In Kiribati, the immigration office seems to have the lead on this process, and we submitted our letter requesting permission to visit a bunch of islands when we cleared in. In Kiribati we were requesting islands south of Tarawa, so we did not request to stop outbound but rather we planned to come back to Tarawa to check out. A couple days later we went back to the immigration office and picked up our approval letter, and then we took it to the customs office near the wharf, so that they could prepare their own approval letters, which we picked up the next day. We requested to stay up to 14 days at each island, but we were granted only 10 days. We requested several islands, and it seems like the ones who only requested a single island were granted the requested 14 days.
When Lauri and I went to immigration to pick up or letters, we asked if we could pick up for all the boats, which would save everyone another ride out to Bairiki. However, I guess we had in mind that all the letters would be prepared already, and we’d just pick them up and go. Instead, we waited about 2 hours while they prepared each letter, answering questions about gender of different people and helping the immigration officer decipher some of the handwriting. Unfortunately, they didn’t do our letters first, because if so we might have just bailed. Lauri is a really nice person, so she probably never would have suggested it, but I pretty much just put it out there that once we got our letters we should just go. It turns out she was on board with that. On the bright side, our time sitting there gave us a chance to get to know each other a little better. So, after that she knew that I’m the bitch that didn’t want to wait for everyone’s letters. And she was OK with that.
We took the bus to the egg farm and then decided to walk back from there. At one point we were standing in some shade having a rest, and we must have looked lost, because two women in a car stopped to give us a ride. We quickly accepted and escaped the heat with a quick ride back. Lauri gave them some flip-flops as a thank you.
Gresham Family Exodus 