7.45-8.15 AM, the kitchen of our Airbnb homestay, Suva

We spent three days in Suva, trying to find information on the ferry connection from Fiji to Funafuti in Tuvalu.

The process had began already on board the Carnival Spirit, when we learned that we would need an onward ticket from Fiji in order to be able to disembark the ship in Suva. We wanted to stick to our chosen method of travelling, and we knew already that two ships existed that take passengers and cargo from Fiji to Tuvalu. We were in the understanding that these ships would sail either once a month or three to four times a year – online information about this was a bit mixed.

With the assistance of Alex, the endlessly patient Guest Services attendant of Carnival Spirit, we managed to contact the correct shipping company in Suva; only to find out that they had no information whatsoever about the ships' timetables. On Alex's initiative, we even made a (costly) long distance call to a guest house in Tuvalu and learned that both of the ships were currently mooring in Funafuti, but no one knew when they would sail.

Pressed by the oncoming disembarkation, we chose to make things easy for everybody and bought flight tickets – not to Tuvalu but to Los Angeles, to where we would have, eventually, flown anyway. We booked the flights so far ahead that, in theory, we could still make it from Fiji to Tuvalu and back before heading the USA.

In Suva we continued our research by visiting several shipping agencies in person. This gave us the insight that the ships are owned by the Tuvaluan government and thus sail only on their command. Even the shipping company would know about the ships' timetable with very short notice. We reckoned that the closest we can get to the Tuvaluan government in Suva would be the High Commission of Tuvalu on the other side of town. As nicely as we were received at the Tuvalu House, they also could not provide us with any new information. But the friendly secretary gave us her contacts asked to contact her directly for further inquiries. For now, the only thing we could do was wait.

In Suva we stayed with Fina, Ned and their two young boys. We had the honor of being their very first Airbnb guests. They did everything they could to help us with our research and even invited us for a tasty dinner. Following the idea of Airbnb (“bed and breakfast”), breakfast was included in our stay.

• white bread with butter and marmalade
• 2 boiled eggs
• 1 avocado, halved
• instant coffee