Hopping Islands

It was in the early hours of the morn that I set off to catch the famous Island Hopper!

We were a merry crowd in the waiting lounge, with colourful mumu-type dresses, Hawaiian shirts and flower crowns galore. The plane was a Boeing 737, much larger than I had expected, but it was also rather filled with many large polynesians.

And as the sun rose over Hawaii, we set out on our journey back across the Pacific.

A little under 5 hours from Hawaii, but back into to future on our side of the date line, we came in over Majuro, serving as main city for the Marshall Islands chain.

What Majuro does not appear to have is very much land–

– But we were all relieved to find the runway was more than sufficient for a plane of that size, although we did have to do an U-turn at the end to get back to the terminal, as there is really wasn't any room to make a special taxying area.

About half the passengers got off here, and they kindly informed the rest of us that we could remain on the plane should we wish … but that the bathrooms would be closed for cleaning. That affectively got everyone off, and we had a 30 minute rest in the small passenger lounge area.

We had definitely stepped into a new little world here. The little food stall was selling a strange assortment of Japanese/Chinese and American snacks as well as batches to local dried bananas.
And there were large signs up everywhere indicating it was forbidden to spit Betel nut or "Copenhagen" onto the walls and floor.

When they had finished refuelling, they started boarding with handicapped people going first, as is proper. Then after they had wheeled the two old grannies out to the plane, a technician came back in to ask us to wait a little longer, as they had discovered the walkway was not at the right height for the plane. …. One can only hope they discovered this before dumping the grannies into the plane!

The next stop was Kwajalein, which is a US military base, and so were weren't allowed to take photos. From the air, it looks much like Majuro, but with a much larger atoll, so that you can probably barely see the other side when on the ground. We were also not allowed off the plane, so we all just stood up and wandered around the isleway a little.

Luckily, they refuelled rapidly and were were off again, for my final stop, Kosrae. I was unfortunately on the wrong side of the plane to see the Island approach, but I've been told it looks a little like King Kong's Island.

And so after an unplanned stopover in Hawaii and about 10 hours of hopping between Islands, while being careful not to spit Betel nut on the walls, I had finally arrived in Korsae!!