9.13 - Prep and Arrival

We began boarding @ 10:40 & left at midnight! Big plane, an Airbus 380. Lots of people! We had a bulkhead seat with plenty of leg room. Our seat mate was named Rachael…from Savu Savu who lives in Seattle. We had dinner & then tried to sleep…unfortunately, a little girl in the seat next to us kept waking up & screaming! Poor thing…sounded like night terrors. We still slept a little. Got thru the entry process easily…then a little problem…my debit card didn’t work I the ATM! ☹! We got our car ~7:00. Even tho we were tired, we decided to drive straight to our hotel. Rod did a great job navigating the Queen’s Road. We were very lucky arriving at The Beach House Resort on the Coral Coast southeast of Sigatoka…the person who was supposed to rent our room last night didn’t show up so our room was ready! This is a funky little resort, but really fun. We took showers, had a cup of tea, & hit the road back to Sigatoka to try to get $. The debit card still didn’t work! Finally went to a Western Union in town & exchanged $100 USD for ~FJD 230! Rod chatted up some men who told him where we could buy some internet. $9.00 for 7 days! Then we went into the market to find some curry. Everyone was very helpful. Rod is pulling out his Fijian & a man named John took us to a curry shop. We wandered thru the market a bit & went to John’s stall…but since we can’t get any cash, we didn’t buy anything from him. Rod also scoped out the yaqona. On the way back to the car, we stopped at a store for H2O & pop. Back at the Beach House we had our curry. Pretty spicy but good! Very filling too! Spent quite a bit of time trying to get someone to fix our debit card. No luck yet…we were able to get ahold of E thru Facebook, She may have to rescue us! Forgot to say we had Fiji Bitter with lunch. Sat outside by the beach. Sitting out here again with more beer! We also took a short walk on the beach this morning. We actually missed the 12th with the time change & crossing the international dateline!