Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Met Amy and Api this morning. Great to see some tribies at last !. We are meeting at 1.15pm to take the trip to VV. In the meantime everyone is distributed around town buying essentials for the week. I am glad of the time to do my first recon run.

Boy it’s hot out here and Labasa high street is a swarming mass of primarily indian features. A friendly atmosphere and Labasa high street has delivered. I have unearthed quite a few hardware and electrical stores with most of the major parts that I need for the turbine tower. Some parts I will have to order to get the lengths I need ( cable, wire e.t.c. ) but it’s here ( or can be here by boat within a week ). How I will shift it all around will be another task ( insert plea for help here ). I have found the 2” tower pipes but in 6m lengths. I will need to speak to Api about this one to see if the skiff can take it. I found a local engineering shop that will cut and thread the pipes for me if these need to be cut down to 3m sections. So far my travel bag is full of local business cards with scribbled notes and phone numbers but I also have my camera as a visual reference. I only have a rough idea of cost, it’s more than I expected but feasible. I will get help from one of the locals to negotiate a bulk buy so that I don’t fall foul of “tourist tax”. The tower is taking shape in my head. Also visited the grog shop for my bag of kava ( from a big friendly animated character called bomo ( I think ). He said i meant “night” in Fijian. He didn’t know what Alan meant in Fijian. I’ll make something up. It’s weird walking down the high street with a bulging bag of drugs on a busy monday morning. Got 3 Sulu’s aswell. I have never bought a dress for myself before and I found myself painfully choosing a range of colours and holding them over my camo shorts in rather camp manner. I’m sure it will all make sense soon…