Friday 30th January 2004, Day 139/273 - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, USA.
What is it with coffee shops? Why do we need 4 on every street corner? Why do you have to order tall, grand or tres and not small medium or large? What is the difference between a latte, mocha, cappuccino, americano, frappuchino and expresso? What are double shots? Why can't I just get a regular coffee? Not that I drink it, but I 'd be confused if I did.
So last night I had my nightly chat with Dave from Ireland. He's working over here and is in the bunk beneath me. Every night he goes out, gets drunk and comes back to the room to have his nightly rant over a spliff. Vancouver is that sort of place. Pot is sort of legal and everywhere you go you can smell the sweet aroma. So anyway Dave always has a rant about how crap it is to work over here and how much he misses Europe whilst asking me every so often where I'm off to next. He even went as far as to say that I'm the most interesting person that he's had above him. Of course in the morning he remembers none of it. This morning he couldn't be bothered to get up for work and when he saw me packing he asked the age old question. So where you off to?
Typically we're leaving Vancouver on the nicest day we've had so far, but it feels good to have the first part of the tour over with. Be gone all this cold shitty weather. Hawaii here I come.
I caught the public bus out to the airport for $3 cdn. The buses are great here. They go every 6 or 7 minutes and people use them. See America if you build it, they will come.
Checked in at the airport and had to clear American customs in Canada, but also you have to pay a $10 cdn airport improvement fee to Vancouver airport, before they let you on the plane. Is that cheeky or is it just me?
We're flying buckshee airways (Air Pacific), just a little better than crab air. We left at 20.00 for a 6 hour flight to Honolulu. Actually the service was much better than expected. Decent food and free drinks. The films were 'The Wannabees' (terrible) and 'Second-hand Lions' (not much better). It's only a little 737-800, but it flies all the way to Nadi, Fiji via Hawaii and Samoa for fuel stops. It’s the same flight that we'll be catching in 2 weeks from Honolulu to Nadi.
They showed a documentary on Fiji. Looks really fantastic, but it did strike home how little I knew about it and the lack of preparation I've done for the rest of the trip.
Arrived in Honolulu at 23.45 (local time, gained another 2 hours so now 10 hours different) and had to wait 5 hours for my flight to Maui. I didn't see the point in checking into a hotel for the night so had 4 hours kip in a comfy chair (sort of) before the Aloha Airlines office opens.
