Nuie At Last!!

Well we have finally arrived in Niue and we love it! It is a small island of approx. 1500 people self governing but under the auspices of New Zealand. We knew this before we arrived and fully expected to find NZ banks and ATM machines and no problem getting cash... Wrongo!! We have spent the last 2 days trying to get cash and in the meantime everyone in town has opened a tab for us... so No Problem... except our beer tab is getting dangerously close to cleaning out our bank accounts once we do get cash!! We are having to wire money from Canada via Western Express... as they only accept VISA in the bank and Bill's VISA card does not want to work despite numerous calls to VISA and they reassuring Bill that he should be able to get a much as he wants... nope... not happenin'! Oh well such is life when one visits small South Pacific islands!!

Anyway, we hope to be here until our money comes through which may take until October 2nd, 3rd or 4th when we will take off for teh northern islands of Tonga (Va'vau group) - until then we will continue to eat and drink our way through the town of Alofi on Niue building up our tabs as we go... what a great little island!!!

Here are two blog entries that we had written earlier and we were not able to get Sailmail working for the last 2 weeks (not sure why)... so we are sending this from NYC ( Niue Yacht Club not New York City!!) of which we are the 1501st members (most members have virtual membership and have nor never will come here!!). NYC has free wifi access albeit slow so again no photos! Oh well maybe in Tonga!!