The Hoffman Hood: It takes us HOW long to get to Tonga?

Spencer and I left our apartment Tuesday, September 3rd at 4:30 p.m to make our very long journey to Tonga. We landed in Tonga on Thursday, September 5th around 3:55 p.m. in Tonga. (Tonga is 19 hours ahead of us.) Which made this entire experience 28.5 hours long... not including the driving around we did for dinner after we landed. PHEW.

Since I knew it was going to be a long flight and I'm trying to limit my dairy intake, I packed a LOT of snacks. Some of them aren't even pictured here and I brought quadruples of snacks for our trip back.

Filled to the brim!

My purse couldn't even fit them all in, and Spencer's backpack had to hold some of them.

Spencer all cute and happy on our way during our first leg of the flight. Salt Lake City to Los Angeles!

We got to LAX and it was a whirlwind trying to figure out how to get to our new terminal. I thought it was the coolest thing when we had to slowly walk two by two past a police dog sniffing for drugs. Although, I was slightly nervous that he was going to smell my snacks and I'd get slammed to the ground when he alerted his handler...

We finally got to our gate and were very happy that we could relax for a little while before our 11 hour flight to Fiji.

Our flight was supposed to take off at 11 p.m., but was delayed until 12:45 a.m.! We got word from the pilot that many travelers checked overweight and over sized cargo. This caused imbalance on the plane and the cargo handlers had to rearrange all of the luggage and cargo to stabilize the plane. A good amount of the passengers laughed since they knew they were part of the reason why the plane was delayed.

Chicken with rice and peas, crackers with cheese, and a Twix.

We got chicken with rice for our 'dinner' which felt like it was at 3 a.m. My nose knew it was chicken and rice and I told Spencer that as the people ahead of us got their food. I became very grateful for my snacks, as I didn't care for the seasoning or spiciness of the chicken. Plus, the amount of dairy that was in the meal wasn't ideal. Spencer ended up eating most of my food. It's my fault that I didn't notify Fiji Airways about my dietary restriction, but I know to notify them next time!

Spencer slept quite a bit on the flight there, I was quite jealous. I watched Toy Story instead. I realized that there are a LOT more jokes in Toy Story that I didn't understand as a child. I was somewhat shocked at some of them. This is a kid's movie?!

I struggled to find a comfy position to sleep, which resulted in me sleeping for about 90 minutes total on our flight. Darn those hip and back aches while being pregnant! I couldn't wait to get off this plane!

A couple of the funny happenings while I was awake:

A man went into one of the bathrooms and was fighting to get the door open. He quickly left and sat back down in his seat. Ten minutes later, a man walked out of the same bathroom. I guess he didn't remember to lock the door and got barged in on! I felt bad for quietly laughing to myself.
While looking for one of my shoes on the floor to walk the aisles, I accidentally grabbed the mans foot behind me. I retreated quickly and pretended it never happened. I learned later on that 'he' was a 'she', since I saw her fancy-schmancy purse. Whoops, sorry lady!

We had breakfast, and it was about as good as 'dinner'. I smelled blueberry muffins and my sniffer was right once again!

Wet scrambled eggs, mushy hash browns, pitiful fruit, blueberry muffin, and orange juice. I wish that red thing was ketchup.

Once the flight was over, I was SO excited to be done sitting on a plane!

This couldn't be more accurate.

Going through customs in Fiji was such a long process, but we had a 7ish hour layover and wanted to say we had a little mini adventure there!

We got a taxi ride to the wharf to have breakfast at the port.

I took a lot of pictures while we were speeding along on the left side of the road on our way there. That took me some getting used to!

Can you spot the gravestones?!?!

We went to Lulu's and I got French toast with bacon (and Spencer asked them to put my bacon on the grill longer since apparently the South Pacific doesn't like crispy bacon). He got an omelet with toast.

It was a pretty cool place.

After breakfast we walked around and I loved seeing the ocean and the palm trees. I got some earrings as a souvenir to say we went to Fiji.

Then we got picked us up and our taxi driver drove us back to the airport.

I'm uneducated and didn't know Fiji had mountains.

We got back to the airport and was very early for our flight.

I thought it was cool the airport had a prayer room.

The older plane we got on to fly to Tonga was so much more comfortable than the last Fiji Airways plane. Spencer and I did not understand this. I didn't fall asleep, but I was a lot more relaxed.

The flight to Tonga was pretty uneventful (thankfully). But we learned when we got to Tonga that Spencer had to report to customs that he brought his pocket knife to Tonga. We weren't sure if they were going to confiscate it or not, as the two workers looked at each other and then back at the knife. But our knife was spared and became an important item of our trip.

Our Airbnb host, Isi picked us up from the airport and told us that he didn't have any other plans for this evening. He offered to drive us downtown so we could find someplace to eat and show us around. I was in awe just staring at everything and absorbing it all. In the end, we went to a sub place that Spencer remembered eating at when he was a missionary.