Vanuatu Part 1 (plus our Fiji layover)

We've been planning for a long time to visit my parents on their mission in Vanuatu and the time finally came! We were gone for 3.5 weeks, from June 27 until July 20. We spent the first two weeks with my parents in Vanuatu and then spent a week in Fiji on the way home. This is right after Greg dropped us off at the airport, ready to begin our 27 hours of travel. 

We flew from SLC to LAX, then LAX to Fiji, then Fiji to Vanuatu. This picture is from the long overnight flight from LAX to Fiji. I think it was 10 hours? Davis is the one we were worried about. It was tough, but okay. It definitely could have been a lot worse!

Not pictured--our frantic run in the LAX airport trying to get to the international terminal. Our layover was not long enough and we barely made it to our Fiji flight to check in in time. All six of us were running frantically with all our luggage from our terminal to the international terminal. We made it 5 minutes before the Fiji Airways desk closed. Extremely stressful. We were all relieved when we made it on the Fiji plane (we were all sweaty at that point).

When we landed in Fiji we had an 8 hour layover so we decided to do a 4 hour Nadi tour! 

Our driver took us to the farmer's market.

Then we visited the Hindu temple. Apparently there's a big Indian community in Fiji.

We visited the Garden of the Sleeping Giant. It was beautiful! 

Davis was a wild boy this whole day! He was very sleep deprived which translated into him running around punching walls, acting completely nuts all day.

Delicious juice they served us at the Garden.

Our tour guide took us to visit his village. This was the church in his village.

After our long layover in Fiji, it was finally time to head to Vanuatu! An elder who was headed out to Vanuatu for his mission ended up being on our flight. 

It was a dinky propeller plane. 

Reunited!

My parents took us to Seaview for our first meal. It was a fast food type place with burgers, fish and chips, chicken, etc. The view is beautiful and we loved taking everything in! It was weird to realize it's winter there and the sun sets really early, like 6 PM.

Cereal his first morning from the back deck! My parents' house is incredible and the view is so beautiful. We were all exhausted the night before, so we all woke up feeling much better. And surprisingly slept pretty well considering the time change. Violet had a hard time going to bed and just wanted to go home and said she didn't feel safe here. But then she woke up in much better spirits. :)

The day after we arrived was my mom's birthday! We celebrated by heading up to the Skybridge. It was about a 30-45 min drive and we loved taking in everything on the way there. We had to split up into two cars the entire trip, half of us with my mom and half of us with my dad. We had to take turns having Davis in the car because he was pretty brutal. We had to put him in the middle so he wouldn't open the car doors. But then he would hit/abuse whoever he was next to in the car. Andy was so cute in the car rides and filmed lots of videos to show to his friends.

This is the sky bridge! Andy was very nervous about it but faced his fears!

We did a big grocery shopping trip that day. Andy and Max loved finding the bush knives at the grocery store. :) The people here carry them around for whatever they need. We ate a lot of eggs, bread, PB&Js, chocolate milks, breakfast crackers (Andy's favorite), and scotch finger cookies. Food was tricky! We brought some stuff from home and we really relied on that and wished we brought more. The cereal was really expensive ($10 a box) and the kids thought the milk was weird (it was shelf stable). We found greek yogurt but it was $14 for about a pint. A little frozen pizza was $12. My favorite was the coconut ice cream! I think it's called Yummi. It was SO good. We had to eat on the go lunches a lot, which we're not really used to. Lots of smashed PB&Js. My parents just don't eat that much and I don't think they're used to thinking about how often kids need to eat. It was tricky! We definitely didn't leave prepared some days because I don't think Cameron or I realized we weren't going to be coming back for a long time.

We went to Umaiya for dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday! It had delicious Thai and Chinese food. It was a bit pricey but delicious.