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Hawaii? FIne thanks.

The 6 hour flight from LA to Honolulu arrived just before midday. As we approached to land, we were surprised at how big Oahu was and how many high rise buildings there were. At the airport, we boarded the bus to Waikiki, where we had booked a hostel just one block from Waikiki beach. After checking in, we went for something to eat before getting our first taste of Hawaii's beach bathing. Waikiki beach is very busy with a line of high rise hotels all the way along it. It turns out that the beach is actually artificial and the whole area was a swamp before it was developed for tourism and loads of sand was shipped in. The sea, however, was warm and it was hot and sunny (in October) so we were happy enough.

The hostel was lively with a lot of international travellers and we spent most evenings sitting around the communal space watching games of beer pong and chatting with the other folk. Over the next few days, we tried some boogie boarding in the waves at Waikiki and went snorkelling at nearby Hanauma Bay which is a protected lagoon with hundreds of different fish of all shapes and colours. in between times we just lay on the beach or floated on the water on lilos. All very nice.

After we had got used to Waikiki, we decided to visit one of the other islands in the Hawaiian chain, The Big Island. Not surprisingly, this is the biggest island and the newest. It is also still expanding as lava constantly flows into the sea making the island bigger. The flight from Oahu to Big Island only took 30 minutes on a small 50 seat plane and allowed us to see the other islands as we flew over. As there wasn't much transport on the island we hired a car for the week and found some places where we could camp. The first place was just outside Hilo and was actually another hostel but they also had a camping lawn which was good as it was cheap but still meant we had all the hostels facilities. The following day we began our tour of the sights of Big Island (Hawaii). Our first stop was Rainbow Falls, where a rainbow shone in the mist of water, followed by a walk around a botanic garden where we took loads of pictures. One of the highlights of the day was stopping at What's Shaking?, a smoothie shop in the middle of nowhere where we both had an amazing thick fresh fruit smoothie. On the way back to Arnotts Lodge we stoped at Big Island candies where you are given a coffee and a free sample on entry and are then left to wander the rest of the shop searching for further free samples which are lurking amonst the products. We took on the challenge and probably scored highly, especially at the chocolate coated animal cracker shelf. On our return to Arnotts we discovered that there wasn't an oven to heat the pizza we were looking forward to.... microwaved pizza washed down with red wine is actually quite pleasant!

The next day we drove to The Hawaii Volcanos National park, stopping on the way at the Macadamia nut factory where we could watch and learn how the nuts are processed, flavoured or covered in chocolate and packaged. Again there were free samples and we bought a large bag of chocolate coated mis-shapes, very tasty. Leaving the factory we stopped to pinch a few nuts from under a tree. At the national park we visited the Lava tube, a tunnel where lava once flowed and then drove along The Chain of Craters Road, stopping to take photos of the barren lava covered land and petroglyphs created by ancient Hawaiians. The road finished abruptly where the lava had crossed it so we walked across the lava flow to where we could see in the distance the current lava activity, a large steam cloud rose from the point where the lava flowed into the sea. The following day we took a four mile hike into a crater where we walked across lava rock and stood over steam which was coming out from the centre of the earth! We drove to a glass making work shop and walked around a bird park where we saw two chickens!! In the evening we drove to the closest place we could get to the lava, unfortunately we were still quite far away but as the evening light faded we could see the lava reflected in the clouds of steam. The next few days on Big Island were spent recovering from a collosal hangover; hiring bikes and visiting the farmers market in Hilo; discovering spam sushi - sushi rice in a cuboid block with a thick slice on spam on top - mmmmm and enjoing the guest appeciation night at Arnotts Lodge where they fed us free beer and take out pizza - hurrah! We also drove over the highest road, Saddle Road, which cut between the two largest volcanos on the island, fearing we would run out of fuel.

Once back on Oahu we spent two nights in the hostel by Waikiki before getting the bus up to the North Shore where we stayed at the Backpackers hostel, a collection of rather run down cabins which we shared with the local ant colony. The beaches here were much quieter and at Waimea beach we went snorkelling and saw a massive turtle. We stayed at the North shore for 3 nights, visiting different beaches and watching the sun set at Sunset beach. This part of the Island is popular with surfers, the most famous break being the Pipeline. Back at Waikiki we took a free trip to Pearl Harbour which was really interesting and played crazy golf at The Big Kahuna 3D golf course where you had to play under under ultra violet light wearing 3D glasses, very disorientating. In the evenings we ruled the dart board and won at our first ever game of beer pong. It was then time to pack our rucksacks and head off to the airport where we would leave the USA and travel to Fiji.

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