On to Fiji

We left Los Angeles at 10pm on Saturday night and flew South West until 4am on Sunday morning when suddenly it was 3pm on Monday morning and we hadn’t had time to read the Sundays yet. Our next destination, Fiji, is just over the International Date Line and crossing it lost us most of Sunday. Never mind every other leg of our journey gives us extra hours and we hope it will all work out by the time we get home.

Our arrival in Fiji happened just as the sun came up, it was beautiful.

The resort Marion chose, The Hideaway is on the Coral Coast and we are staying in a Bure with no glass windows and an outside bath as part of its inside and outside bathroom.




It is nestled among tropical gardens next to the beach, so every day we see exotic birds and flowers.

Twenty yards from our Bure is a stunning coral beach with a reef about a hundred yards off shore.

At six o’clock each evening a Fijian Warrior performs a sacred ritual involving flaming torches and drums. This sacred ritual signals the start of the all important happy hour!
















Each day we toil strenuously to the swimming pool and bar and work hard on our tans and keeping cool. Each evening after dinner we stroll along the beach to watch the beautiful sunsets.

Long Beach

We spent our last full day in LA at Long Beach where we toured the Queen Mary and visited the Aquarium of the Pacific.

We thought about staying on the Queen Mary as she is now Hotel where all passengers stay in first class cabins even if she is a 3 star hotel. The ship is certainly showing her age although she was certainly the height of luxury in her day.

John did think of putting in an offer as he is still looking for as boat, and he did look good on the deck but the price of $3,500,000 thirty years ago puts her outside his price range.

A short, free, bus ride away from the Queen Mary is the Aquarium of the Pacific. We found trying to travel on busses, for anything but very local journeys, very difficult in LA. The Long Beach Passport free bus service was great, with frequent, well used buses cutting down the already huge volume of traffic.

The Aquarium was our first experience of the joys of being a senior, over 55, in America. We got a good discount on the entry fee. Having recently visited the amazing aquarium in Plymouth we were eager to see how they compared.

The Long Beach aquarium has huge tanks with an enormous range of fish, presented in an informative and entertaining way. We were in time to see the fish being target fed by divers in the tanks, while sharks swam innocently by. This little fish walked over the sand of his tank to check us out and we thought he was rather cute.

The octopus looked rather unpleasant but had a great sense of colour.

Although this is a spectacular aquarium, we both agreed for once that the new marine aquarium in Plymouth was even bigger, better and more fun.

Marina Del Rey

One morning we walked to Marina Del Rey, much further than we thought as the map we used was not reliable when measuring distances.

We decided to treat ourselves to a “light lunch” in a Japanese restaurant, The Café del Rey, beside the Marina with births for thousands of boats.

As you can see their idea of a light lunch was more than Marion could cope with.

Hollywood Tour

As we were in Los Angeles, we had to see the Hollywood sign and all the places the very, very, very rich people live and shop.

To get good view of this sign, we went up into Beverley Hills and saw this amazing view of LA from Mullholland Drive with the Hollywood Bowl in the foreground.

As well as enjoying splendid views the rich of Hollywood shop in exclusive splendour in Rodeo Drive, full of expensive shops without any shoppers when we were there. It was more like a ghost town, even the street lighting, although very spectacular had to be protected from the elements.

A Walk in Venice Beach

It is November but the weather is wonderful, bright blue skies, the temperature in the high seventies and a beautiful beach to enjoy. We decided to walk along the boardwalk from Venice to Santa Monica, explore new places, watch new people and wildlife.

Some of the birds we recognised easily, like the Egrets and Little Egrets by the canal and the Pelicans swooping so low over the waves that I couldn’t get a clear picture of them. Other birds were more helpful, so I could get their pictures even if I didn’t recognise them. The gulls and pigeons, although familiar are different from those resident in Cornwall.

We enjoyed the Santa Monica shopping mall and the variety of stalls along the way. Returning on Main we came across an amazing sculpture created by Paul Conrad from chain links. This is his attempt to promote peace and an end to war.

As we stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the beach, the place was invaded by a large group of hopefuls from the next series of American Idol. As well as the contestants with numbered badges, there were people looking important and others with cameras and all the paraphernalia of a film crew. Good luck candidate no 98999.

As I was not sure I would ever see the Pacific Ocean from this side again, I felt compelled to have a swim joining the surfers in the sea. It was cold, very cold; nearly as cold as the sea around the UK.

Our First Day at Large

At last we have set off on our long planned trip around the world. As you can see Marion settled into her seat very easily. Just as well as we were to be in them for the next eleven hours.

For most of the flight, we were well above the cloud and unable to see much but as we approached Baffin Island, the clouds cleared and we had a great view of the ice covering land and sea.

Sixteen hours after leaving London we settled into our Venice Beach hotel in LA and took an evening stroll to see the beach and plan our next day.