After 5 days on the beach in Fiji we felt like we could have stayed a few days more…. But it was time to go, this resort was majorly busting our budget and we had our tickets to Honolulu.

So on May 17th in the morning I got up early to go for a short hike up the mountain next to our resort to get a last glimpse of the beautiful scenery from the heights: soft green hills of the surrounding islands bathed in turquoise blue waters, we could see up to the main island 42 miles away. Not bad…. Went back to the resort for a last dip in the ocean, then showered and hopped in the boat for the 5 hours ferry ride to the main island. A bus ride to the airport where we had 5-6 hours to wait for the 8 hours flight to Honolulu. All together a full-day journey. Little did we know….

It was not going to end there. See Marcel had registered online for the Visa waiver program that allows Swiss citizens to enter the USA without a visa. He just sort of disregarded the small print that said “valid only for people without a record with the US Immigration”. Ha. Ha. Ha ha. So when we arrived in Honolulu we both showed up at the immigration desk where they stamped my passport within seconds, no eye scan nor finger prints needed thank you I’m Canadian. Then they scanned Marcel’s passport….and ushered us to the back office. We thought this would be a question of minutes like it had been in the past, Marcel would explain his story of overstaying his tourist visa by 2 weeks 15 years ago and we’d be on our way. Well he did. And then the officer went to check this. And came back. And Marcel explained some more, that after he overstayed he got a 10 year visa which was in his previous passport and had in the meanwhile expired. The guy went away again. Then came back. More questions and explaining. This went on for a while until the end result came out: Marcel had only been allowed in the USA in the past years because of the visa he had, and since that was expired, he was now not allowed in. Lovely….we were going to be sent back to Fiji on Pacific Airways! Or not? Seeing that we were not going to say Aloha to Hawaii this time we mentioned this was a stopover on our way to Canada, if we could please be deported there instead? Luckily we had our tickets to Toronto already booked, so the immigration people took the details down and got us re-booked on flights out for that same day. In the meanwhile we’d been in the immigration office about 5 hours, eating instant noodles they gave us and reading in the waiting room. More waiting later one of the immigration officers escorted us to the Continental check-in counter and hurried us through security, because with all their paperwork we were just going to make the flight. On the way to the gate I had about 5 minutes to call my sister and tell her we were not arriving next week as planned….but the next morning. The immigration officer handed out Marcel’s passport and transfer papers to the airline and we boarded priority. Then on our stopover in Chicago we (I should say HE, ’cause I was a free woman, Marcel not) could not transfer gates alone, Marcel had to be escorted to the next flight. With about an hour stopover it was not very convenient that the flight attendants called the Chicago police instead of the airport’s immigration office…. We had to wait for this huge policeman and his partner to arrive and then realise he had nothing to do with this case, and then wait again for the immigration guys to show up and drive Marcel to our gate in a minivan while I had to run around in the terminal with all our hand luggage. Too bad, because I missed the movie worthy comment of the immigration guy: “now I’m not going to handcuff you and I’m keeping my gun where it is, hopefully you don’t do anything stupid.” Isn’t that super? At least he was living up to the american standard, the immigration guys in Honolulu had been way too nice and accomodating.

Do I need to precise I was relieved to read “Welcome to Canada” when we landed in Toronto and Marcel had gotten his passport back?