After roughly 27 hours of traveling, from Seattle to LA to Nadi to Savusavu, we have arrived at our first destination - Siga Siga Sands (pronounced Singa Singa - there are a lot of hidden n's in the Fijian language). We left on Sunday evening and arrived early Tuesday morning after crossing both the Equator and the International Date Line for the first time in our lives. The time change is a bit disconcerting. It will probably take a few days to adjust but time is on our side. We are now on Fiji-time, as the locals say.

Our journey was fairly uneventful save for two oversized things. After much debate, we decided to bring our bicycles and leave them at Siga Siga when we depart. We grabbed a couple bicycle shipping boxes from Montlake Cycle. The staff there were super helpful and really nice about it. After watching a few instructional videos, we had our bikes apart, taped appropriately and jammed into the two boxes. They definitely kinda fit.

It was smooth sailing all the way up until we were ready to leave for Savusavu. We discovered the island hopper was too small for the bikes. After some discussion with the man working the desk, we decided that sending the bikes as freight on a different flight would work. The only issue was that the different flight was going to Labasa, a city on the other side of Vanua Levu, the island on which Savusavu and Labasa live. We called the Labasa airport when we arrived and had a taxi sent down to us with just our bikes. An hour and a half drive later, a little after dark on a wet windy evening, our island vehicles arrived in fine condition.

Now that they are here and assembled, I'm not sure when we will actually be able to use them. It has been overcast and rainy since we arrived and the weather is not anticipated to change much until next week. Really, none of this matters though, because we found out upon our arrival at the Coco Bure that WE HAVE A FUCKING DOG AND SHE IS AMAZING!

Tuk Tuk follows us around and sleeps outside our door and romps in the surf and messes with the goats and cows on the property and digs for crabs on the beach and fetches sticks and runs next to our bikes. I love her.

Today, we went into town and stocked up on food supplies and coffee stuff. The next few days, I look forward to just hanging around and exploring the spacious grounds of Siga Siga, on which we are the only guests booked for our entire thirty day stay.

It was a lot of traveling with a few bumpy moments with few nice surprises along the way but overall it was a great way to start our trip. I look forward to more surprises along the way. Like HAVING A DOG ON A PRIVATE RESORT PARADISE.

A flower in the beautiful, lily filled ponds of Siga Siga.