Colin’s blog about his adventures aboard Pura Vida and his amazing pictures can be found at http://deadreckoningreports.com. Check it out.

It’s been a while since we’ve blogged, but not for lack of adventure. We’ve been pretty busy ever since Colin arrived and we left the mainland. I met him at the airport right around midnight on Wednesday. After several last-minute trips to Fijian immigration to get his entry permit letter signed by the Fijian Director of Immigration (one-way tickets into Fiji require formal permission), I was a little worried about immigration hassles, but nobody even asked to see the letter and we were off in a cab toward Nadi within minutes. Colin’s blog on the trip is well worth a read, but suffice it to say that since no late-night busses or mini-busses were running that night, we had an informal late night cab ride ($75 US for the 3 hours trip) that included a stop to pick up a few beers from a severely kava-intoxicated shopkeeper, a stop to pick up the cab driver’s sleeping friend to help keep him awake during the drive, a stop to avoid several very large and unimpressed cows who had taken possession of Fiji’s main highway (two-lanes through villages with one phone booth near the road in each village), and a couple more stops to discharge said beers.

We spent the hours of the ride catching up and swapping stories and finally arrived at the Royal Suva Yacht Club an hour or so before daylight. Once aboard, I settled in for a couple hours sleep before our dawn departure. Colin was still too excited to sleep and woke me up at dawn to get moving.