We left our resort at midday on 2nd February, and
boarded a local bus, a Chinese made bus with three seats in one row and two in
another so it was a very tight squeeze; especially seeing how Fijians can be
quite large. I was sat next to a 20 stone man and his only slighter slimmer
wife meaning I was left less than half a seat and Nicola fared little better in
the row behind me. It was a horribly long two and a half hour drive to the airport
and we were both relieved to get off the bus and stretch our legs, not to
mention being able to breath out again!
We had a bit of a drama at the airport, we tried to check in
to our flight but we were told that we could not board as we didn’t have a VISA
for the US. STA Travel booked the flights for us and as we were only in LA for
a few hours whilst waiting for our connecting flight we didn’t realise, and
were not informed by STA, that we would need a VISA. 30 minutes later, after a
quick rush to log on to the airport WIFI and apply for a VISA on the ESTA
website, we were allowed to board. We did panic a little, well more than a
little, as we were down to our last $50 USD and would not have had enough money
to book another night in Fiji and buy two more flights back to the UK.
Our flight to LA went okay, the plane (Air Pacific) was
unchanged from the 1980’s and the entertainment was pretty awful but other than
that it was okay, well about as okay as a ten hour flight can be. We left Fiji
at 22:00 on 2 February but due to the time difference between Fiji and LA (LA
is 20 hours behind) we landed at LAX at around 11:00 on 2 February – crazy. We
landed in LA and were surprised by how long the immigration process was, and
were more surprised that we had to collect our bags and re-check in for our
connecting flight.
LAX was surprisingly poor, very few shops and a lot of
construction going on; not much by comparison to Heathrow. After a nine hour
wait we boarded our flight back to the UK.
After a comfortable flight with Virgin Atlantic (where I stayed
up and watched three films and a documentary – Nicola had a short nap but
otherwise stayed awake for the duration) we landed at Heathrow at 15:55 on 3
February, and with our landing, spelled the end of our travels. We were greeted
at Heathrow by two welcome faces, Nicola’s dad and brother.
After five months, three continents and a whole number of
time zones, our travels were over. We’ve had a wonderful time, seen some
amazing sights and had the experience of a lifetime. Our itchy feet have been
soothed for now, and for the foreseeable future at least our fate lies in the
UK. The grass is not always greener, especially so if you come from Wales. So
we sign off from our blog, there’ll be no more posts from us but we thank
everyone who has read our blog and followed our adventures; we never thought
that we’d have over 5000 views when we started writing this blog! Back to
normality, back to job hunting and back to coats and trousers…but we wouldn’t have
it any other way!