So begins our South Pacific cruise. More than a year ago my dad booked a Fiji cruise with some friends of his for October 2026. We were looking to travel to Ireland during that time, so we crossed it off our travel plans to join them. Earlier this year our Ireland plans were changed to August, which meant that our October was free. Tony wasn’t too enthused about the long airplane ride, but being a big Survivor fan (which is filmed in Fiji), he longed to see if the island and ocean views were as spectacular in person as they appear on TV. After weighing the pros and cons and checking the Norwegian Cruise Line site for availability, we booked the cruise. We will be joining my dad, David and Sandy A., and Mary and David C. for a 12-day cruise aboard the NCL Spirit. Due to flight schedules, we will spend a couple of days in Fiji before boarding the ship and then a couple of days in Tahiti after the cruise before heading home.

Wait, What Happened to Friday?

Flying to Fiji meant crossing the International Date Line. Try wrapping your head around this. We left Des Moines at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday, October 8, and arrived in Denver at 10:30 a.m. the same day. That leg was easy; it’s only a one-hour time difference from Central to Mountain Time. Then we left Denver at noon and arrived in Honolulu at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon. There’s a four-hour time difference from Mountain to Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time, so we are now five hours behind Iowa time. With me so far?

After a lengthy layover in Honolulu, we took off from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport at midnight on Thursday, October 8, to arrive in Fiji at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 10. Wait, what? The flight from Honolulu to Fiji was 9.5 hours with a 1.5-hour refueling stop in Apia, Samoa. So where did Friday, October 9, go? We went from five hours behind Iowa time to 15 hours ahead. Talk about time traveling! Crossing over the International Date Line can really mess with your head, not to mention your sense of time. Fortunately, our cruise back over the International Date Line between Samoa and American Samoa will make things right, and we’ll have two, yes, two, back-to-back Fridays. So crazy!

Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii

But I’m getting ahead of myself. While in Honolulu we started to feel the time change a bit. It felt late in the evening to us, and we had a grueling 7.5-hour layover before boarding our flight to Fiji. Fiji Airways doesn’t have online check-in, so we headed down to the main terminal to look for their desk and find out where we would end up going through customs. While looking for the desk we ran into a couple from Albany, New York, also trying to find Fiji Airways. Turns out they will be on the same cruise.

After some searching, we discovered that Fiji Airways is too small to have a permanent spot in the terminal and won’t open their temporary desk until closer to flight time. With seven hours to kill, the other couple decided to leave the airport to go find dinner somewhere while storing their luggage at the airport. Both parties lamented the closing of the National Pearl Harbor Memorial each day at 5:00 p.m., with the last boat to the USS Arizona at 3:30 p.m. Our layover did not align with that opportunity or any other close tourist spots. Given that, we opted instead to find a restaurant at the airport and wait it out since to us it was already getting pretty late in the evening with the five-hour time difference. And we got to enjoy the Culture Gardens, a most beautiful and must-see spot in the center of the airport.

Flying Fiji Airways is, er, Different

We enjoyed a leisurely supper at a place called The Local @ HNL and a stroll through the Culture Garden at the airport at sunset. The E Gates area in Terminal 2 has a very large air-conditioned space to hang out (and nap) and charge electronics while waiting for flights that we took advantage of. As we approached takeoff time of 10:55 p.m. (3:55 a.m. Iowa time), we found our specific gate, which was a separate room that was closed. The couple from Albany had made it back to the airport and were describing their reentry experience at the Fiji desk, which finally opened. Each of their carry-on items was weighed, and they had to shuffle items around between them to meet the restricted weight requirements (different requirements for stowed items and personal items). Hmm, not sure what would keep you from reshuffling them back after walking to the gate, but whatever. Items to be stowed in the upper bins were given a blue tag and personal items under seats had a brown tag.

While standing outside the Fiji gate, an attendant guarding the door noticed that my bags did not have the blue and brown tags. He motioned us into the empty air-conditioned lounge behind the door to get the tags. Thankfully, they didn’t weigh out carry-ons, as I’m pretty sure all four of ours were over their restrictions; no amount of shuffling would have helped. Whew!

In our limited international travel, we have never had carry-on luggage or personal items weighed and tagged. Everything being carried onto the Fiji flight was, even purses. Note to self: be careful of this when returning aboard Air Tahiti coming home. They will probably do the same. I do know the weight limits (even stricter than the Fiji Airways limits), so will likely check one of our carry-on suitcases then.

After getting our carry-ons tagged, we were ushered back out of the gate lounge room again until after the plane taking us to Fiji arrived, as the passengers had to enter U.S. customs and needed to stay segregated from other passengers while doing so. Now it made sense why they weren’t allowing the Fiji-bound passengers currently sprawled on benches and the floor in the hallway into that comfy and empty lounge.

Our 7.5-hour flight to Honolulu was on a nice large Boeing 777. Our 9.5-hour flight to Fiji? A small Boeing 737. Lots of turbulence trying to sleep on this one and it required us to make a “mechanical stop” in Tahiti to refuel. Fortunately, we didn’t have to deboard the plane, but no chance of sleeping through that.

Another odd thing we observed about the Fiji Airways flight was that the passengers in the exit rows had to store everything loose in the overhead bins during takeoff and landing. This meant that backpacks, purses, neck pillows, headphones, blankets, etc., all had to go up in the same bins that the flight crew were already busy cramming full of carry-on luggage.

This brings us to the end of our first day of our South Pacific adventure. Or is it the end of the second day? One thing I do know, time traveling is tiring.