A Good Time in Lata

Hello All,
This morning we went across the bay again to Lata to conclude our Quarantine check in. When we got there the officer was still out of town so we took a walk around and in our travels ran into a 60 year old Polish traveler. We all hit it off with him right away, especially Rafal and Paula. We went to the market for bread and afterwards went to his hotel, well kind of a hotel, anyway we ended up chatting with him most of the day. He is on holiday here and is a HAM radio operator. He brought some portable gear with him and spent a few days out at the reef Islands not far from here broadcasting to other HAM operators. He has traveled all over the Pacific doing this. He sets up his gear and talks to people all over the world. The funny thing is he was suppose to fly out of here last week but the plane keeps getting delayed so he has been stuck here for a week now. Now keep in mind, this place has little to no Internet, land line calls are extremely expensive, there is no ATM and 99% of the place doesn't even know what a credit card looks like so all of that being said this is an awful place to be stranded. He is taking it pretty well and has had a good time just visiting with the locals. He is a really nice guy and had some good stories to tell about his travels. Rafal and Paul got to speak Polish most of the day with him so they really enjoyed that. There was a gal that was also at the hotel stranded. She was there with us also. She is originally from Vanuatu but now lives in Australia. She has an extended family that lives here so was here visiting. She has been here for 2 weeks waiting for the plane. This place really takes the "Island time" rule seriously. I made a few more trips to the Quarantine office and finally got with the guy and got all of the paperwork sorted out.

Today was a very interesting day to say the least and it was really nice to visit with those folks.

We are getting ready for the 200 mile crossing to San Cristobal Island and from there we will only be 100 miles and some change from Honiara on Guadalcanal.
I will keep in touch on the crossing so stay tuned.

PEACE
P.S. This was sent on Thursday 10-27-2011