visiting 11 countries in a month

Finding myself in a very comfortable resort in the Cook Islands, watching Man Utd beat Wigan on the bar TV – sound down, but they are playing an Afrobeats playlist, with four Burna Boy tracks during the last 45 minutes, so I’m not complaining!  & then a Wigan player named Aasgaard gets booked which seems so appropriate given the very camp male staff serving me

After the match I go for a swim, followed by a walk in the sand alongside the turquoise sea.  What am I doing here??!

Well, I’m in the last week of a month-long group tour around the islands of the Pacific.  Changes to flight schedules meant that Vanuatu was dropped (although many of us fly there after this tour ends) with the Cook Islands slotted in as the replacement, en route from Tonga to the Solomon Islands.  A flight cancellation meant that we missed Micronesia (but had extra days in Palau), and weight restrictions meant that five of us had an extra day in Samoa but one less in Tonga … it’s a crazy trip.  Not to mention that the tour participants come from all around the globe (from Brazil to Taiwan, Hungary to Kazakhstan) and seem to include several alcoholics (who drink all night and then miss half of the daytime activities) as well as some very interesting people – one of whom celebrated visiting every country in the world when we arrived in Tuvalu.

It's not my usual style of travel, but when I saw the tour advertised it seemed (despite the hefty price tag) such a great opportunity to visit these out-of-the-way places.

I realised during the trip how little I know of this part of the world – their complicated colonial history and important role during the Second World War, for example.  I didn’t know that what used to be called the Gilbert & Ellis Islands is now two separate countries called Kiribati and Tuvalu.  I didn’t know that around half of the population of Fiji is of Indian descent, taken there as indentured labour (slaves) by the British to work in sugar cane fields – although the taxi driver who told me this said that they, the descendants, are happy about it as Fiji is a much safer place than present-day India (although I don’t know that this view is held by all of them…).  & I didn’t know how varied the countries would be, from beautiful, lush, mountainous (and spotless) Samoa, to poor and litter-strewn Tuvalu and Kiribati – their highest points only a few metres above sea level and just about everything – including drinking water – needing to be imported.

Nor did I know that there were 67 nuclear tests carried out by the US in the Marshall Islands, or that Kwajalein – the largest island in that country – is rented in its entirety by the US, and used as a military base.  I'm still trying to mentally process everything I've seen and learned.

Some of the countries are surprisingly lacking in what we take for granted elsewhere, I suppose from a combination of their tiny populations (eg the Marshall Islands with 42,000 inhabitants) and their remoteness.  For example, Nauru only got its first bank in 2015.  & Tuvalu airport has no computer system (so your boarding passes are written out by hand), no x-ray machine, a body scanner that doesn't actually work ... and quite a few local people - adults as well as children - stood alongside the runway and waved at us as our plane took off.

Anyway, I shall end this post with a picture of one of the many beautiful sunsets I saw through aeroplane windows, whilst I continue to process what I have seen.