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Although we are home and struggling to adjust to the 17 hour time difference, we wanted to share our adventures in Fiji with everyone. Let’s just say we wrote this entry in “Fiji Time – no worries, no hurry”! The last leg of our trip was 9 days in Fiji just to relax and enjoy…

CURIOSITIES On every journey we take we run across curiosities. Curiosities are observations that are somewhat unusual for us. The following are curiosities worthy of mention. While in the Los Angeles we observed a woman on a wheelchair. She was moving through the concourse with no visible means of assisted motion and she was not…

When we were in Brisbane, our tour director confirmed why , even though we’re all speaking English, sometimes we don’t quite understand our Aussie friends. The reason he gave – Australia and the United States are separated by the Pacific Ocean and a common language! And our bus driver further acknowledged our confusion by stating…

Our Guadalcanal tour ended on August 9th with a flight back to Brisbane. There we met up with our Australian “mates”, Carol and Greg. We met them in 2012 on our first river cruise. Since then we’ve taken several trips together and keep in contact with Skype. They joined us at the airport hotel in…

Today is our last day on Guadalcanal. The final excursion was to Coffin Corner which is the part of Edson’s Ridge where John Basilone’s heroics won him the Medal of Honor. It had rained overnight and the track we were taking was steep and muddy. Cory chose to stay with the bus while Jim headed…

As our time in Guadalcanal comes to an end we would like to share some of our experiences and thoughts about the people of the Island. What Guadalcanal lacks in economy and industry it makes up for by the people who call it home. The moment we stepped off the plane and were greeted by…

Today we headed northwest to Cape Esperance, the northernmost point on Guadalcanal. Throughout the Battle for Guadalcanal the Japanese landed reinforcement troops here and it was from here that the Japanese left the island for good. There was also a sea battle off of Cape Esperance. The godfather of one of our group was the…

After the American Memorial and the Coast Watchers Memorial ceremonies we returned to our hotel for a late lunch. We joined several of our fellow travelers in searching for the monument to Signalman First Class Douglas Munro the only member of The United States Coast Guard ever to receive the Medal of Honor. Douglas Munro…

After the memorial service at the American Memorial we went directly to ceremony honoring Solomon Scouts and Coastwatchers. Prior to the war the Royal Australian Army created a network of “Coastwatchers”. They were mainly Europeans who remained behind enemy lines to notify the Allies about Japanese aircraft, naval, and ground forces in the area. These…

The Battle of Guadalcanal, which took place from August 7, 1942, to February 9, 1943, was a critical turning point in World War II’s Pacific Theatre. As the first major offensive by Allied forces in the Pacific, the battle aimed to stop Japanese expansion by gaining control of the strategically vital Guadalcanal Island in the…