We're on the road again.

Had we realised it was the Easter weekend we would have stayed at Andy and Sally's until the Easter holiday was over, but as there was nothing we could do about it we were forced to travel on Good Friday. Sometimes when you plan six months in advance you miss the really easy things.
After a quiet breakfast Philip and Sally drove us to the airport and we ar Ives in plenty of time, I have to say I have never seen Gisborne airport so busy, a plane. Full of people were waiting to get away for Easter, and two plane loads were waiting for relatives to arrive for Easter.
The plane was a few minutes late but we were ready, Andy joined us at the airport but as were delayed by ten to fifteen minutes said he had to make his farewells and go back to work. I think he was fighting back the tears. Eventually our flight was called, you could write,the flight was called ,because it was the only one. Then there were tears from Rosemarie and Sally and we all knew something very special had come to an end.
The flight to Auckland was smooth and we were a little late but as we had thre hours to waste it was no problem to us. The nice people at Gisborne had put our bags through to Fiji so we didn't have to collect them and we strolled from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.
In the terminal the expedition planner and chef do combat decided to take on the whole Fijian rugby team who were jumping the queue, despite giving away. About two and a half feet in height and several stone in weight she expressed her anger in no uncertain terms and jumped in ahead of quite a large chp, well he certainly towered over me. She was helped in her battle by the check in desk assistant who was desperately trying to get the rugby team into the right line but who was failing gloriously. I think Rosemarie should have been put in charge of queue formation at Auckland airport there is a definite vacancy there and she seems to have all the necessary skills and aptitude for the job.
The flight to Nadi was very bumpy and we were served a chicken sandwich for lunch. I have never tasted anything quite like it, it was however helped down with a very strong gin and tonic. Perhaps the cabin crew had been warned not to upset the expedition manager.
Our arrival at Nadi airport went smoothly and everything was going fine until Rosemarie went off to get a Fijian SIM card. The problem here was that we wanted the the travel company to rearrange our transfer back to the hotel from the first of April to the twelfth of April. This didn't seem to go down very well but part of it appeared to be our complete inability to get our argument across. Eventually after several minutes discussion the light bulb went on in the tour operatives head and she said she would send an e mail to the relevant person.
We were then introduced to our driver, Andy, and we loaded our bags into the back of  a minibus and set off. Andy was a cheerful soul full of conversation and with a pleasant wave or a honk of the horn to everybody and every thing. He insisted in shouting"Bula" to every  horse, dog or cow that crossed our path. He did tell us that his house had been destroyed in the cyclone that had hit Fini in January and that he and his family were living in a tent. Two hours later we arrived at our hotel. For the first hour we were able to see something of Fiji, which is very green and obviously very poor but the second hour was in darkness.

By this time we were very tired. The expedition manager was not ina particularly good mood at this point, and our registration proved to be a bit traumatic, the original four day say was found easily enough but our booking through a web based company could not at first be found. We drew up outr trusty iPad and showed the email to her and using the reference number she found the booking, the receptionist, then demanded, stupidly I thought that we print off the page and give it to her. This did not go down well with mission control, I was suddenly faced with a complete diplomatic incident. We were asked to log on at a terminal in reception and forward the emai to the receptionist, what is it about tiredness that makes you lose all of your marbles. First of we couldn't find the email and then once we had it on the screen we could've work out how to forward it. This was duly achieved but only with a modicum of good grace from the expedition manager, who kept telling me  over ahow

Stupid the receptionist was