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Nexus - Never been more worked over, by a more friendly bureaurcracy



Well...Savusavu is very nice, and the people are lovely, but I haven't been worked over by this much bureaucracy in a long time. First of all, the quarantine buoy was a half mile up river from the location given in the instructions. It was a simple buoy..orange with a yellow flag, right across from the first marina and just past the ferry dock, not out in the channel where the instructions gave its waypoint. We had the first wave of quarantine inspectors arrive, consisting of one nice Fijian gentleman, and two nice young peace corps volunteers who appear to have started this whole bureaucracy by "educating" the locals on the dangers of mosquito borne illness. They carefully explained the dangers of dengue fever to us, didn't even mention Chicken Gonya, and closed up and bombed our boat with 7 canisters of pesticides imported from the US aircraft industry for commercial planes. While the fog inside the boat kept our propane alarms ringing, we filled out additional health questionnaires for this new government ministry. They gave us a bill for $89 and told us we would have to come to their office in the morning to pay and fill out additional forms. They were very friendly and polite throughout the process. Soon another dingy arrived delivering four more government employees; Customs, Immigration, Health and BioSecurity. They didn't have copies of any of the paperwork we had sent in from Tonga. We provided them copies, and were given more paperwork to fill out and immigration cards for the crew. While filling out the cards and additional questionnaire, they were looking warily at the heavy fog inside our boat and discussing who was going to go inside and do the searching, ultimately deciding none of them were willing to do so. We finished up and were stamped into the country, and given our permission to enter for our records, however the customs gentlemen apologized that he didn't know we were coming and wasn't prepared to finish processing us in and calculating the duty on our alcohol stores or boat value, and I needed to report to his office in the morning to finish the process. I guess he and the biosecurity guy just came out to greet us on overtime. I duly reported to the Biosecurity office and paid our fee and filled out another form, and headed to customs. At customs it took about 90 minutes to fill out additional forms, and although they worked the numbers as much in our favor as they could, we ended up paying over $160 in duty, excise tax and VAT applied to the spirits, wine and beer we had on board, much of which I was now planning to consume as soon as I returned to the boat. As I stuffed the pile of official papers into my bag, he officially told me I was now cleared INTO the country and welcomed me...and he informed me that now in order to move the boat, I had to apply for a cruising permit, and return to his office tomorrow to start filling in the forms for customs clearance for iinter-island travel within Fiji. Picking my jaw up off the floor as I left, I headed over the the marina, where the manager faxed off to the central government, a request for a cruising permit to visit the other islands on my behalf. She informed me it would take a day, and I needed to prepare an itinerary after attending "Curly's Seminar" on cruising Fiji, and then return to customs with the two documents to start the process for the inter-island clearance for travel....I have no idea what to expect tomorrow, but I'm promised it will be easier. Again the people were all super friendly and helpful throughout the process.

So being an experienced World ARC sailor, I chalked it all up to the adventure cruising experience and decided to go diving with hammerhead sharks in the morning at one of the top dive sites in the world located right nearby... I'll deal with the rest of the paperwork later.


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