Over the course of my life, i've been on a lot of planes. Like, a LOT of planes. Factor in all the family vacations, flights to Utah/Texas to spend time being the favorite aunt and bonding with my bestie a couple times a year, trips home from school for the holidays, etc. and it adds up to way more than I can count. I have grown to love airports and flying and all the jazz that comes with it. I think its absolutely amazing that we can get from one side of the world to the other in such a brief period of time. I can promise you that when you're traveling from across the world jumping from plane to plane and traveling for 24 straight hours that it doesn't FEEL very fast, but boy i'm sure it is infinitely better than braving the seas by boat! Anyway, I was lucky enough to ride on the smallest and the biggest planes i've ever been on during this trip.
10 planes, 7 airports, all in 26 days. SLC to LAX. LAX to Nadi. Nadi to Tongatapu international. Tongatapu domestic to Eua. Eua to Tongatapu domestic. Tongatapu domestic to Vava'u. Vava'u to Tongatapu domestic. Tongatapu international to Nadi. Nadi to LAX. LAX to SLC. Thank goodness flying doesn't terrify me!
Yeah baby, travel time! I was so excited to get some cool new stamps in my passport.
Here's the really big guy. The 747. My first time (I think?) on a double decker plane. And we even got to ride on the second floor on our return flight home! It is just so overwhelmingly massive. 416 passengers. Several HUNDRED TONS of weight. Traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Over 30,000 feet in the air. Say what? Insanity.
From Fiji to Tonga we took a more normal sized plane, but the international airport is about 1/100 the size of any international airport you'll find in the states. Plus it was super fun to take the steps down off the plane like you see the cool people do in movies :) Maybe we felt like movie stars for a moment.
We spent our fair share of time in airports, and we got smart about always packing a book with us. Especially when we were traveling between the Tongan islands, because these airports have just got nothin' to 'em. In this picture you can see the entire Tongatapu domestic airport. No joke, that is all there is to it! Get this: as we checked in we had to step on a scale to make sure that we wouldn't be putting too much weight on the plane! And luggage? Yeah, YOU try packing a week's worth of stuff into one backpack. It ain't easy, folks.
That. That was our plane! 16 of us, 16 seats. It was a perfect fit, minus the fact that I was too tall to stand up straight on the inside! Our flight to Eua lasted less than 11 minutes from takeoff to landing, which was super cool to us. However, we rode in this same plane to Vava'u, which was an hour long flight, so we had our fair share of time in the fun-size plane.
So small we could see right into the cockpit and out the front window.
Ready or not, lets do this thing!
And then of course we had the cute tiny little baggage claims to look forward to on the other side :)
Gotta say, never thought i'd use the words "cute" and "baggage claim" in the same sentence.
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