David returns half-way from the dead and we spend most of the morning making arrangements for going to Suva, the capitol of Fiji located about a four-hour drive from Nadi around the southern coast of Viti Levu. Wayne, Myra and Cynthia pick the car to rent, the company to rent it from, arrange to have the car brought to us, determine the best route to take (there’s only one paved road so …), and identify places to stop and site-see along the way.

After Wayne and David are picked up by the Eurocar guy who drives them to the airport where they must present their licenses and pay for the car — Wayne weaving adroitly through several schemes by the Eurocar counterman to extract more money than initially agreed — they drive back to pick up the waiting women and we all drive to a Hindu temple, Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami, which is incredibly colorful and almost totally under large plastic wraps to protect the repainting and reconstruction being done.

Myra and Cynthia both wear long pants to the temple, knowing how it will proscribe a strict dress code, but they are told they may not wear long pants and must use the temple’s dhotis. We walk around it a bit — but not as many times as the sulu-wearing, bare-chested octogenarian who circles the temple on the fourfold path for the entire time we’re there — and get back in the car, trying to decide where to go for dinner. We drive around Nadi, seeing all the scenic one-way streets that Cynthia’s iPhone wants us to go down the wrong way, but cannot find any of the restaurants at the top of our list. So …

We drive out of the city and wind around several roads in the dark before we finally slot into a parking space by an Indian restaurant that has a menu several pages long. When Wayne orders the 100-gram lobster dish, he’s told the place only has a kilo-sized crustacean. Wayne and David want Fiji Premium beer, but the place has only one bottle. Cynthia wants a Villa Maria sauvignon blanc, but the joint’s out of that. This pattern continues but we manage to select a few dishes and have a meal while a Fijian soloist sings a mix of 70’s tunes.

Another day of veiled delights in Paradise.