Dahna: We decided to hire bikes for a couple of days (US$20 a day) and just stay based at the hostel for a few nights. We rode five miles up a pretty steep (well steep enough) hill to Kaumana caves. Not a very long ride, especially considering Jono's brother (ode to you Martin) is currently riding around eastern Turkey to Syria and Lebanon to Iran, Central Asia and onwards to Russia. BUT it was enough to make my legs feel it after having not done much exercise since leaving home. The caves were only marked by a small road side sign [View Full Entry]

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Dahna: As we flew into Hilo and did not see any high rise buildings, we both breathed a sigh of relief. Less tourists, and lower key. We had to catch a taxi from the airport though which was a little unexpected drain on the wallet, as there were no public buses and we had a bit too much gear on us to walk comfortably. It cost nearly US$20, and it was only a 4-5km drive to the hostel we were staying at. The friendly taxi driver was about the tenth person to tell us we'd need to rent a car in [View Full Entry]

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Dahna: After a good sleep (thank-you sleep-gods ;-) ) we caught a touristy shuttle bus and went out to Hanamau bay to go snorkeling. We realised later that we could have caught a public bus that got pretty close to the bay, but we were time pressured and still hadn't quite got into shoestring mode. So, excuses aside, it was ok - we got dropped off and picked up two hours later. The bay is an old volcano crater with a reef and a pile of coral and fish - some species unique only to that area apparently (I'm told, unique [View Full Entry]

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Dahna: After a long flight including a particularly long and uneventful four hour stop over at Fiji airport, we flew into Honolulu sleepless. We decided to take a 12 day stop over in Hawaii to absorb a final bit of summer before heading into Canada's almost eternal winter. It almost didn't happen due to some complications with the US embassy, but that is too boring to go into. Cheesy, busy, tacky and touristy would be the first words that come to mind about Honolulu, unfortunately, but you can also see the tropical island underneath there - somewhere. Not at 8am in [View Full Entry]

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