Fiji - leaving on a jet plane

23 Fiji - leaving on a jet plane (Tues. Feb 24)

One of the women workers that we have been talking to for the past couple of days (we had her try chocolate covered raisins - she loved them) was the receptionist at breakfast this morning. She had the singers (two men playing a guitar and ukulele and playing during breakfast) and four of the women attendants for breakfast come over and sing us a goodbye song at our table.

After breakfast I take pictures of the Resort's grounds as we head back to the room to finish packing. Around 11:00AM we head up to the reception desk and check out. Since our ride out of here isn't until 5:30PM, we leave our big bags in a lock-up (I have my back-pack with my computer and camera) and head out to the pool while we wait for 5:30PM for our pickup. Well Carmen goes down to the pool while I'm trying to catch up on the blog in the lobby on the top floor. The top floor overlooks the entire resort area and I get a picture of it, for your benefit of course!

While I am sitting in the lobby working on the blog (I paid for 24 hr connection so I might as well us it) there are a group of men playing guitars and ukuleles, singing island songs. Now this is what the South Pacific should be like! But, I am running out of battery so I'm going to shut down and head out to the pool with Carmen.

After a several hours by the pool, black clouds are starting to build up and in the distance there is thunder. In no time at all an attendant is asking people to get out of the pool. There is more thunder and it begins drizzling but we are under the "grass" umbrella, so we should be good right? All of a sudden the sky opens up and it starts pouring rain, I mean really hard. Water is beginning to come through the grass umbrella we are under so we pack up and walk, very quickly, to the restaurant area near us. On the walkway we are using there are places where the water is flooded to about 3-4 inches, good thing we are in our bathing suits and my computer and cameras are in the backpack.

After about 20 minutes, the rain was still coming down really hard, so we decide to brave about 20 feet in the pouring rain to the covered (grass hut style) walk-way that heads up to the main building. We get to the main building and change into dry clothes and hang out by the open windows (no glass in the windows by the way and no air conditioning) in the breeze until our ride comes. (At this point in the afternoon it is about 3:00PM.)

Remember the ride to the resort I mentioned a couple of days ago? Well this time we are doing the ride during daylight hours and not at night. We are able to see the countryside, the sugar cane crops, and the horses and cows on the sides of the road, and the houses and businesses along the way. We take a couple of pictures along the way.

We get to the airport around 7:20PM and have to wait about 15 minutes for the counters to open up. While we are waiting to get to the counter, one of the counter people (a woman) is taking about 20 minutes per person. Each one seems to be an issue with her. Well guess what? We get her. We present our passports and put our luggage up on the scales. She puts our tags on the bags and we are given our tickets and passports back and are then asked for our e-ticket numbers. What? We give the attendant our itinerary and flight information and she can not find anything. Guess what? She has an issue with us as well. She asks questions of the counter people to her side (no help), then calls her supervisor (no help) and then a Qantas person (from upstairs). He comes down, says the same thing; we do not have any e-ticket number and we have to go with him to his office.

I am up in the office with him and he spends some time looking up our information on the computer. Then he asks "how did you get here"? "What? We flew here on the jet just like the information indicated on the computer", I said. But then again, there is no e-ticket information for that flight either. All of the numbers I need to call are either to early (midnight the day before we are in now) or to late (after 6:00 PM in Australia) for other numbers.

I have him call Qantas for me so I can talk to them. I go round and round with the lady on the phone with the same information, I did not fly here because I had no e-ticket number; even though we did - you know "Catch 22". "Yes we flew here on Qantas. No we did not have a problem. Yes we gave the same papers to that counter person. Yes we got a ticket, Yes the computer has us assigned seating. What do you mean we do not have ticket numbers?"

So I ask the lady on the Qantas line what can she do for me because everything is right there in the computer. Her answer: "Pay for tickets to fly back to Los Angeles". Unbelievable. I do not have to tell you how very upset I was and made sure I mentioned it to both the Qantas person at the airport and the one on the phone, especially how very unhelpful they were. (And the poster over his desk says something like "We are here to please the customer"; yeah right.) My suggestion: if you can fly someone other that Qantas or Air Pacific do it.

This is taking some time and while the Qantas person is trying to get more information, I go down and get Carmen, who has been waiting. It has been about 20 minutes. Carmen comes back up with me and again we go round and round about our flights. Qantas is no help at all, even though all of our information is in their system. The solution: buy another ticket to get to Los Angeles!

So we buy the tickets again ($2774.00 Fijian) in order to fly back to Los Angeles, California so we can get our connecting flight to Orlando, FL. We go back down to the Qantas representative (we have to wait another 10 minutes for her to finish up with her current customer - again issues) and she prints out another set of tickets. THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME TICKETS! She gives us printed tickets and asks for the ones she printed earlier. I look and there is no difference between them. We even keep the first ones she printed! We were so happy to get out of that airport.

The flight back to the US was a little over 10 hours, but we landed early. (At least the flight went right.) The first thing we do after getting to the domestic counters is to call the Travel Agent, the Tour Company, and the Credit Card Company to stop payment. No they can not stop the payment, but if we do not get this resolved in 30 days, they will help us to get it resolved.
Our flight out of Los Angeles was on time (10:45PM, no hassles here) and we landed in Orlando 30 minutes early at 5:30AM. At least the flight time went smoothly.

We are now back home, yeah! Except for the flight home, the trip was fantastic!