Day One: LAX to Nadi, Fiji

after driving down from oregon friday to get into my parents house at 2am on saturday, we started this day off with little sleep. not to mention we were ao excited because tonight we would be leaving for our big adventure. after a soccer game of courtney's, last bit of erands before our flight, a few games of laser tag for courtneys birthday, and family pictures for the christmas card, we were finally off to the airport. with our back packs packed packed to the brim and a surf board in tow, we were so excited to be on our way. we also lucked out to score the exit rows on the second floor. it seriously felt like we were in first class or something because we had our own flight attendants for about 40 people. the ten hour flight did not seem so bad. we arrived in to nadi (pronounced nandi), fiji at 5:30 am expecting to catch a flight at 8:30 am to auckland, but apparently the flight was going to be delayed untill later that day. so the airline put us up in a hotel for the day so we would not have to hang out at the airport. this turned out to be one of the nicest hotels in the city. we ate breakfast and with our new friend graham, decided we should head into town as to not waste a day in paradise. we caught a cab and went into the main drag. its a real touristy mile long strip with many souvenir shops and banks. we weren't going to buy anything because we were going to have several days here at the end of our trip.

Fijian sunrise from the plane

breakfast before we went into town. i was really tired.

from the main strip we wanted to go to the beach. we hoped on the local bus system which is different than what we have here. these buses are all open with as many peopple as they can fit in it. we sat on a row with 3 other people, so with the high humdity, it made for an interesting experience. the fijians are some of the nicest people. everyone was so talkative and interested in where we were going and if they could help. im sure they dont get very many foreigners hoping onto their buses with them. we got off and were told to walk 15 minutes down this street and we will come to the beach. this was a beautiful walk along a road that had only a few houses speckled along it. and these were no mansions. most of them looked to be about 750 square feet with steel paneling as walls. many had their cattle or sheep wandering right around their home.

Nadi, Fiji

once we got to the beach we were so hot from our walk that we couldnt wait to get in the water. after a photo shoot for the local newspaper about vacationers in fiji, we hoped in. the water here wasnt quite as refreshing as we had hoped. it felt like 80 degrees. soon we were back off to our hotel to see if any news about our flight had come in yet and to get some lunch paid for by the hotel. we hoped back on the bus which dropped us off about 5 minutes from our hotel. it wasnt untill we got back to the hotel that we realized how sunburned we were. we didnt put any sun block on that morning and had spent the entire day in the sun. two little lobsters is what we turned out to be. we ate some lunch and found out our flight was now scheduled for 10:00pm, so we had some time to rest befor heading back to the airport. our flight was again delayed a bit but by 11:20 we were finally in the air and happy to be back on our way.