Sunday, 10 February 2013

We’re back! Our final post…


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!

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