April 2015 Fiji

March  25, 2015
Maps

The days of March have somehow wandered by and we are still in the marina and still chained to the hurricane moorings. I thought we would be sailing by the middle of the month, or April first at the latest.  Now it looks like at least May and maybe later.  It is just too hot to do anything.  We cannot turn around until the box is done because the new starter switch will be in the box and the box is far from done.  The pieces are cut out and sanded   Apparently at least part of the 150 lbs of gear that I brought back was parts for the box, so now he has those.  Eventually it is all put together.  Now it has to be varnished, that takes several days.  And now it is time for the electrical work.  installing all the switches and gages and wiring them in.  Of course this requires trips to the hardware store and several days with pencil and paper sketching wiring diagrams.  Little by little it is coming together but oh so slow.

I have made numerous trips to town.  I have wanted good map of Fiji since we got here, not a chart but just a map with the names of villages and islands and the major roads  Up until now, it has been impossible to find one.  Finally someone suggested that I try school supply stores since the kids need to study their country.  Still no luck but eventually someone suggested that i go to the “Land Commission” office.  I had no idea there was such an office but it makes sense.  They are in charge of real estate transactions and obviously would need good maps.  Real estate in Fiji is very complicated and political and I will not even pretend to know much about it.  What I do know is that most land is owned by the villages and non-fijians ( which I think includes indian-fujians) cannot own the land except under certain circumstances that are constantly changing according to the most recent legislation.

 Anyway, I make my way to the appropriate building and office and discover that they do indeed have a wonderful set of maps covering all of Fiji.  There is just one problem, the maps are in locked cabinets and they cannot find the key.  They all think the key must be here, but it is not.  The entire office is in an uproar.  It is finally suggested that we go and have lunch and come back later.  Surely they will have found the key by this afternoon.  The afternoon is no better.  No one knows what happened to the key.  Two of the maps that we want are in unlocked cabinets, so we take those and promise to come back the next day. 

The next day the office is noticeably cleaner that the day before.  Numerous piles of paper have been sorted and filed, but the key has not appeared.  “So sorry.  Give us another day.”  The problem with this is that the bus only runs every tow hours anti takes an hour to get to town so any trip to town uses up a whole day.  By the time I get back I am too hot and tired to do much of anything else.  By the next day the key has finally shown up.  Apparently it had taken a little trip to the head office in Suva.  The drawers are unlocked and unchained with great aplomb.  Indexes are consulted.  One by one the maps are produced.  There are seven all together.  We got one the first day four of the remaining six turn out to have been in the unlocked cabinets all along.  Number six comes out of the formerly locked cabinet and number seven is nowhere to be found.  This is the map of the southern Lau group, a small scattering of sparsely inhabited islands.  Paperwork is filled out and we are escorted out of the office and across the waiting room to the cashier to pay.  Once that is done we take possession of al but one of the maps with promises that the final map will be ordered from Suva and will be here soon.  Unfortunately it is now Easter week, Thursday to be exact and the rest of the week and Monday will be holidays so it will be Tuesday at least before it will arrive. 

Meanwhile i take the six maps back with me and lay them out at the bar that night.  “OK, which one of these is what you call Castaway?  Bounty? Treasure Island?    Where are the good dive spots?.  Which way did you go to the Yasawas?  Which islands have fancy hotels? “  Eventually we get most of the close islands labeled with their common names and identified the places where the staff grew up.  After several more trips to town I finally got the last map.  Now we are set.  We use the IPad when we are sailing but it is hard to get the big picture on that.  These are lovely.

Eventually I went back and bought another set of large scale (or is it small scale?) maps of the Yasawas.  They do not show depths but they do show the reefs.  These are the official maps that the government uses for ownership and disputes so anything that someone might lay claim to is going to show up.