Armed with 2 litres of Patron and an equal amount of sunscreen, we began our journey into the unknown today. It began at around 6:00 a.m. with dogs barking at my sister's house in Auburn. A typical morning there! Now we're sitting in the airport in LA waiting for our flight to the Cook Islands.

We caught a shuttle to the airport and the flight from Sacramento to LAX went pretty smooth. Even our overweight luggage went undetected:) The check-in for our Air New Zealand hit a bump that we expected to hit in the Cook Islands, but their computers picked it up right away. We are staying longer than 31 days and this requires a special Visa. I knew this, but was under the impression we just paid a fee to Immigration when we arrived and everything would be OK. Since they caught it here in LA, we would have to deal with it here. The ticket agent told us there were two options. Immigration would approve an extended Visa, or they would reschedule our departure a few days earlier from the islands. This wouldn't have been horrible since it would have meant a little more time in Fiji. And after all, we're on vacation ... who cares where we spend it?

Well, out ticket agent must have said the right things to Immigration because not only did they approve the extended Visa, but they didn't charge us the extra $70NZ each for it!!! Life's looking pretty good through these eyes right now.

That's about it for now. Next posting will definitely be from the Cook Islands.

Happy trails,

Eric