Well, we’re here. Right now we are anchored off the Royal Suva Yacht Club in the city of Suva which is the largest population center in Fiji. Checking in here is an arduous process that took the better part of two days to get completed.
The Hurdle-thon
Day One
- Arrive around 0800 on Monday morning and contact Port Control and the Royal Suva Yacht Club to arrange clearances.
- RSYC calls back and tells us clearance will happen at 2:00 p.m. I’m sure happy at this point that we time our entrance to the harbor for right after all the offices open so we can clear early.
- Around 11:30 a.m a fellow from the Health Department comes out and does the health inspection.
- Nothing, until well after 3:00 when the clearance team shows up. Readers might recall we were trying to get here in working hours to avoid overtime charges…they all go home at 4:00 They cleared a boat that arrived hours after us before coming to our boat, but I guess they were in the area at 2:00.
- The gentlemen are very nice, but the process seems to take longer because we are pretty honest about what we have on board in terms of meats, alcohol, and other stores they are concerned about. It seems that simply saying “nope, no bacon and 6.75 liters of booze right here” would have sped up the process, but we don’t work that way. We’ve never thought it wise or respectful to play fast with the rules so we report what is really there.
- The customs officer determines we have a little too much booze and “seals” three unopened bottles of gin in a locker with official seals. The booze limit is 2.25L per person over the age of 17 – our motley collection of half finished bottles might add up to that but the new ones put it over. We are told we need to come in to Customs the next day and pay Duty on the three bottles since they couldn’t figure the Duty for us on the spot.
- Since we have no Fiji currency we are given invoices and told where to go to pay fees to Biosecurity and Health, and told we need to visit the Office of Tribal Chiefs to get a cruising permit and then come to Customs for an inward clearance.
Day two
We have a list of clearing tasks for Day Two, but Day Two is also Will’s eighteenth birthday so we have a few other things we need to accomplish. After a nice birthday breakfast, it was off to town for us and off to find eggs for the Birthday Cake crew.
Things to finish to get our clearance include:
- Get Fiji dollars. We need this just to be able to get a cab to town.
- Pay the Biosecurity Fees
- Pay the Health Fees
- Pay the Royal Suva Yacht Club fee for their part in the process
- Acquire a “Cruising Permit”
- Get an “Inward Clearance”, for which the Cruising Permit and all the receipts for the other fees must be presented.
- Pay the Duty on the gin.
Getting the money and the eggs was easy, there is an ATM a bit down the road from RSYC and an easy walk, followed shortly by a convenience store with eggs available. We got the cash, got the eggs, and split up with the women heading back to the boat and the men plunging forward into the bureaucratic abyss.
“Don’t even let anyone tell you that clearing into a new country is a glamorous process” – B.J. to Will
Our first stop, King’s Wharf – the main commercial shipping entry point for the entire country. Here we should be able to find Biosecurity (the people that worry about your incoming stores that are NOT booze or smokes) and Customs (the people that are concerned about your booze). We thought first to head to Biosecurity, so we stopped at the security checking and picked up a security officer who took us on a long walk through the port to the Biosecurity office.
Who were all at lunch, because it was 1:15 pm. Lunch is 1:00-2:00, silly me. So we walked all the way back through the port. None of our tasks would be doable now, so we stopped and picked up our local cell phone SIM cards and internet access, then walked back to the King’s Wharf. We paid Biosecurity, but realized that we had to finish everything else before seeing customs.
After asking directions we were told we’d need to take a cab to the I Taukei Affairs Board (TAB) at the Great Council of Chiefs building, but the Ministry of Health was “just up that way”. I’m not sure where he was pointing, because we couldn’t find it and eventually asked in another government building for directions. “Take a cab” apparently was the clearest direction we could get.
So we jumped in a cab, but had him take us to the Great Council of Chiefs, where the driver promptly dropped us at the wrong entrance of the wrong building. A little exploring and around the block and we found the right office. They were very quick at the TAB, and we had a completely incomprehensible letter in Fijian in our hands in about ten minutes. Back outside, and we were off in another cab to the Health Department.
Once again, after being dropped at the wrong door at the wrong building we found our way in. At this point I’m watching the clock, as it is around 3:00 and the government offices all close at 4:00 as we know. Upstairs to the Health Department and we meet the nice fellow who was first on our boat on Monday. He fills out some forms and hands me a bill for FJD $182.50. Now I am in this office because I didn’t have $FJD when I arrived the day before, I am supposed to be there solely to make this payment. I hand him $190 in Fijian currency and he disappears for about ten minutes. (Right now $1.00 USD is about $2.00 FJD)
Finally he comes back and is apologetic – nobody has any change in the office. We aren’t sure how to pay this. Briefly I debate just saying “keep the change” and internally contemplate the wisdom of expecting cash payment on an odd amount like $182.50 without keeping cash on had to make change. Why not just make the fee $180, or $185 or $190? Will and I decide to run to a small market and get a bottle of water or something to break the $10 bill he handed me back. Of course the odd little market doesn’t actually have any chilled drinks anywhere except for some off looking protein things so we grabbed a pack of gum ($1.50) and rush back with out $2.50 in coins. Done!
