35,000 Feet Above The Pacific Ocean

I’m writing this in route from Port Villa, Vanuatu to Honoria, Solomon Islands….

I had an interesting experience at the Port Villa airport. When the flight with my plane to Honiara landed, there were a bunch of police and TV cameras waiting. I didn’t know what was going on. I assume it was a politician or a celebrity which was arriving. The flight had come in from Fiji.

After everyone got off the plane, a man exited and was thrown to the ground by the police after he got down the stairs. Turns out he was a counterfeiter from Fiji who had been coming to Vanuatu to make fake notes. The police made a big show of it for the cameras (some things are the same everywhere I guess) and put him and two accomplices who were arrested waiting for him in a cage in the back of a pick-up truck and drove off.

Frankly, it was the most entertaining excuse I’ve had for a flight to be late.

I was worried about my flight to Honiara. When I got my tickets for this part of my flight in Apia, the flight from Vila to Honiara was full. I was put on a wait list and decided not to get any tickets beyond Honiara if I wasn’t sure I could get on the flight. I figured it was a small plane because the Vila to Honiara route couldn’t possibly be that big.

Well….the flight was 50% empty. It was a Pacific Air 737. Why in the hell they had this marked as full was beyond me. Yet another story to throw on the pile in my Pacific travels. I had I been guaranteed a seat on this flight, I would have taken care of my flights beyond Honiara sooner. Now I have to cross my fingers and hope I can get a ticket there an back to Rennell Island, my objective here in the Solomons. I really don’t want this to be another Vanuatu. I also have to book my flights to Tarawa and back to Fiji. From Fiji I’ll take a brief weekend to Tuvalu, then to Hawaii

I’ll stay a bit in Hawaii so I can send mail out and finish up the video that I keep talking about but never showing (I think you’ll find it worth the wait). Then I finish up the Pacific in August in Guam, Palau, the Northern Marinas, Micronesia and the Marshalls.

Then…..JAPAN!! I look forward bullet trains and not being trapped in one small spot for a week at a time…..and quality internet.

Your things to see/do in Japan suggestions will be welcome. The help I got from everyone in New Zealand was really appreciated. I got to see most of the things that were suggested.

1 thought on “35,000 Feet Above The Pacific Ocean”

  1. Ah – the wonders of co-badged flights. Some of flights have been shared amongst airlines. They get two flight numbers, eg. an Solomon airlines one and a Qantas one. If you look in the airport, you sometimes see both displayed on the schedule boards. Often they just split the seats between the two and sell them separately, so one flight can be full but you can book on the other (sometimes at a different price) but still fly the same plane.

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