OAHU

6TH - 10TH JUNE

We took off from Fiji at 11.59 p.m. on the 6th and were due to arrive in Honolulu at 10.35 a.m. on the 6th! This was a very confusing day in terms of time. Neither of us had ever crossed the international date line and it’s nothing really to write home about, other than having a 44 hour day and your time becoming a day behind, which is a little bit odd! Our time now will be behind that of the UK, so off into minus time we go. We had a short diversion via Christmas Island, which came as a surprise to us! Neither of us knew that the flight stopped here, but we weren’t even allowed out of the plane so its not like we can really say much about the place, although it did look wicked from the air! The airport terminal resembled a large shed and we didn’t really feel we were missing much by not being allowed off the plane! The oncoming passengers all seemed to be carrying very large fishing poles and looked very hunter/fishing sorts so not really our cup of tea! After about an
hour, we were up and away again and now really starting to look forward to touching down in Honolulu as we were very tired and ready to get off our small plane!

We arrived on time and headed for immigration. We had heard so many nightmare stories about American immigration that we weren’t particularly looking forward to it, or the usual 2 hour wait! Thankfully our wait was something along the lines of 10 minutes maximum, which was a great relief as we were feeling a little jaded by this point. It had been a long day and we were now living it again! Our customs man was a friendly chap but his jaw nearly hit the floor when we said we were visiting on a normal tourist visa for 4 ½ months and not intending to work! He didn’t really check up on anything we told him as I think our visa covered us, but neither of us really thought we’d get through quite so easily. He stamped our passports for a six