June 28

We spent a lovely 4 days in Port Villa. It is fairly small but has lots of Duty Free shops, good supermarkets and is the center of the tourist industry for all Vanuatu. We anchored in the Quarantine area and decided to stay as it was nice and breezy and - well - the anchor was in so why lift it? The other area is behind a small island and there are mooring balls which cost money to use - why pay when you can anchor for free?

We bought some movies the first day and they were fairly decent black market versions of commercially available DVDs at around half price which is outrageous considering they are illegal copies. We bought some more DVDs the second day at a different store but these were all movies that I believed were still in the cinemas. They were so pathetic - someone had brought a video camera into a movie theater and videotaped the movies. You could even see people walking in front of the screen! We decided to bring them back. The store tried to claim we should have known, etc. which has a certain logic to it if you are in the black market. We finally got a credit from them and we bought a bunch of computer games for Jonah.

We did some provisioning mostly on items we had forgotten. There was a lovely produce market in the center of town and the prices were fairly decent. The yacht "Steadfast" was in town. We saw a couple of other boats we know. We decided to go to Mele Island which is around 6 miles from Port Villa. It's a lovely anchorage with a nice coral reef with some nice snorkeling. We went swimming the moment we dropped anchor. Nice blue water. After lunch we went snorkeling with Steadfast. Jonah had a blast. There were swarms of fish and lots of things to look at for everyone.

I am sort of tired from all the activity. I think I am having a bout of anemia lately. I am taking my daily vitamins again and hopefully my energy will return.

We want to go diving tomorrow but there is no one to watch Jonah - I am not comfortable living him on his own as he is still a bit young. I might just dingy around and introduce myself to the yachts in the anchorage and see if any of them might be interested in watching Jonah. If not - I guess we will do lots of snorkeling!

This anchorage apparently has a lot of mosquitoes which is a bummer so all our screens are up which makes the boat very hot. This is a very bad malaria area and we are not taking meds for a variety of reasons. We do carry malaria medicine if we do get sick.