We Made It!

So we arrived safely in Port Vila (Vila to the locals) after a long flight. All in all about 21 hours of travel. Just slightly longer than the drive from Fairview, Alberta to Vancouver, British Columbia, where we go every year to visit Carren's family.

We suspected it might take longer than usual for us the clear immigration so we listened to the Ni-Vanuatu (name for native people) sting band that was set up to greet the tourists and waited to be last in line.

After everyone else had chosen which line to go in, we got in the 'residents and citizen's line-up rather than the tourist line since we had arranged to pick-up our residence permits at the airport as instructed by the Immigration Office.

When it was our turn I told the agent who were and that we were informed that our residence permits would be waiting to be picked up from the airport. He took about one second to look around his little kiosk and then shook his head "no". I said, "are you sure, so-and-so from the immigration office said it would be here". He said, "wait" and got up and left. He went to a little office beside the kiosk and returned about five minutes later saying, "I tried to call so-and-so but didn't reach her". I'm not sure where he called since it was Sunday, then he said, "its ok, just go to the immigration office on Monday and pick them up". Then he stamped our passports and let us through. We had been worried since we were travelling on a one-way ticket and normal requirements for entry to the country are either a residence permit or a return ticket out of the country. Since we knew we were staying we didn't want to waste a couple thousand dollars on a ticket we would not be able to use.

After we got through Carren and I looked at each other and thought, "you've got to love the laid back island life!"