With the last of the weddings wrapped up, it was time to depart again.
My flight from Toronto was at 8 in the morning, so I had to get up very early. I was up at 5. Being the independent traveler that I am, I didn’t wake my sister or Hass to get a ride to the airport and took good old bus 58A down Lawrence Avenue to get there instead. It was a cold morning and I was wearing lots of layers to stay warm, including my blue and white AU$1 scarf from the Blue Mountains of Australia. On this upcoming trip, I didn’t expect to spend any prolonged times in any cold places (unlike the last one), so I gave the scarf away to some Spanish speaking lady who was sitting beside me on the bus.
I landed in Los Angeles ahead of schedule, around 10:30 AM. I had many, many, many hours to kill here. Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is a pretty boring airport (much more boring than your average airport), and Los Angeles itself is a pretty uninteresting city to me. Why did I set myself up with an eleven hour layover here?
There are a couple reasons, unlike my last Toronto-to-Los Angeles-to-the-South-Pacific flight attempt on February 1, I didn’t want unforeseen problems to make me miss my connecting flight from Los Angeles. Also, that 8 AM flight on Air Canada was the cheapest flight I could find, costing me only CA$11 (one-way, of course). How did I get such a dirt-cheap flight? I took advantage of my TD Travel Rewards Visa. Yes, the same credit card that cause me so much annoyance earlier in the year helped me save CA$200 on that flight. Yippee!
I had an excellent plan to advantage of my lengthy layover. On the advice of the Traveler’s Aid office in LAX, I took one of the free hotel transfer shuttles to the Radison hotel near the airport and checked my big backpack into their storage room, giving the bellhop a tip for his troubles. The hotel was only a two block walk to the bus stop where I was able to catch a ride on The Big Blue Bus (Santa Monica public transit) to Santa Monica, where I would have lunch, roam around, and play with my new camera.
The bus ride was about forty minutes long and only cost US$0.75, which doesn’t seem like much. Given the current exchange rates, that’s like CA$42we374t72364, though. At least I got to see lots of interesting people. I didn’t talk to any though. My spanish skills aren’t that good, after all.
I walked down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the ritzy pedestrian-only shopping street, where I was accosted by at least a dozen solicitors requesting my support for at least as many different charities. The shrubberies and fountains in the shapes of dinosaurs were pretty cool, though.
After enjoying some cheap and spicy Mexican food I continued my wanders down to the beach. I walked down the beach promenade and watched people enjoying the lovely weather (sunny and about 20ºC). There were people biking, roller blading and taking strolls (just like me!). I wandered past Muscle Beach where there were many very fit people swinging on gymnastics equipment, contorting themselves, and spinning around on the ground. Overall though, the cast of characters on the beachfront in Santa Monica was not as interesting as the colourful folk I saw at neighbouring Venice Beach back in February.
My final destination was the long pier with the big ferris wheel. There was actually a full blown amusement park on the pier with maybe half-a-dozen rides, though they mostly seemed to be shut down. The ferris wheel was running though, and I enjoyed a ride on it. It was pretty cheap (US$2.50, I think). The views from it were pretty cool.
I walked to the end of the pier and gazed out at the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I felt like I was at the extreme end of North America. Somewhere over watery horizon were the distant places that had held so much of my fascination over the year and continue to hold me in thrall. Oh well, it was time for me to go back to the airport so I could hop that puddle!
I got back to LAX around sunset and still had about five hours to kill before my flight. I walked back from the Radison to the airport (it was ridiculously close) and continued playing with my new camera. I took some shots that I’m pretty sure I couldn’t pull off with my old one. The “sunset mode” on my camera was pretty sweet. You can probably expect many more glorious sunset pictures in the upcoming months, my friends.
My flight that night was a 10.5 hour jump on an Air Pacific 747 to Nadi on the main island of Fiji. I had two empty seats beside me took advantage of it by stretching out and lying flat to sleep. I’m usually not very successful at sleeping on airplanes. On past overnight flights I had attempted to help the process by taking a Gravol pill or an herbal sleeping pill. These attempts had limited success. I wasn’t goofing around anymore. I took two proper sleeping pills before my dinner of mundane airplane food, laid down, and passed out. It was excellent.
November 19, 2008
For me, this day did not exist. Since I was flying west across the International Date Line, I would be skipping this day.
I’ll take advantage of this small space, however, to boast about my air fare. My one-way transpacific flight on Air Pacific from Los Angeles to Fiji then, two weeks later, onward to Brisbane, Australia only cost me US$777 (my lucky number?). That seems pretty good to me. It also had the advantage of breaking up the ordeal of a thirteen hour flight and hopefully cutting up the jet lag a bit.
November 20, 2008
Welcome to Fiji! I landed at about 5:30 AM, just after sunrise, at Nadi (pronounced “nandi”). Nadi is not the capital of Fiji (the city of Suva is), but it is where the main international airport is located.
I’ll tell you more about Fiji in a later post, though. I’m still there right now. It’s a sunny day (which is actually kind of rare here, I’ve discovered), so I’m going to go lie in a hammock and read for a few hours, suckahs!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
No comments:
Post a Comment