28.5.2015

Elina: 9.00-10.00 AM; inside my room, Hideaway Guesthouse, Funafuti

• bread with peanut butter
• 1 orange
• tea

Tuvaluan life is beautiful also underwater. While having my breakfast this morning, I drew pictures of some of the most interesting species that I encountered during my snorkeling trip yesterday (so that I could introduce them to Mikko later on). I labeled them seagull fish, space fish and my favourite fish.

The sea is full of miracles here. Besides snorkeling, one of my favourite pastimes in Tuvalu has been to bathe in the sea and observe the flying fish that leap from the water and sweep through the air. For the locals my activities seem to be somewhat idiotic. They keep asking, if I seriously just want to watch the fish, without any attempt to catch them.

Mikko: Fiji time; Danny's Village Homestay, Namatakula

• banana pancakes with home-made guava jam
• papaya
• tea
• etc.

I mostly spent my two stop-over days in Fiji lying in bed with a book, or eating the great, massive meals our host Tupou prepared, three times a day (“Miko! Eat more!”). Yesterday we also made a trip to Sigatoka (the bigger village an hour's bus ride away – they were showing “Thor” on the bus) to shop at the market. I used this chance to get online, and received annoying news: my flight, that was supposed to leave late tonight, had been rescheduled to early tomorrow morning!

The Namatakula hosts offered to accommodate me for another night, but as I would need to be at the airport around 5 AM, the taxi ride would have been mighty expensive. So I made a reservation in a hostel dorm next to Nadi airport, and this morning, after breakfast, I packed up and Tupou accompanied me to the roadside, to show me to the right bus. After a long wait with no buses, an airport taxi happened to drive by, and Tupou negotiated a fair price for me. It was a three-hour ride: mostly just me and the Indo-Fijian driver, with occasional other passengers – friends and relatives of the driver, it seemed; chatting away in Hindi, at times in such an agitated manner I was scared we'd hit a horse (there were lots of them hanging out on the roadside along the way, gnawing the grass). Finally in Nadi, I went online once more, only to learn that my flight time had been changed again, from 7.30 AM to 6.15 AM.