Then it’s another cab and back to King’s Wharf for our third visit. The security guys and I are practically exchanging Christmas cards and family pictures by this point as we’ve been hanging around there so much. The Customs office is at the end of a twisting walk through some dead machinery, a bunch of dusty cars that are probably stuck in paperwork limbo, then up a flight of stairs. We are dropped in Customs, tell someone our problem then are whisked through a “Staff Only” door by some of the nice fellows who came to the boat Monday.
This is getting close to the end of the day now, around 3:45 and the place is emptying fast. As I sit down there are two people helping me, they ask for all the requisite paperwork which I give them and ask me a few confusing questions. Like “When are you leaving Suva?” “I don’t know, I just got here” I reply. Confusion ensues…I’m trying to get an “Inward Clearance” and you have to have a date you plan to leave Suva for the computer. “What islands are you planning to visit?” “I don’t know” I reply, thinking to myself that there are 322 of them in this country and we really haven’t fixed our agenda quite yet.
As it turns out, as is usually the case the computer systems are geared towards large commercial ships and we small pleasure cruisers are sort of shoe-horned in to the same boxes with more nebulous and dubious answers to questions that don’t mean so much for us.
At some point the gentleman asks me if this is my first time in Fiji, and how did I like the country. I had to laugh as I told him that we hadn’t gotten cleared until yesterday late and had spent all of today running around to government offices, but the government offices seemed quite nice.
Sealed cabinet with three captive bottles of gin. We may not open this cabinet until we leave Fiji. Seriously.
All is proceeding nicely and we’re about done. As they are wrestling with a recalcitrant printer I mention “and we’re supposed to pay the Duty on three bottles of gin, too.” They stuck the three bottles of gin in a cabinet and put stickers on the door.
This seems to catch them off guard, apparently the “Sealing of the Gin” did not make it to the record about us because no one has a clue. They start asking about the size of the bottle, how much there is, the percentage alcohol, how much I paid for it ($33 NZD each) – I’m reasonably certain the nice woman doing this was a little fuzzy on what “Gin” actually is. Eventually I do point out that the fellow that actually sealed up the closet showed me in here and left about 15 minutes ago, so they call him and start filling out forms.
Eventually the customs woman starts making a sort of “not good” face. “How much” I ask? Apparently the normal import duty is around 15% plus some other charge of around 5%. But there is also a FJD $60 per liter surcharge on dutied liquor. So to get my gin admitted into Fiji was going to cost something like FJD $220+ which is more than the gin cost in the first place. Arggh, should have gone for the Bombay Sapphire instead of the no-name rotgut.
I ask if they are going to take the gin if I don’t pay. “That’s an option, or you could seal it.” “It IS sealed,” I explain. But it was sealed in a closet quickly with the expectation that we’d free it the next day – there is stuff we will need in that closet and we can’t leave it closed for the next three months!
After some discussion the realize I am asking if they can re-seal it someplace else so we can pick a spot we can close of more carefully, as I’m just not interested in throwing that much money away on duties for gin I might not even drink while here. After all, we have learned that the tropics are NOT ideal martini conditions as the glass and drink tend to warm up too quickly at these climes anyway – though I do not offer this technical explanation on why, in general, rum drinks with ice are better in the tropics.
“Sure, we can do that. The fellow can meet you at the Royal Suva Yacht Club right now.” Oops, so much for the trip to the market and the rest of my errands. We race through the port and grab a taxi and head to the RSYC. No customs guy…so we call Evenstar and alert them to what is happening. After a few more minutes with no Customs guy I call back – he went straight to the boat and was re-sealing the closet as we spoke.
Done!
The Payoff
At the end of the day though, we got it sorted and are now free to move about the country as we please. Danielle and Kathy joined Will and me at the RSYC, where we hoisted a cold one for Will’s 18th birthday (18 is the drinking age in most countries outside the U.S.) and enjoyed an excellent dinner at the adjacent restaurant.
We have a few more things to settle then we hope to see some of the outlying areas as we move the boat around Suva to Denerau Marina on the West side of Viti Levu. We are planning to spend about three weeks in the U.S. in June so we will be securing the boat at a marina while we are gone. But we have another week or two to finish the school year and maybe see a little of the country.
At one point during this Will asked me if it was worse than Panama for clearing in. Panama was annoying because we shot ourselves in the foot and made mistakes – it was expensive but we could have had it easy if just I’d called my agent before I called my mother to tell her we were safe. Here in Fiji I do not think there was a way to get all the clearances done in a single day without running all over Suva. Even if we had Fijian cash on hand and hadn’t had any booze problems we still would have had to go to the TAB for the Cruising Permit and back to Customs for the Inward Clearance. Cost-wise the various fees added up to around $165 USD, which is less than Panama by a fair amount, but even with everyone speaking English here I think I have to give Fiji a slight nod for biggest nuisance process to date.
