Travel to Fiji - 39 hours

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The dreaded 3-flight haul for us to make our way from England to Fiji turned out to not be too bad after all with a couple of exceptions. After some ticket drama at Heathrow and 12 hours crossing the Atlantic we arrived at LAX to see a US border official interrogate a woman after she had acquired a luggage trolley somehow, the worst crime of all apparently. Following this we dropped our bags off in an 'interesting' location.

We learnt two things about America(ns) pretty quickly. As LAX has 8 domestic terminals and only one international terminal a lot of them obviously don't travel outside the country much. Also, the 'bigger means better' mantra attached to them must also be true after seeing numerous objects larger than they're usually seen, the main one being an 8-finger KitKat.

After some more ticket drama we boarded the flight to Auckland. Once in my seat I befriended the Kiwi sat next to me with an impressive moustache. We got acquainted and he told me that he ran a safari park an hour south of Lake Taupo. I told him about our trip and he said that by the time we arrived in Fiji my backside would look like a pancake. After taking this funny yet vital information on board, I watched a film or two and fell asleep and before I knew it we had arrived in Auckland.

To our delight, we had 9 hours to kill here but this period was made to feel longer as there were only a handful of shops all selling the same thing. We managed to pass the time with two trips to Burger King, looking at cigars we couldn't afford, and an incident with an Ipad I'd rather forget.

We then got on our plane to Nadi. Luckily, I had the honour of sitting next to an old woman whose grating voice would be on full volume for the next 3 and a half hours. Luckily the inflight entertainment volume was equally as loud allowing Denzel Washington in 'Unstoppable' to out-shout her.

Once we arrived in Fiji the heat instantly hit us. In my stubbornness I decided to stick with the decision to wear my hoody despite the 30 degree heat. Dave was truly suffering as he was sporting a t-shirt on top of a long sleeve top, trousers and walking shoes.

We made our way to the free airport shuttle after a friendly welcome, which was going to take us to our hostel, and met the other three people joining us; an English woman, a German woman (who looked like Dr Allison Cameron from House) and a Dutchman. Now the trip truly felt like it was beginning...........

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