Flying to Fiji.

I’m embarking on my dream trip. Well, one of my dream trips, anyway. Two of the first movies I ever saw were Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Jacques Cousteau’s The Living Sea. Many exteriors for 20,000 Leagues were filmed in Papua New Guinea, and I fell in love with the landscape. The idea of discovering a whole new world under the ocean excited me as well. And the shots of Cousteau and his crew gliding effortlessly through that world seemed to like the closest I would ever get to being able to fly, another dream of mine.

 I grew up at the beach. I was learning to swim in the ocean before I was five. So jumping into salt water is like going home for me. At 16, I bought a scuba tank and regulator with money I saved from my evening job at Chicken Delight. I took a scuba course at the local community college, and started diving. 

 

There was no such thing as certification in those days (1965) and BCDs (Buoyancy Control Devices) hadn't been invented. I  learned to control my buoyancy by regulating my breath and dove happily by myself, but I always had a problem equalizing the pressure in my ears. That and the dearth of great diving sites in Southern California meant that I got burned out on diving after a few months, sold my gear, and went on with my life.

 

But the vision of those South Pacific beaches still called me.

 

When I turned 40, I set a goal of learning to fly and returning to the undersea world. I soloed in sailplanes, skydived, and got scuba-certified in Monterey, California. The water in Monterey was cold and murky, but we had a trip planned to St. Martin in the Caribbean, so it was worth the effort.

 

My first dive in warm, clear waters was a revelation. The sea life, the coral, the colors this was what I’d always dreamed of. I was hooked. I dove in a few places in the Caribbean and resolved never to dive in cold water again.

 

I finally got a chance to dive the South Pacific when we visited Bali. I quickly realized that, for me, Pacific diving was superior to diving the Caribbean. The stunning richness of the corals, the amazing abundance of colorful fish, the warm embrace of the tropical waters filled me with joy.

 

I made trips to Palau and Truk Lagoon, but I still wanted to explore the vast island archipelagos of the South Pacific: the Coral Sea, New Guinea, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, the Marshalls, the Solomons, and all of Micronesia.

 

My wife, Ophelia, doesn’t dive. She can swim, but is not made happy by it. Gets bored rather quickly at the beach. She has gamely accompanied my on some of my dive adventures, bravely leaping from the boat into choppy waters in Belize to snorkel while I dived. She even struggled into a dry suit to snorkel in the frigid water of Iceland.

 

So a long journey through the islands of the South Pacific was not high on her list of dream vacations. It came to pass that she was occupied this spring with a class that would keep her from traveling until at least August. I saw that as an opportunity to take my dream vacation for about half the price it would be if we both went. 

 

So here I am. In Fiji. The first stop on a two-month journey that will take me to Guadalcanal in the Solomons, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia.

 

The journey hasn’t all gone smoothly. In late February, Winston, one of the most intense Category 5 cyclones ever recorded, hit Fiji, devastating the island of Taveuni, where I had booked most of my time in Fiji. I was assured that all was well or would be by the time I got there in early April, so I went ahead with my plans.

 

Getting from Boise to Fiji is a circuitous proposition. I flew to Portland first, then on to LA where I had a four-hour layover before my flight to Nadi, the capital of Fiji. The flight was listed on the board as leaving at 11:30 pm, but no gate had been assigned. As the evening wore on, I kept checking the board: still no gate. Finally, I went to find someone who could tell me what was going on. After twenty minutes of searching, I got my answer: “Oh, that flight’s been canceled until tomorrow. There’s a big storm in Fiji. You have to go back out of security and rebook.”

 

No message from the airline, and the board still said leaving 11:30. Back out through security, grimacing at the huge line waiting for TSA. Nobody at the Fiji Airways desk. I was finally able to track someone down who could book me on the flight now leaving at 7:00 am. Now I’m ready to face the line at the security checkpoint. Again.

 

I have TSA PreCheck, but there was no line for that, so I got ready for a long wait. I had the idea of showing my Global Entry card to one of the attendants, and she put me in the first-class line, which whisked me through with a minimum of fuss.

 

So now I had only eight hours to kill before my flight. I hadn’t been able to sleep more than an hour or two the previous night, and I knew I wasn’t going to get much more than a catnap on the 11-hour flight, so I found a comfortable chair with an electrical socket nearby and settled down with the internet.

 

All the shops in the airport closed at 12:30, and the only signs of life were a few people lying on the chairs trying to sleep, or wandering the vast halls like doomed souls pulling their sins behind them in a carry-on bag, glazing vacantly at the riches of Prada, Petrossian, and Duty-Free, barred from access forever, or at least until 10 am.

 

The flight really did leave at 7:00 am, and was fairly uneventful. It was only about half-full, so I was able stretch out a catnap for a bit.

Fiji at last. Only seven-and-a-half hours late. 

 

We’d heard that Nadi town had been flooded, but by the time we arrived, the storm had blown over.

 I arrived at Bamboo Backpackers Hostel weary, but elated to be there. It was a funky, friendly place right on the beach. I had a beer, a piña colada, a delicious plate of curried chicken, a stroll on the beach to watch the sunset, threw myself in bed around 8:00 pm, and slept for a sweet eleven hours.

 

P.