To be honest, when we were booking our flights, the only reason we stopped in Hawaii was because the lady selling us the flights said it saved us £500 to stop here. Having no idea what was there other than a few beaches with good surf we thought we should book more than an overnight stopover! So 10 days it was!
Split between 3 of the 4 main islands of Hawaii, we did some incredible things.
The first place was to visit pearl harbour, the home of the Japanese surprise attack on the US naval fleet mid WWII. The biggest and the best American battleship (USS Arizona) was among the casualties and still lies on the bottom of the harbour. The area above it has been turned into a memorial. The thing we learnt that the whole attack came down to was because the Americans were a bit stupid and cocky and the Japanese took them by complete surprise and incapacitated them before they could do anything about it! They didn't say it that way as they wanted to keep some American pride, but essentially...
Also during WWII, on top of a lot of the mountains on Oahu, they built radars and now you can walk up the incredibly steep hillsides up to the points they were. From the top you could see whales swimming in the ocean. We even took a bit of a whale watching cruise to see them a little closer and could see a mother and baby humpback chilling out!
The pacific islands are abundant in all kinds of sea life and especially sharks! So we thought it would be a good idea to jump in the water with 15 of the 3-4 metre Galapagos species of them! We were in a cage and it was all very exciting. When you head was underwater you could even hear whale song from somewhere in the distance! That was amazing! So amazing that as I was getting carried away taking photos, Gill saved my hand from being bitten off by a shark that snuck up from behind us! This really happened! Gill even saw the eyes roll back before it goes in for the bite. But lucky, we were too speedy for it and made it back to land, all limbs intact.
Maybe it was because I was getting carried away with the photos, or maybe it was because of lack of sleep whose to say? The night before, we had no accommodation booked as online places would only accept bookings for longer than 3 nights so we thought we would drive up to go and see what we could find. It turns out, nothing. Everywhere was full other than a 5 star resort which cost $900 per night so we thought we could just sleep in the car. All very well. We had done this back in NZ. The difference here was that we were in a smart car! With all of our bags. These fitted perfectly well in the boot but wit no possibility of the seats reclining, it was for a very uncomfortable and restless nights sleep! That could explain the shark incident? Probably not.
Keeping with the water theme, we also went night snorkelling with manta rays when we went over to the big island! To see these 16ft wide fish swirling and looping so elegantly it was beautiful. Just don't think about the sharks when you look out into the pitch black water...
The big island of Hawaii is one of the most volcanic places in the world! We saw loads of lava flows that had engulfed hillsides and taken out roads! We even managed to catch a glimpse of molten lava which was very exciting!
But by far the most beautiful island was Kauai. This is where Jurassic park and over 16 other big Hollywood productions have been filmed. And as only 20% of the island can be explored by car, we thought we would get a helicopter ride to explore a bit. And it is beautiful!! We flew over a huge canyon (the grand canyon of the pacific), beautifully impressive cliff coastlines, officially the wettest place on earth and even Julia Roberts new $16m house!
Hawaii has certainly been a very pleasant surprise and a lot more than beautiful beaches, although it does have them too! But we now have to say goodbye to the sun and heat as we are heading to Canada and the Rockies, in the winter!
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