Day 345, Year 1: Shop ‘til You Drop
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Weather: Rainy with Intermittent Sunshine
Location: Apia Harbor, Upolu Island, Samoa

After being here for more than two weeks, we finally got ourselves up early enough to get into town to see the Police Band. Doug and Sylvie from Windcastle went with us. Every weekday morning at 7:50, the full marching band dressed in their blue police uniforms, play music as they march down the main street to the Government Center. There they play for the raising of the flag, and then they march and play their way back through town. This is a leftover from the days of British occupation and is quite impressive. I love watching the police men and women, all in their blue dress lava lavas, as they direct traffic in town wearing their white gloves. They are very formal, and they do their jobs with obvious pride. They march with the same pride and it was fun to watch.

Yesterday I had made arrangements to go shopping today with Sylvie. So after our trip to watch the band, we returned to the boat to get the laundry and our computer. We dropped the laundry off to have it done and Mark went to the internet café to try and send some of the pictures from American Samoa to the website. Sylvie and I went to the Flea Market and told Mark we would meet him back at the internet café at 12:30. We made it back, but we still had more shopping to do. After having lunch at the Seafood Grill near the wharf, Sylvie and I went back to town. We were looking for gifts and for some souvenirs for ourselves. Somehow we always seem to leave port without buying the special things that will remind us of our voyage years from now. But we took care of that today. We are all out of money, but we have souvenirs!

Mark spent the afternoon arranging for duty-free purchases as we leave here. We are thinking that Saturday morning will be departure time and we will probably be headed to Tonga. But weather and whim might change those plans once again. Brian from Thistledown and Jill, his new crew member solicited through the internet, were hoping to leave this evening for Fiji. The weather out there is not so great, so they might go north to Wallis/Futuna, and then south to Fiji. Jill is new to sailing and is little worried about the passage, but I gave her a couple of Scopamine patches and hope that they will help.

Tonight we invited Penny and Greg from Long Tall Sally over to play Baja Rummy. Once again, Mark and Penny were the winners and Greg and I had pathetic scores. We must have a rematch.

Tomorrow I will continue to work on getting photos ready to send to the website and might do a little more shopping.

060927 Day 345 Samoa–Samoa Police Band