Fiji Holiday (Various Disasters At No Extra Charge…)

After 18 months of dealing with some very significant (and seemingly never-ending) challenges Fenella and I were very, very much looking forward to our holiday in Fiji between August 8th and August 17th. 

Alas… "Disaster 2008" seemed determined to stalk us on our holiday as well.

Yes, overall we had a great time but I can’t say that I really relaxed much at all.

When I arrived back in Christchurch with the intention of getting straight back to work I discovered that I was still emotionally and physically drained, possibly even more so then before we left.   It has since taken almost an entire week to recover and get back up to speed.

This means I’m still playing catch up on overdue work and I want to say thanks to clients for their patience.  I’ll be fully caught up within the next few days.

I won’t bore you with the entire tale, but here’s a very quick summary of our Fiji holiday events:

• Flew out of Auckland to Fiji - our daughter Emila waaaaaaaay over tired so screamed most of the way.  Never, ever expect to watch an inflight movie in full when you have a child under 4. Ever.
• Fenella’s mother Penny was horribly sick before we left and even more so when we arrived.  How she made the flight and boat ride across I don’t know.  She crawled into bed upon arrival and couldn’t get out again for almost four days.  For the first two days she was barely concious.
• The next day was relatively calm although Emilia was really unhappy and seemed a bit unwell.  Lots of crying and refused to let anyone but Daddy hold her.  Standing by herself was not allowed and so I had to endure "Duddle!" ("Daddy Cuddle" - everyone else gets asked for "cuddle!", I get "Duddle!") aaaaaall day (very, very tiring).
• On day 3 Emilia developed chicken pox.  Yes… again.  And REALLY badly.  We went to see the doctor on the island. Turns out there isn’t one - we had to arrange to go to the mainland the next day.
• That night she screamed for 7-8 hours straight because of the pain / itching.  We’ve never heard / experienced anything like it and never want to again.
• Finally the next morning we get on a Ferry to the mainland. I’d had 15 minutes sleep and wasn’t much fun to be around.
• Almost 8 hours, $500, two ferrys, a shuttle, a taxi and various times of sitting around waiting for transport or doctors we arrived back to our home island with a much happier Emilia.  The anti-histamines the doctor had perscribed worked brilliantly - Emilia stopped scratching and was able to get some sleep.  Yay for us - it meant we did too.
• On a positive note, the Ferry we came back on didn’t sink with a full load of passengers (all evacuated) until the next day. Nice!
• By day 5 Penny was starting to feel better - well enough to walk around.
• On day 6 James (Fenella’s sister’s partner) had a massive diabetic attack and almost went into a coma.   His blood sugar levels dropped suddenly for no apparent reasn - Sophie raced into the kitchen screaming for sugar.  I grabbed it, ran downstairs and started shovelling sugar into him while we kept taking his blood sugar levels every 30 seconds.  Anything under 4 means he can go into a coma.  When I arrived his levels were at 3.5 and over the next 3-4 minutes dropped to 3.1, 2.8, 2.5, 2.1, 1.8 and 1.5 before they finally started going up.  Meanwhile we’d broken out the emergency injection kit (only every to be used when someone goes unconcious).  Fortunately we didn’t have to use it. But if things hadn’t improved for another 60 seconds it may have been a different story.   James quickly improved back to normal and was fine afterwards. 
• Next the big fight with the airline started.  They didn’t want to fly us home with an infectious child.  Fine we said, travel insurance will pay for us to stay for another couple of days until the Fiji doctor says she’s safe.   Oh no, says the airline, that’s not good enough.  You may have to stay up to another 5 days until every last scab falls off  Emilia’s Chicken Pox…
• Fenella, Emilia and myself stayed an extra couple of days (thank goodness for travel insurance) while everyone else flew home.
• The disagreement with the airline turned into a 4 day battle with hundreds of dollars in phone calls and faxes which I eventually won.  Air New Zealand finally agreed to let us fly based on what the Fiji doctor that diagnosed Emila said, rather than their own doctor in New Zealand who had not seen her personally.  
• Those last two days with just the 3 of us were great - we finally started to relax a bit and chill out enjoying the sun and the pool and the all expenses paid travel insurance restaurant meals. Not bad at all.
• So the day of departure arrived and we prepared to fly out of the island to the mainland on a little plane.  Fenella hates flying so took her off to the airport bar and loaded up with some dutch courage.   It wasn’t enough.  She walked up to the plane just fine but then the fear kicked in.  She still managed to do the 10 minute flight but cried and kept her eyes shut almost all the way.  After almost 10 days of only being Daddy’s little girl and refusing to be held by Mommy, Emilia finally did the right thing and sat on Fenella’s lap for the flight hugging her which helped Fenella immensely.
• Of course, I loved the flight as did Emilia who sat there saying "I on a plane!" over and over.
• We arrived at Nandi airport (Fenella immediately demanded cash for a large round of chocolate therapy to get over the flight) and checked in for our main flight back to New Zealand at 9:15pm. 
• Which was delayed 3 hours. Sigh.
• On the plus side, because of the delay we were now leaving Fiji on the 19th (Emila’s birthday) instead of the 18th and so they had to give her an extra seat instead of making her sit on our lap.
• So eventually, after literally running around Nandi airport for 4 hours trying to wear Emilia out (during which time she poured an entire bottle of water over someone’s seat and tried to help herself to all the jewelry displays in a store) we climbed on board the 767 for home.
• Emilia loved the take off and first 15 minutes ("I on a plane!"   "I on a plane!") and then realized how tired she was and started to cry which lead to 2.5 hours screaming on the 3 hour flight.
• On top of that there was the argument with one the cabin staff member about a meal for Emilia.  He was was surprisingly nasty and was yelling at Fenella who was trying to explain that the airline had given Emilia the seat but he didn’t want to hear that.  After a while he came back and apologized and was really nice from that point onwards.  Still wouldn’t give Emilia a meal though.
• About 30 minutes before landing Emilia passed across two seats (hers and mine) out and I crawled into a spare seat at the back of the plane.
• We landed in freezing cold, raining Auckland and caught a shuttle to Fenella’s parent’s place where Emila woke up and started screaming again before finally falling back asleep at about 5:30am. 

And thus, our "holiday" ended.

Not the most relaxing holiday by any stretch of the imagination but we did have some really nice times and I’ve got some great videos to upload very soon.

Definitely want to go back there though - the location was beautiful.

The resort we stayed at:  www.musketcovefiji.com/

The private villa we stayed in:  www.fijianvilla.com/

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