Honeymoon with a stranger

The alarm clock, set for 6:30, never went off. Luckily, due to the heat and the unfamiliar environment, I wasn’t sleeping too well, so my eyes opened on their own at 7:15. I woke Andrea, and we scurried around the hotel room to put on our swimsuits and stuff our belongings into our bags.

We were told the night before to see Rosie at the front desk of the Tokatoka hotel at 7 to plan some sort of day trip around the Fijian islands. I did one final room check, stepped out into the outdoor sauna, and dragged our bags to the counter as fast as I could, breaking a sweat after 50 feet. We picked the first tour we saw and signed our credit card receipts seven minutes before the bus was to arrive. As Rosie finalized the itinerary, I ran to the bar to borrow a beach towel for the day while Andrea stored our bags and checked out of the room. When I arrived back at the desk to pick up our tickets, Rosie informed me, “Your wife has them.”

I had met Andrea three days earlier, or four if you incorporate the fact that crossing the international dateline bumped us 20 hours ahead of Los Angeles. After learning last Tuesday that my flight from L.A. to Fiji had been canceled for two days since a bird flew into the engine of our plane, I took an open chair in a row of seats placed there only for, I assume, people who learn their flights have been cancelled. To my left was a blonde girl, frantically talking to her mom on the phone and crying her eyes out. I tried not to stare but wondered if I could be of any help. I pulled out my itinerary, trying to figure out how the change in plans would affect my trip. I wasn’t too bothered by the cancellation and remained fairly calm given the fact that I was leaving the country by myself for an extended period of time. Plus, they were putting us up in a hotel for two nights and giving us meal vouchers, so since I hadn’t slept on a bed in quite a while, and I was pretty hungry, that sounded like a pretty good deal. All the bird in the engine really meant was two less days in Fiji.

The sad girl to my left pointed to my itinerary and then back at herself. Her eyes got wide and she hung up the phone.

The conversation, to outline it, went something like this:

“You were on the flight that was cancelled, too?”

“Yep. I’m Brian. How can we help each other?”

“Andrea. Nice to meet you. I don’t know. I don’t know anyone in L.A., I’m going to Sydney by myself to study abroad. I don’t know what to do. I hate this."

“We’ll be okay. I have lots of friends here. We can just hang out here for a couple days. I can show you around. We can be in this together.”

“Promise?”

It was the beginning to a cheesy romantic comedy movie. Twist of fate (dead bird) causes change of plans (stuck in L.A.) causing guy (me) to meet girl (Andrea). What’s next? The two main characters decide to vacation together in Fiji? Whoops, I just gave away the ending. Oh, and did I mention we were supposed to miss Valentine's Day completely since we would miss a day on our flight, but now we would spend it together?

As we roamed around L.A. for the next day and a half, we got to know each other pretty well, deciding that we could trust each other and that we were no longer strangers. Originally, Andrea was to stop over in Fiji just to connect to her next flight to Sydney. After some research and a bit of spontaneity, she decided to bump her flight back a day so she had some time to see the country.

The 10-hour flight across the Pacific surprising flew by very quickly. Fijians were voted the friendliest people in the world according the travel guide I keep with me. And the flight crew proved it. Fay drew a map of the island for me and wrote down some simple Fijian words I should learn. Jeffrey continued to bring us more beers even when we didn’t ask for them, and he would high-five or fist-pound me every time I walked past to go to the bathroom. We met an 18-year-old Australian kid named Tim in the airport, and he joined our row for a couple hours to join in on the festivities, saying he’d had “heaps of beers” already. While Andrea fell off to sleep, I began chatting with a priest from Fiji who sat in the row behind me. He pointed out that Fiji's best rugby player was the big guy standing in the aisle.

"I think he's pretty drunk," the priest said as he laughed.

The big rugby player then decided I needed another drink, so he went into the flight attendant area, broke out the best Fijian rum, and poured me a drink that I could hardly put down.

We had left Los Angeles at 3 in the afternoon on Thursday, and touched down in Fiji around 10 p.m. Friday night. Due to the flight cancellation, they gave Andrea a free room in a five-star hotel with a waterslide in Nadi, so we decided to ignore our reservation at the Horizon Backpacker’s hostel.

After four hours of sleep and no breakfast, we hopped on the bus for the all-day cruise around the islands. We saw the island where the latest series of Survivor was filmed, and snorkeled to the island where the movie Cast Away was shot. The tour guide cleverly announced that no one should go looking for Wilson. We visited a village of 700 Fijians, participating in their ritual of drinking kava, a tasteless liquid made from a root which numbs your mouth. On the boat ride back we listened to the locals play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “In the Jungle” on their guitars as we sipped our beers and chatted with other travelers from Australia and England. I didn’t want to the boat to dock, knowing that meant the end of our fun in Fiji.

Andrea and I had spent four straight days together, so I wasn’t sure what to think when we had to part ways at the Nadi airport yesterday morning. She had her plans in Australia and I had my ticket to New Zealand. We said our goodbyes and promised to meet up if I make it to Sydney. I asked a man in the airport to take a picture of us. When I bumped into him again as I boarded my plane he asked, “Did you lose your girlfriend?”

“Actually, I just met her a few days ago,” I said. “And I’m not sure when I’ll see her again.”