Jerri:
Tim and I are back to being on our own after five weeks with the kids. Two with all of them and three more with Elizabeth and Alex. We slept nearly twelve hours last night so I guess they wore us out! Either that or the final ten hours of flight drama. We figured out Friday at 4:30 p.m. that the kids were booked out of an airport nearly 200 miles away from where we were anchored. It never dawned on us that there were two international airports in Tonga. There were 4 flights to the other island, but all booked with lots of people on standby. Tim finally managed to secure two tickets (at a price) from two young men on the final flight. Flights only go out on Saturdays so if they had missed their flight, Alex would have missed another week of work and Elizabeth an entire week of orientation for grad school. As a positive, it has made them leaving a little easier because the sadness is tempered by extreme relief that they made it out.
Tim’s post covered our absolutely amazing whale adventure Friday. Other than that, things have been somewhat uneventful. There was a lot of rain the past week leading us to spend more time inside playing cards, going to Tropicana and getting on the internet, and watching the Olympics on the big screen at another restaurant. We did manage to get a short run in, walk through every Chinese market in town, shop for gorgeous wood carvings, baskets and produce at the local market, and do a little paddleboarding. Today I am airing everything out in hopes of drying stuff out.
Our plans are very loose right now. Tomorrow we will order some meat, drop off laundry, buy some food, and pick everything up Tuesday morning. We’ll explore some anchorages after that and figure out when to head to Fiji. Next appointment is to pick up my mom and cousin at the airport in Fiji (we’ll try to get the correct island this time) on 9/28.
