Getting to Tuvalu

Woke up at 3:15am and was in the shower before the alarm went off at 3:30am.  Helen generously volunteered to take me to the airport, and we were away by 4:02 – a dream run to the airport at that time of day.  Flight to Nadi uneventful, and I only had half an hour to wait for the flight from Auckland, with Heather, Shane, Hadley and Michael – all members of the previous team blown off Tuvalu by cyclone Pam.  The missing member was Roger, who had been on Fiji for the past fortnight, living with the natives, and trying to find the perfect spearfishing spot – Shane assured us that he knew he was booked in to the Tokatoka Resort that night.  Here is the team assembled at Tokatoka, minus Roger:

Roger finally arrived just as we were all headed off to bed later that night – he seemed to be on first-name-terms with many of the hotel staff.  I stayed up to have a beer and hear some of his exploits, while he had dinner.  Not quite such an early start the next day – the plane was due to depart for Suva at 7:30am, but from here on everything seemed to wait for us to be checked in with all our gear. Amazing to fly from one side of the main Fiji island to the other, and see all the uninhabited land – mountainous rugged country.  Although the same plane would take us on to Funafuti, all people and luggage had to disembark and be re-checked in for an international flight.  Here is the team in the transit lounge at Suva:

At the last minute we were handed some spare parts for a tractor for some other team on Funafuti.

Then, on the ground in Funafuti:

The landing form is a four part form, with perforations down the middle, both horizontally and vertically - each piece requires your full name, nationality and passport number, plus its other respective details.  Then the form is torn into its four constituent parts, and handed to four separate people - these four people are only required to be on duty twice a week for the two planes - but maybe the archiving of these forms is a more detailed operation.
Some of the welcoming committee:

The team settling in to our accommodation:

Our accommodation is the upstairs half of this house: