Adventures in Hawaii....

Dinner at Bubba Gumps....yes, it really was called Bubba Gumps, from the movie!
see all photos »

The trip started interestingly enough…we arrived at the airport for the 9.30am flight to Honolulu….only to find that the flight had been delayed till 12.30pm, but they gave us a meal voucher, so we sat and had a leisurely breakfast at the airport.

After the hard part of saying goodbye to my family and friends, I headed through the customs gates to start our adventure….

The flight was interesting. other than being very full, we had some hostesses who were cranky as! Unfortunately everyone had told us that Canadian Air were good to fly withand although the flight wasn’t bad…it wasn’t that great either. They had movies on, but they had only one big screen at the very front of the cattle class section…ad as you all know, we aren’t the tallest of people…. But that was ok, we entertained ourselves (and others!) playing Kanga-Chain…it’s like the “Barrel of Monkey’s” game, but with Kangaroos instead…..Thanks Naomi!

Can't get over the size of these trucks....they were everywhere! I hailed this guy down when we were walking home for dinner so we could get a piccy of it!
see all photos »

Arriving in Honolulu at 1am, needless to say we were cranky and tired…but by the time we got through customs etc…it was close to 4am when we finally got to our hotel. After having a few hours sleep, we headed out into the streets of Honolulu to try to organise our flights to Hawaii (The Big Island)…Firstly we tried booking over the internet, but the airline wouldn’t accept bookings from Australian Credit Cards less than 24hours before departure…..so, we thought we would try a travel agent….although everything else was open, there weren’t any travel agents open on a Saturday. So, we ended up just jumping in a cab and going out to the airport in the hope we could get a flight…which luckily we did….Yeah! We did have to pay more for it that way, but at least we learnt a valuable lesson! And we met some really nice people who tried their best to help us out, including the hotel offering us a late checkout of 6pm.

Trying to book a car...
see all photos »

The flight to Kona from Honolulu is about 40 minutes and it was great to finally be able to put our bags down and know we would be there for at least a few days. Our hotel the King Kamehameha was excellent, close to everything and right on the water. After the frantic first 48 hours of our trip, we decided we needed a beer….so we headed up the street to see what mischief we could get ourselves into. The place we found was called “Bubba Gump’s Shrimp”….from the movie Forrest Gump…..but the food was good, the atmosphere was friendly and the beer was cold! We ended up staying there till closing, chatting with random people at the bar, as well as the bar staff.

Exploring the lava tubes...they were amazing!
see all photos »

One thing we couldn’t get over was the “Monster Trucks”…. These trucks were usually something like F350 or equivalent and they were jacked up so high, our heads were about inline with the wheel arch. The following day, neither of us were much good…I think it was a combination of jetlag, weird tasting food and too much alcohol….but, it’s ok Mum….we drank plenty of water and slept for about 15 hours the next day!

The next couple of days, we basically hung out in Kona….just wandering the streets and seeing what was around, until our last day. We hired a car and drove to the Volcano….with Saraid navigating and Cath driving…we managed to get ourselves there safely….although driving on the wrong side of the road is slightly daunting initially! The volcano is amazing, especially the Lava Tubes…it’s like something out of a movie!

The view from the dive boat...this is where they did a lot of the filming for the t.v. show "Lost"
see all photos »

From Kona we flew back to Waikiki, Hawaii….where we spent close to 10 days after we had extended our trip twice! Waikiki was great…we found a really great bar where we soon found ourselves being called by name and treated as locals….the bar is called Dukes and sits right on Waikiki Beach….it’s a perfect place to watch the sunset (with a cocktail in hand…of course!)

I also managed to squeeze in some diving on the western side of the island where there are underwater lava tubes….it was truly an amazing experience…as well as slightly scary! Aside from the lack of safety procedures on the boat, (the equipment they gave me was too big and when I jumped into the water the first time, I got smacked on the back of the head with the tank…..I had a lump for about 10 days after…they also decided I didn’t need a snorkel???)… there was also the tiger sharks….which I didn’t know about until I surfaced and one of the dive guides was talking about the 18Ft tiger shark who was sharing the water with us… But it was amazing to see the lava tubes and to be squeezing through several metres of tubes that were pitch black with only around 60cm between the rocks above and the sea floor…it really was an amazing experience!