Namaka

So last night we struggled to get our clothes dry. This morning we had a little bit of time to get them properly dry, and the sun was there to help. Nevertheless, we had to really leave 10:30 the latest, to get fuel and to deliver the car. So it felt like a race against time. But the sun did its job and despite all pessimism dried it all just on time.

The flight went well, Machiel's ears were OK so it seems the efforts taken for that in New Zealand paid off. But time will tell. We landed in Fiji! "Bula!" is what everyone likes saying to greet you. So that's a new word learned. The first thing we noticed was the warmth and humidity. How were we going to get used to this? This nice feeling of every single part of your body becoming sticky...

While on the plane we had to fill in two forms this time: one for bio security, and one for corona. We still had some leftover nuts and cookies with us, that in New Zealand or Chile would properly not have been allowed in, but here the check was incredibly relaxed and we were allowed to take it all as long as we "declared it". Not sure if that's how bio security works, but OK.

In the arrival hall, we got some cash from the ATM, and exchanged our booking confirmation for proper vouchers for the boats we had booked. After a long wait for our shuttle bus to arrive, we were driven to our hostel. Except the formula works a bit differently here, because it's more like you have a dozen or so hostels all owned by 1 organisation, with one reception and restaurant where everyone who stays at any of these hostels will end up having to go to. We eventually figured it out and made it to our nicely air conditioned dorm room. Not too bad. But we were still missing dinner. So we had to go back out into the hotness. Back at the restaurant we ordered a pizza and fries. The very long wait for those was made more interesting by the Dutch couple we had met in the shuttle. We could share some nice sandfly traumas and got to know that corona will make them get stranded in Hongkong Airport for 3 days.

Eventually we were fed well, packed our bags or better the bag-we-will-store-here-until-we-return-in-6-days for the following morning (we really didn't intend to take all our camping gear on the 2 islands we were going to stay on) and went to bed again.Read more