Aloha!

Yep, we know, it's been well over a month since we did any update, so we have some catching up to do! Here is the first of the Hawaiian islands we visited.

We arrived in Hawaii on the 5th February after an epic journey of 3 separate flights from Australia - never again!  As we went through a load of time zones, we went back 10 hours so we actually arrived in Hawaii before we left!  Weird huh!

So, first stop is the so called "Big Island".  We weren't greeted by the hula girls bearing leis as you see in the movies much to Rob's disappointment! But we were greeted by the sunshine and welcoming faces - it felt different already.

Black Sand Beach - can you spot the nude snorkelers!

We spent a bit longer on the Big Island than we originally planned as there was plenty to do and such a variety of things to see.  As we were booking most things at the last minute and accommodation was a bit hard to come by (its the busiest time there), we found ourselves zig-zagging across the island to do stuff.  We started on the east coast in a place called Captain Cook (yep, its named after the legendary English explorer - its where he died actually).  Turns out we did our best to follow in his footsteps on one of the days as we took a really steep hike and foolishly ran out of water on a very hot day - learnt from that one!  Not quite as bad as the older English guy though - he had to be airlifted from the hiking path - all very dramatic!  We did manage to see the Captain Cook Memorial though which was the purpose of hike ...

We also took a look at a funky Hawaiian style church - it was pretty neat and had been decorated in a typical Hawaii colours, so made a change.

The drive over to the west side of the island was nice enough - we saw some humpback whales spouting and breaching in the distance and stopped at a few nice places on the way, with the pick of the bunch being at Pololu, a beautiful lookout....

We arrived in Pahoa to visit the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park where we got to see the Kilauea Volcano erupting, sadly it was a bit cloudy in the evening so the view wasn't as clear as it could have been, but it was still pretty amazing to be so close to such an event.

We heard the locals talking about hiking out on the lava fields to see the active lava flow - as that's one of the things we wanted to see we decided to take the hike. We met up with a polish couple and wandered out there together, it was amazing - we got to see lava oozing down the rocks and into the ocean, popping and cracking as it went, not something you get to see everyday.  The lava beds themselves are pretty spectacular it's quite unbelievable that plants, fruit and many other things continue to grow here, also that people have their homes so close to the volcano and their landscape is entirely a lava field.

We tried out the snorkelling and it was excellent - the water was so clear and we got to see loads of colourful hawaiian reef fish, some came right up to our goggles and took a look inside - don't think they liked what they saw as they moved on quite quickly!  Our second snorkelling expedition was a bit rocky and rough so we got tossed about by the ocean, we managed to scrape our skin against the coral whilst the ocean was throwing us around.  Rob managed to get some sea urchin spines stuck in his little toe - great fun removing them!  We also got to see some Green Turtles too.....

Something we talked about doing before we got here was night snorkelling with Manta Rays, it did sound pretty special - scary getting into the dark open ocean but hey it's something you may only do once in a lifetime so we did it, and yep it was pretty special.  You basically float about and wait for the oceans gentle giants to appear and appear they did, so graceful and swimming so close to you it almost felt like they were going to touch you.  We have got a video clip of what we saw but blogger won't let us upload it - it is on Facebook though.

We took a trip up to the summit of Mauna Kea (a volcano around 14,000 ft above sea level which hosts a number of astronomical observatories), we got to see the sunset and had a tour of the stars, the stars here are really visible due to the clear skies and we saw parts of constellations that we never knew existed.

On our last full day we hiked out to the active lava flow again, this time with a Hawaiian guide so that we could see the sunset and the lava flowing as it got dark.  It was amazing, like a lava waterfall - a very memorable hike.  The dark walk walk across the lava field was interesting and it was amazing how the guide knew his way in the complete and total darkness.

We have really enjoyed our time on the Big Island, it's been very different to what we expected, the people are really friendly and we believe we will return someday and explore some more, as there is a lot more to see.

Next stop Maui - sounds interesting too and a bit more popular with tourists than the big island so we shall see....