Well here we finally are in Fiji! Last night it really looked like we might not make it. Tucson International was dead center beneath a really severe thunderstorm – the weather outside the windows looked like a hurricane with trees bent over in the wind, rain blasting horizontally to the ground, hail, lightning, thunder…and all the computers at the airport went down. Our Tucson to LA flight was delayed by at least an hour and a half and we really didn’t think we’d make the connection to Air Pacific. In LA we hired a taxi at the terminal to transfer us to the international terminal and raced to the ticket counter where an Air Pacific representative rushed us through and gave us an escort to jump to the front of the line to clear the security X-ray machines. We got to the gate just as the plane was boarding.
Much to our astonishment upon arriving in Fiji – our suitcases made it all the way as well.
We shared the emergency taxi ride at LA airport with another couple in the same predicament trying to catch the same flight to Fiji. The problem is that the flight only goes every other day so we would have had an enforced vacation in Southern California if we had missed our connection. The other couple had been visiting their kids in Tucson – but they were professional crew for a 57 foot sailboat that was berthed just three boats down from Raven in the same marina in Denarau! Small world.
The flight over was uneventful except for Air Pacific’s strange concept of cuisine – dinner was spinach lasagna and potato chips, with a KitKat for dessert.
We arrived at 5 a.m. in the dark, but Rod met us at the airport and we headed straight for Raven, unpacked, and then struck off on a 60 mile motorsail…no wind all day and flat calm water, grey skies. Fiji has had fabulous weather for the past six weeks while Raven has been waiting for us, but yesterday there was a big storm with wind and rain, and today was the aftermath.
We are heading towards Vanua Levu, the northernmost of the two main Fiji Islands. This is an area we didn’t see last summer and is supposed to be very beautiful with rain forest scenery and fabulous coral reef diving.
We anchored tonight off a little island and went for a snorkel. The water temperature is a comfortable 80 degrees. I haven’t been in the water since diving the Poor Knights in New Zealand last March when I about froze. This felt great and got us back into vacation mode for swimming, snorkeling and diving.