight during our cocktail hour.
Another exciting first on Tabu Soro was a Zoom call with the kids and grandkids that Katrina and Jake set up. It took a bit of learning curve and getting up at 04:45 on Monday morning but was the highlight of our week. Johnny couldn't stop asking questions; he was so excited. Also exciting but disturbing was the lightening and thunder directly over the boat the last couple nights. It felt like the hairs on my skin were crackling.
So we will wait a couple days for the new regulations to settle in and then call the Navy and Harbor Police to see if we need permission to begin sailing again. So exciting!!