Mea culpa. It was wrong, deeply wrong, to count my eggs before they had hatched. I guess I just assumed that people involved with Air Nauru--let's just say based on their performance on this issue, it's no surprise they lost their plane--would be at least slightly willing to help me find a solution to my travel problem. But no. Left up to them, I would be here in Nauru for the foreseeable future.

The flight this Saturday to Brisbane is the last they have scheduled, and according to the manager of the office here, who was sympathetic if completely impotent to help, the last they will charter for at least a few weeks. So it was this or nothing. But I can’t go to Australia--there is no connecting flight to Fiji that I can catch without having an Australian visa. Instead of offering to help get me an electronic visa, which even a travel agent can do, the Air Nauru people in Melbourne said that I have to apply for it in Nauru. Only the Australian visa office here is closed until Jan. 2. In short, they would not even let me board the plane. Unbelievable.

Not one person I talked to was able to help or recommend another option. I’m leaving Nauru on Saturday only because I kept snatching papers out of people’s hands. Through this I learned that the plane to Brisbane also stops in Honiara in the Solomon Islands, where I will not need a visa. Not where I needed to go, but closer to the rest of the world than Nauru. From there, by pushing and prodding and generally making a giant nuisance of myself, I forced the Air Nauru agent in Melbourne to book me on an Air Vanuatu flight to Port Vila, Vanuatu, on Jan. 5, which was my next destination anyway. I’ll skip going back to Fiji and will lose the cost of that flight and all six nights of hotel that I booked in Fiji. A tough blow, but more manageable than three more weeks here. So now I have to read up on the Solomons--I’ll be there for five unscheduled days. It was not my best option. It was my only option.

I guess it pays in these situations to be calm and creative and flexible and whatever. But I have to confess that several times during the three hours I spent in the Air Nauru office today I was a moment, a single synapse-firing, away from going all smashy-smashy and letting loose a torrent of blinding profanity and invective. And it would have felt pretty good. Now I’ll need a little time to let that frustration work itself out so I can see this island clearly enough to write more about it.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I won’t be sure I’m ever leaving Nauru until I see it receding into the ocean from the window of a plane.