As always, the last day of vacation arrived too soon! We have had such a great time in the South Pacific, that today arrived with sadness - not only because we are sad to leave, but we kind of dread the 34 hour door-to-door return journey (if all goes on time), and we both have to launch into crazy work weeks as soon as we land in Nova Scotia.
In any case, we had planned an early rise and some last resort activities before our 11:30AM checkout. But when we threw open the curtains, the rain was POURING out of the morning sky. Still, we were at breakfast shortly after it opened at 7AM, followed by a last resort walk, logging 2KM under an umbrella. The skies dried up sufficiently to enable us to spend the last bit of our morning by the pool.
We checked out right at 11:30AM, squeezing every last drop out of our stay. Port Vila doesn't have a lot of sights, and even less since the December earthquake damaged or closed the entire downtown core, but we took in any of the sights we could. We made it to the airport by 1:30PM, waited an hour for the airport's computers to come back on line so that we could check in, and finally got through customs and security for a rest in the airport's (terrible) business lounge before boarding our flight, which left 10 minutes early.
We had enough time in Fiji to get a bite to eat and showers in the Fiji Airways Lounge, before starting the 10-hour flight back to LAX.
Now get this: the weirdest part of the trip! We left Port Vila at 4:30PM local time Sunday afternoon. We arrived in Los Angeles 14½ hours later, and it only 1PM LA time! So that means that, despite 14½ hours of flying, it was earlier in LA than when we had lifted off from Vanuatu. Oh, that International Date Line can twist a person's brain into a pretzel.
In any case, we had a five-hour layover at LAX, gnashing our teeth through the whole stay, in anger at America and Trump and wishing we didn't have to touch American soil for the trip home. The Westjet flight was 45-minutes late, making our connection in Calgary tight, but we still made it without difficulty. The Calgary-Halifax flight was smooth and enjoyable, and we got an hour of sleep, before pulling into the Halifax gate exactly on time at 7:30AM. By 8:20AM, I had dropped Pam at her school for her to teach her classes.
And just like that, our vacation was over and reality set in.
Thank you for joining our South Pacific journey! We hope you enjoyed Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu and learned a little about it.
Early Morning Moray Eel Spotting!
Just off the beach by the resort we spotted a moray eel. It cautiously peered out from along the rocks, and when it found his prey, it darted out and went in for the kill. We never did see the dreaded banded sea krait (sea snake), but this moray eel was pretty close.
Schools of fish, just off the resort beach.
Our room was in this building.
This currency exchange notice at the hotel desk shows the countries that visit Vanuatu the most, listed in descending order based, on the greatest number of visitors.
Scenes from Port Vila, the capital
People were dressed in their best Sunday clothes for
Church. Services were just getting out as we were leaving the hotel.
Port Vila monument.
The Vanuatu Parliament.
Statue in front of the Parliament.
Unfortunately, the National Museum of Vanuatu was closed today. In fact, almost everything was closed! The country truly recognizes. Sunday as a day of rest.
The medium security prison in Port Vila. Not a pleasant place, I am sure.
Port Vila’s harbour. We were originally booked to stay at a resort on the island shown below, which is in the middle of the harbour. But we decided against it for a few reasons. In the end, we were extremely happy with our choice of accommodation.
Waterfront park in Port Vila
The harbour waters were amazingly clear. While we saw many, many starfish on our trip, this was the only blue one we saw.
It’s not often you see homage paid to a Russian explorer. However, this is a Russian explorer who arrived in Vanuatu in 1809.
Examples of damage from December 17th’s 7.2 earthquake in Port Vila, which claimed 50 lives
This building didn’t collapse, but it was destabilized by the earthquake and cannot be occupied.
Demolition crew were taking down this damaged office building in the centre of Port Vila today.
The market in the center of Port Vila is now unstable and has been closed.
Noticed the Christmas decorations in the window of this cell phone store, left exactly as it was at the moment of the earthquake on December 17.
A lot of buildings may look OK, but they have been destabilized by the earthquake and are closed. The economic impact is terrible.
A gas station, which looks perfectly fine upon first glance, however, the canopy over the gas pumps is tilted.
The lower floors of this building pancaked.
We went into the business lounge at Port Vila Airport. It was the most scant business lounge I’ve ever seen.
We have really come to enjoy Fiji Airways’ service
and aircraft. Here is the very new ATR–72–600, which took us back to Nadi. It departed and arrived 10 minutes early
The Vanuatuan islands off the northeast and north coasts of Efate.
On all its intra-South Pacific flights, Fiji Airways serves this delicious chicken salad box.
These are the two meals we received on the flight from Nadi to Los Angeles: chicken puff pastry for dinner, and scrambled eggs for breakfast.
As we were seated in the middle section of the plane, away from the windows, it was very cool to be able to use the airplane’s undercarriage camera to view our descent into Los Angeles. After flying over the Pacific for 10 hours, it is a real comfort to sea land!
Metropolis Los Angeles goes on and on and on.
Landing gear down on final approach to LAX.
Here is our landing on LAX Runway 25, as seen from the aircraft’s camera:
The Fiji Airways Airbus A350 is a marvel of 21st century aviation engineering.
This is the last time we’ll see such a welcome
sign for many many years. We won’t be transiting through the USA or visiting here until the current regime comes to an end and democracy returns to the United States of America.
LAX’s iconic 1960s control tower is now almost a novel museum piece on the LAX property.
Our flight path out of LAX took us directly over Malibu, which was devastated by the January fires. Pacific
palisades, also devastated, was a little to the east of our flight path.
That is Santa Monica, with its famous pier protruding. We were on that pier at the beginning of our around the world trip, in February 2024.
Malibu is directly beneath us. From media reports, one might have gotten the impression that all of Malibu had burned to the ground. But that is not the case.
The snow capped peaks west of Los Angeles
A wonderful WestJet dinner from LA to
Calgary…
… was followed by a great breakfast to end our vacation, on the WestJet flight from Calgary to Halifax. The same WestJet aircraft took us from LA to Calgary and, after we cleared customs there, onto Halifax.
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