We ended up spending 10 days in Graciosa awaiting the next weather window to get to Vanuatu. We anchored off a lovely village which has an Anglican run school for vocational training. They own a log mill which has been moved from the village to another location. An official came to visit us from Lata, the main town. We had checked out from Honiara several weeks before that but he gave us no problem, even offered us a ride to Lata in the banana boat so we could purchase some fuel. As bad luck would have it, the bank had a problem with giving out money due to some possible corruption so we could not get cash and only had enough to get 3 jerry jugs of fuel. Once we got back to the boat we were pinned in by the high winds. No one was traveling much back and forth to Lata, which was only 2 miles away. The seas were directly into the landing area in Lata and were pretty formidable. We decided not to attempt it in our dinghy.
In the meantime we made some friends in the village. Leonard, a teacher, visited us and took us around the area. Kids came out almost daily to trade fruits and veggies for school books and other items. One man, Charles, came by often with bags of fruit. He wanted a variety of things, but mostly wanted DVDs which we had plenty of.
My favorite kid was Moses, a little albino boy you just had to love. He was severely sunburned and not very protected so we gave him a hat and he was our very good friend after that. He would find us anytime we went ashore and was such a sweet kid. One day I told him to go fetch 3 of his friends and we would show a movie.
There was a beautiful natural fresh water spring pool just across from where we were anchored. We could get buckets of water and do our laundry there as well as get a nice fresh bath. Heaven!!
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