Australia 2012

A journey of ten thousand miles begins not only with being the only people in New Mexico who got clouded out of the annular eclipse, but also by having our flight connection from Los Angeles to Fiji delayed by fourteen hours, so far. When we got to the Air Pacific checkin counter, there was a large mob and the departure board indicated that the flight was delayed from 2330 to 0820 the next morning. As we stood there watching, it moved back to 1330. A line wrangler with an Australian accent said that a flap on our designated airplane wouldn’t retract when they left Nadi, and they went back. It isn’t perfectly clear that they’ve taken off yet. It’s best to be sure that your flaps are retracting. Our luggage is checked through. We bought a set of toothbrushes and toothpaste at Walgreens for $1.99. The Hacienda Hotel has meal vouchers for delayed passengers printed up already. It’s clear that they cater to this market segment.

We did not use the dinner voucher. We had sushi with Rob and Maria and Nico. They live in Manhattan Beach. That is a real treat. Truthfully I don’t like 20 hour travel days. I divide up flight with nights when possible. And this seems to have been done for me, though if the agent in SFO would have told us the air pacific flight was delayed, I wouldn’t have checked the bags through.

We will be traveling around Australia for most of June and a bit of July, stopping in Fiji on the way and on the way back to see our friend.  On June 6 there will be a transit of Venus which we will watch; the rest of the time we’ll be driving around and checking out Australia’s scenic beauty.

Before we leave there’s another quick trip to Santa Fe to see the annular eclipse.

We’ll do our best to let you know what happens.  There might not be that much Internet in the outback.