Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Hello from the Los Angeles airport

Hello from the  Los Angeles airport

Tuesday afternoon May 7, 2013  USA time (seventh  travelogue of this trip).

Depending on how you look at it, this is our second Tuesday or a very long Tuesday (recall that we lost Sunday on the trip to Fiji).

We tried to watch TV in Fiji, but there was nothing that we were interested in.  We thought that they might have some news channel that would give world news.  If they did, we did not find it.  Given that we did not have TV in the bus and now in Fiji, we have almost been able to wean ourselves from TV {yeah right!}.  I have been able to catch up a little on the news via Denver paper and TV apps on the iPhone.

The internet in Fiji was interesting.  They gave you 30 minutes a day on each apparatus (computer, iPhone, Kindle, etc).  Sounds like enough, but it takes about 15 minutes to get a blog post made, even though I prepare the text in advance.  I have to insert the hyperlinks and upload the photos and then do a couple of other things before I can finish the post.  Worse yet, the 30 minute free connection has a rather small bandwidth limit and the last two days I have been kicked off after about 10 minutes.  I think good old Windows or some other software package has been downloading updates. They offer packages of 2 hours and all day.  The two hour package is $13 Fiji dollars (about $7 US) which doesn't sound too bad.  However, they also have a fairly small bandwidth limit in the two hours and if you exceed the limit, they throttle you down to about dial-up speed unless you pay more money.  I like to do some research for the blog, and it has been frustrating to get that done with their system.  On the positive side, it keeps me from spending too much time on the computer {grin}.

The flight from Fiji was about 10 and a half hours.  Again, I slept some of the time, but not as much as on the way over.  Pat had a restless night.  It was terribly crowded and not at all comfortable, but we survived.  Clearing customs was another fun event.  We landed a bit after noon and that must be the “rush Hour” for international flights.  It was a madhouse.  Between clearing customs and picking up our bags, we were there for almost 2 hours.  We then had to transfer our bags from the International terminal to the Southwest terminal.  There is a shuttle bus and it was not a huge deal.  We now have about 3 hours before our flight leaves.  Time to catch up on the Internet and relax.

That is all for now.

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