An Open Letter from Bernie and Rita post Maui Vacation.... Aloha dear friends, Almost everyone has the experience of some sort of vacation - the Initial Planning, the Anticipation, The Day One Departs, and the End! When Rita earned her Sabbatical last year we settled on a month in Maui, HI and afterwards a month in Seattle. How time flies...we are back home in Seattle and we thought we’d share a few memories from the Isle of Maui with you. Although we are very familiar with the island since we have made many trips to it starting in 1982, we had [View Full Entry]

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Where would you find one million gooney birds and forty-five humans all living on a historically significant island? Yes, it’s Midway Island, five days from Tokyo and two days from Hawaii. As we went ashore, we couldn’t believe all the albatross with their chicks on every square inch of this ten mile long island. Midway is mainly known because of the battle of Midway during WWII. Today, it is a bird sanctuary under the US Department of Fish & Game. It also acts as an emergency stop over for jumbo jets between the US and Asia. We were only the first [View Full Entry]

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I write about Wai’ki’ki over a week after I left. Had such a cool time in Hawaii that I didn’t write. Then I got to Fiji, no electricity on the islands I was staying on. So from memory this is what I did. Day 2 Wai’ki’ki. Split the cost of car hire with Neil and Dean, a Londoner and Edinburghonian who I met at the Hawaiian Hostel. Travelled around the whole of the island, drove again for the first time in ages. Every few miles there would be a sign that said, “scenic view parking”, we’d pull in and ou and [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Honolulu airport with very little knowledge of Hawaii save Magnum PI in the 80's and I used to work for a company that choose an Hawaiian name for itself - Kokua Communications - the word Kokua in Hawiian means Help (more or less). The company went bust after about 18 months, after a long and drawn out funding process that from one day to the next changed from "We're funded" to "We're doomed". So long dot com. Arriving in Honolulu on Wai'ki'ki beach I instantly realised that this is a big tourism centre. I have never seen so [View Full Entry]

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Just got back from a week in Hawaii. It was my second trip to the Hawaiian Islands but my first to the "Big Island." We spent our entire time on the Big Island. It's an island with a bit of everything. It's large but yet not that large. You can easily drive all around it if you don't take stops and plan on a long day. We of course didn't do that because I need to hike to my waterfalls and stop at every point of interest worthy of a photo. September 24, 2002: Arrived on Kona via Honolulu at around [View Full Entry]

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Exploring the big island was both fun and relaxing. The big island has many different climates and scenery to explore! Erin snorkeled for the first time here and we found that exploring the sea was just as fun as exploring the land. [View Full Entry]

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Last leg of our 2 1/2 week stomp through the Hawaiian Archipeligo. We visited the Kona coast, Purchased a beautiful woven coconut straw hat from a local and enjoyed the perfect weather. The tour buses on the island are called Jack's tours, i asked the bus driver if i could get in the driver's seat and take some pictures... suspicious at first he agreed after telling him my name. [View Full Entry]

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The first day we went up to Haleakala crater to catch the sunset and learn about the massive volcano that flanks the south eastern side of the island. Travelling up the side of this massive volcano we passed through 5 diferent bio zones from temperate rainforest to desert 10,000ft up. The next day we hiked across the crater - the hike took 11 long hours. At that elevation with no cloud cover every part of your body has to be protected from the sun, the tops of my hands were very sunburned by days end. The endemic silversword (pictured) is an [View Full Entry]

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more to come [View Full Entry]

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more to come [View Full Entry]

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