I’m not kidding you. The air really is sweet in Lautoka, every breath fills your lungs with the soft brown Demerara scent of sugar, giving you a sense of everything being slightly sticky… The sugar processing plant is here, and most of the plantations are in the West. Most of the time a plume of smoke hangs over the factory, you have to walk past it to get to town, and a light covering of ash falls on the deck when you’re at anchor and hangs suspended in the water, like dull glitter, whenever the wind blows from the shore. There’s a steady stream of lorries looking like hedgehogs with spiky sugar cane in a heap on the back, and long trains of cane go along the rails on the side of the streets at a walking pace. It feels like things haven’t changed for hundreds of years, like you’re walking in a history of the Caribbean. 

Lautoka is a bustling city, crammed full of stores. It had a rather more Indian feel to it than Suva, and seemed more spread out but is a great place to provision. So as well as visiting immigration to sign Jon off the boat, provision we did. Even more food - mostly for trading, second hand clothes from the Chinese shops, wood glue and sandpaper for the carvers from the hardware store. Lochmarin is full!