Departure Day

1/5/2019- Saturday

A little later today (actually tomorrow morning) we will be embarking on our trip to Moso Island, Republic of Vanuatu.  The flights for the trip today are long and we will certainly be very tired when we arrive at Tranquility resort around 1700 h on Monday.(1/7/2019).

We will try and keep up a fairly active stream of information as we conduct our research and other activities on Moso Island.  The internet connection at the resort is very slow and intermittent and ofter we are unable to upload pictures.  We will try our best!!!!

Below is a picture and a video as we wait for the KOA to HNL flight.  People are tired already

The team sitting outside at Kona airport waiting for our flight. 

Boarding our Hawaiian flight to HNL.  The first of three flights - KOA-HNL (45 min), HNL to Nadi Fiji (6 h 50 min) and Nandi Fiji to Port Vila Vanuatu (2 hours).  Not to bad except that we have to wait 4 hours in Honolulu, and 6 hours in Nandi for our flights!!!

1/7/2019 – Monday

Going back to last night, we were able to take off from Honolulu at 0249 on our flight to Nadi, Fiji.  The plan at the time was to fly from Honolulu to Apia, Samoa to refuel.  This is all because of concern about cyclone Mona hitting Fiji.  This detour would have involved a 1.5 hour refueling stop before continuing on to Nadi.  We were resigned to a longer flight but were told about 4 hours into the flight that the weather had improved and we could go directly Nadi without stopping in Apia!!!! Great News.

Well, we landed safely and got through customs in Nadi at around 0830 h Fiji time.  We walked around the airport, exchanged some US $ for Fijian $ and walked over to the ticket area to check out when we could check in for the Vanuatu flight.  We found that we could check in at 1130 or so for a 1430 flight to Vanuatu.  Currently the team is trying to learn how to play hearts (the German version as taught by Justus Benz).  More to come.

 

Honolulu Airport with our plane in the background.

On a precarious adventure! (Nadi airport)

Nadi Airport

Our flight from Nadi to Port Vila went without incident and we have made our way out to Moso Island.  Everyone has been given their room and they are most likely already in the ocean doing some snorkeling.  The weather is great and the ocean is reasonably calm.  We will rest tonight and tomorrow and, if all goes well, we will head out around 1700 h tomorrow for our first night of nesting beach monitoring and, hopefully, we will be able to get some tags out.

As I have mentioned many times, the internet out here is very slow so we will not be able to upload very many pictures... we will do our best!