Qatar, Australia, Fiji, and Kiribati--Introduction

On the road again!

Even before I had planned our last two trips, my wife said that she had always wanted to take a train trip across the Australian outback.  Spending two and a half days on a train looking at nothing would not normally top my list, but I agreed to do the trip because:

1. I am a good husband 
2. I took a trip to Southeast Asia earlier in the year without her
3. It's a trip

My only requirement was that since we had previously been to Australia, we needed to also include at least two countries that I hadn't been to.  The train trip that she wanted to take was the Indian Pacific, which runs from Perth (on the west coast of Australia) to Adelaide (in South Australia).  After Adelaide, we wanted to see Melbourne.  So we had to fly from Raleigh to Perth, and then from Melbourne back to Raleigh, and stop in two countries we hadn't been to.  (We didn't *have* to, but I wanted to).

It turns out that the cheapest fare from Raleigh (or anywhere on the east coast) to Perth was on Qatar Airways, which stops, amazingly enough, in Qatar!  So, problem one solved.  I then discovered that one of the cheaper fares from Melbourne to Los Angeles was on Air Pacific, with a stop in Fiji.  Both Qatar Airways and Air Pacific allowed multi-day stopovers so we arranged for a couple of days each in Qatar and Fiji--mission accomplished!

But wait, there's more!  The flights we booked on Air Pacific included a nonstop from Fiji to Los Angeles.  About 3 weeks before we left, I got an email saying that we had been switched to a flight from Fiji to Honolulu with a stop in Kiribati (a collection of islands in the Pacific).  In Honolulu we switched to an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles.  Kiribati, being approximately the size of a postage stamp, is nevertheless an independent country, so it would count in my quest for 100 countries--but only if they would let us get off the plane there. (I have my standards, you know).

So, below is the route we took:

For those of you keeping score at home, Perth is as far as you can go from Raleigh and still be on land.  Our flight from Washington to Qatar (you didn't think there was an RDU-Qatar nonstop, did you?) is 12 hours, and the flight from Qatar is 11 hours.  After that, it was a piece of cake.

Enough of the details, on to Qatar!