Day 34 and 35 - last day in San Francisco and away to Nadi Airport, Fiji

Usual last-minute packing frenzy and wondering how we ever fitted everything in. Then a lovely lazy day at the Golden Gate Park, handily bordering the Pacific for me finally to catch that toe-in-the-Pacific-brrrr moment  

And, just like that, our month on the Pacific coast was over (clear highlights included Crater Lake and the majestic Columbia gorge, pretty Astoria and certainly the innumerable quirky small towns and interesting people; a very few predictable low-lights : miserable weather meaning not a sniff of an orca in the San Juan Islands and the shutdown closures cramping our style in the Olympic National Parks.  Overall, hugely enjoyable : relaxing, funny, beautiful, sometimes unexpected and rather peculiar, sometimes unexpected and quite marvellous)

So onward and upwards - and some real shenanigans getting to Fiji.  You'll remember that we were scheduled to fly from SF to Auckland, wait a bit and change to another plane to come from Auckland to Fiji?  When we checked in at SF, they told us that the crew apparently was going to go over their legal time limit and so the plane to Auckland was going to touch down in Nadi airport to pick up some new crew.  So - did we want to get off there?  Er, yes of course, please, we chorused - provided that our bags make it there too.  Yes, you've guessed the rest of the story, except that it did eventually have a happy ending despite there being a full jumbo's-worth of luggage to search.  Just as we were completing the AWOL-luggage form and handing out the Fiji address to which to send the bags when they eventually made it back from Auckland, the ground-crew reported that someone had finally consulted the captain and he'd evidently remembered his post-Lockerbie aeronautic law and the thou-shalt-not-knowingly-take-bags-without-passengers rule and announced that they were going to root around in the hold after all. And ta-daa! - out came our stuff.  Because we had landed before the first departure of the bus from Nadi airport to Suva (where Duncan's cousin Sheila lives), we were, in any event, hanging around, so it proved to be smiles all round (though a reminder of why we usually have only hand luggage!!)  

When we arrived at 3am, as you'd expect, we were the only souls there so, once we'd been escorted through immigration and into arrivals, it was just us and the echo of the gentle snores of the airport security guard until Friday morning life restarted.