Day 212 Latoka

We taxi into Latoka along with Dave and Melanie from Telarre, Debbie from Volaré and Tatyana from the German boat Breakpoint that is next to us at the marina.
The open-air produce market is much like the others we have seen, larger than Nadi and smaller than Suva. Saturday is market day in Fiji. In addition, Monday is Fiji Independence Day and there is a small carnival in the park and a parade planned for 1PM. Young kids are everywhere and the air is festive. Sunday at 1AM the Fiji rugby team will play one of the favorites – South Africa and the hype over Fiji’s chances adds to the excitement.
We buy some produce, wander through the carnival, buy some curry for lunch at one of the stands and are back in the taxi just as the parade is ready to start. Our taxi’s route is in the opposite direction as the parade so we see all the floats and marchers formed up and ready to begin. The weather is very hot and the sun strong so we elect to skip the parade and return to the boat.
After stowing the groceries, we walk over to the hotel that is adjacent to the marina and spend the afternoon trying to stay cool by the pool.
In the evening, we invite Volaré and Breakpoint over for Mark’s curry and end the evening talking politics with Thomas from Breakpoint. They have been sailing for 7 years and spent one year in Ushuaia on the Beagle Channel at the south end of Patagonia. Their boat is a “high latitude” aluminum hull so they were able to travel into the fjords of Chile and see the glaciers. It is quite an exciting story. Thomas’ political views are interesting as well. He postulates that Gorbochev won the Cold War by making the U.S. the last remaining superpower – an expensive position that will eventually weaken the U.S. economically. Is this one of the brilliant moves in the game of global chess?