Yesterday our neighbors, Tony and Raywnne (not sure of that spelling), invited us to their house for a mid day bar-b-que. Seems they had a bunch of food left over from their wedding reception the night before. Let me clarify. They've been married for 15 years, but were renewing their vows and then having a large reception afterwards. They still refer to this as a wedding reception.

Seems things didn't go as well as planned. They booked a fancy resort here on the island and the old manager had left and there is a new, temporary manager in charge. Based on the conversations, this man not only won't be manager much longer, he likely won't work at the resort and may not even be welcome on the island:) Besides being rude to the guests, closing the pool off to their use, he halted the reception at 9:30 and rather gruffly informed everyone to get the f....k out of here. What he failed to realize was that among the guests were some of the islands most influential people, including the Minister of Education! Ah yes, getting a little flavor of local politics can be fun!

After the bar-b-que, we were invited to go sailing. Val and I love being on the water and would love to get more experience sailing so we jumped at the opportunity. When we got to the Rarotonga Sailing Club, we saw the boat we were going out in. It's based on the traditional local sailing vessel which was a hollowed out log with an outrigger. This was a little more modern than that, but still not your typical sail boat. We set out and sailed around the lagoon for about an hour. Several missed tacks and a few jibes later we were heading back into shore when our captain waited a little too long to give us the tack command (or were we just not quick enough?) and we promptly flipped the boat. We were only in 3 feet of water, so it was very funny and we received a standing ovation from the crowd at the bar. I'm pretty convinced he did it on purpose just to get us off the boat (just kidding). All in all it was great fun and we're going to go watch them race next Saturday. We may also join them for dinner on the 15th during the next full moon. Dinner on the deck of the sailing club restaurant is supposed to be quite elegant. Not bad for a couple of backpackers on a budget!

As Mr. Garcia once sang ... May the four winds blow you safely home!

Until next time, Happy Trails,

Eric