We arrived back at Port Denerau with Ashley and Dominic in depressed mood after being torn apart from their sweethearts on the island. We looked around Port Denerau because the shops were duty-free. We made some last minute purchases before eating out with a wonderful view of the harbour. It was really sunny day and we were soaking up the atmosphere. It had a farewell feel about it and we knew our travelling was coming to an end.

We hailed a taxi to our last hostel Smuggler Cove and it was a mixture of backpacker's hostel and a small but smart hotel so we enjoyed hotel-standard facilities with backpacker's prices because we were staying in a dormitory which house about 30 travellers but it was comfortable and not over-crowded as Beachcomber Island was.

The first thing we did was to sample the world cup fever hitting Fiji because today was Fiji ruby team's first group match against Nambia. Rugby is a national sport in Fiji so there was plenty of interest in the match so we all watched it in the hotel's bar. The atmosphere was good especially that Fiji was winning handsomely. We then relaxed on the beach and had dinner before even larger crowd made up of mostly English travellers gathered to cheer our England Rugby team on. The atmosphere was even more jovial and our boys nicked the win at the last couple of the minutes!

We spent rest of the evening playing a quiz that I created about our experiences this summer. We also decided to have a midnight swim (with our clothes on!). The girls chickened out but the boys were game and we were rewarded with pleasantly warm sea-water.

Next day was even hotter so we hit the beach and lazed around. We also packed our gifts and clothes, a horrendous experience for me because after packing Sara wanted to borrow a book which was in middle of my rucksack After frantic disassembling and re-packaging, my task were completed half hour before our taxi were due to pick us up. I had a quick shower before we hit the airport.

The security was extremely tight because it was 10 years anniversary after the horrors of 9/11. I was really terrified because my beard hardly did me any favours and I got off to an uneasy start in my journey through Customs when after saying I didn't have any deodorants the attendant took out one of my bag and gave me a look. Luckily I realised it belonged to Sara and she accepted my explanation.

We got to the departure lounge and to our bemusement there were a huge tent planted in the middle of it. The people were queuing up to it rather nervously and occasionally the slit in the tent opened and a hand slide out rather sinisterly to beckon a person in. We joined the queue and my fears were aroused when I saw a guard with a rubber glove but I whizzed through inside the tent without any problems. The guard went through my bag and waved me off. Dominic and Ashley had more trouble than me (The girls were in a separate tent for gender reasons)

We got in the plane and took off for the first leg of our 26 hours journey. The journey were rubbish, I can't sleep and when I turned to the inflight entertainment to whittle these long hours away, the bleeding screen won't even start and when it finally switched on, the system behaved like someone with Tourette and randomly flick itself through the menu all of the time.

I then struggled through the flight before eventually landing in LA. The landscape lived up to my expectations. It was a hot day and the airport was in a middle of a desert. The airport had hundreds of terminals and soon enough when we were lost, the directions were rubbish and we eventually got directions off a rather stereotypical burly black security guard who manhandled our bags as they were a bunch of pillows.

We then checked in and boarded our last ever flight armed with sweets we looted from America's overflowing candy shelves. The last flight's in flight entertainment were a disappointment because only two movies were subtitled and I already seen them both. We decided to gang up on a steward to complain and we were rewarded with a first class goodie bag which entertained me for ten minutes when I read the ingredients of a champagne.

I eventually stumbled across a subtitled dodgy Arabic movie buried deep in the foreign language section. Eventually the airport wheels bumped on the tarmac and within minutes we were breathing the English air and our feet met the English soil for first time in two and half months. Our great adventure had come to an end and we had come home.