Hawaii: Surf's up!

Thursday 30th March

We set off from Queenstown bright and early, with Valerie and Rodney dropping us off at the airport and waving us goodbye. Having spent so much of our time in New Zealand in their company, it was sad to leave. Queenstown airport was very small, so we flew through check in and baggage check in no time and waited patiently for our plane to arrive. It was coming in from Auckland and arrived slightly late but the changeover took no time at all and we managed to depart early. We corkscrewed up out of the airport and could just about make out the features of Queenstown that had become so familiar to us over the past year. The flight up New Zealand gave us spectacular views of the Southern Alps and their numerous glaciers. Before we knew it, we were over the Cook Straight and descending into a showery Auckland. We made good time, which wasn't exactly the best news for us, as we had a 9 hour layover ahead of us at Auckland airport. The walk from the domestic terminal to the International one consumed 5 minutes. We'd attempted to check our bags for both our flights back in Queenstown but we'd been told that wasn't possible as we'd booked them separately however, Air New Zealand have a great policy that allows you to check in and drop your bags as early as you want, so we were rid of our incredibly heavy backpacks which was a huge weight of our shoulders. Rather than wander round the terminal building, we headed straight through to the departure lounge and preceded to sit around eating, reading and people watching until it was time for us to board our 21:05 flight to Honolulu. As we were ready early, we set off into the dark night sooner than expected.

Thursday 30th March

That isn't a typo, we did actually travel back in time. As we flew over the international date line at about 1am, we pretty much had to live the whole day we'd just had, again. Thanks to constant light turbulence, sleep on the plane was hard and by the time we arrived in Honolulu, 3 hours earlier than we'd departed from Queenstown, we were both pretty weary. We were just keeping our fingers crossed for a nice simple customs and border process, so we could get to our hostel and relax for a bit and get a shower. Any hope of a quick process evaporated the second we started talking to a border control guard. I can't go in to details for itinerary spoiler reasons but we were ushered into a holding room by an extremely rude woman. There was a couple of other people in their, one of whom was an Australian woman we got talking to who had no idea why she was in there. We waited for about an hour as there was only a single member of staff on duty until 8am but we were eventually called over by 2 officers who bombarded us with various questions about where we'd been since travelling, how we'd earned the money to travel for so long and about our future plans. We didn't want it but knew we had to go along to get along. Any attitude or out of place remark would probably have seen us deported. We were returned to our seats before being marched to a customs table downstairs where the humiliation could begin. In full site of every other traveller arriving at Honolulu airport our bags were gone through with a fine toothed comb. Everything we'd neatly put in them the day before at Queenstown was pulled out and strewn across a table for everyone to gawp at as they strolled smugly by. Charlotte and I just had to smile. It was at this point they got suspicious of our travels in Asia and countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia. Typical backpacker destinations to normal people but not to American customs officers. They were fairly convinced we were carrying drugs having come from them, although we wouldn't have got them in to Australia or New Zealand anyway and why on earth we'd keep hold of them for a year in New Zealand. We knew we didn't have anything anyway and once they'd got everything out and hadn't found anything, it was clear they were thoroughly disappointed. Eventually, reluctantly, they had to give in, stamp our passports and let us in to the country. The whole ordeal had taken about 3 hours and had really put us in a bad mood. We'd pre booked a shuttle to our hostel for 7am so when we finally made it into arrivals for about 10, we weren't convinced that we were still going to be able to get one. Fortunately Rodney (we thought that was pretty apt) was on hand to help us and they still had our name written down from not turning up for our earlier booking. We had a short wait before hopping on a minivan and being dropped off at our hostel in Waikiki, which is sort of a separate town just next to Honolulu. We were made to feel even less welcome when we were greeted by the owner of the hostel by him saying “ how did you get into my building?”. We just told him an old geezer had held it open for us, to which he said he would have a word. Still no hello or welcome, we had to wait until 3pm to check in but he did point us in the direction of where we could pick up the bus to get to Pearl Harbour. By the time we had found it though and then waited 20 minutes for one to come along, it was almost half 11 and our tour we had booked for 12. The bus ride would have taken us an hour, so we gave up knowing that we would never make it in time. Fortunately, the tickets only cost us the price of a small booking fee. We were incredibly annoyed, as if we'd been let through customs quicker and not treated like dirt, then we would have had plenty of time and probably even had an opportunity to freshen up before heading off. We got over it quickly though and headed off to find a coffee to wake ourselves up. After our caffeine hit, we wandered the streets of Waikiki for a few hours, where I picked up a pretty snazzy Hawaiian shirt, and took in the rolling waves of Waikiki beach. We made the mistake of sitting down on a bench to pass some time and both nearly drifted off into the clutches of jet lag. 3pm was incredibly close by that point, so we forced ourselves up and walked back to the hostel to finally check in. We knew we'd booked a private room but had forgotten it came with an ensuite bathroom, so that was a pleasant surprise and cheered our mood a bit. Rather than flop on the bed and crash straight away, we nipped to the supermarket and picked up our dinner on the way home, before finally treating ourselves to a bit of shuteye. It only lasted an hour though, which we knew would turn out to be a mistake later in the evening. After a visit to the kitchen to contact home using the wifi and another quick excursion to the shop for a bottle of water, we returned to the room for the big crash. Although, thanks to our nap earlier in the evening, it was a bit of a struggle.

Friday 31st March

Finally, after 48 hours, Thursday 30th March was over and done with. Our alarm awoke us for 7am which was a bit annoying but as we had a booking for 9, we didn't want to end up missing out on something else. We got some breakfast and headed along Waikiki beach to the Hans Hedemann surf school. We couldn't miss out on surfing whilst in Hawaii and had been sure to book a 2 hour lessons long in advance. We were apprehensive but excited too and once we'd donned our reef shoes and rash vest, there was no turning back. We were led out to the beach and met up with our instructor who turned out to be a complete moron. He offered no assistance when I asked about glasses falling off and string apart from to say try back at the office. There was no help there either, so I gave up and went back and was ready to give up and just let Charlotte go. That was when the morons boss came over, who turned out to be the eponymous Hans Hedemann, a seasoned professional surfer. He turned out to be really nice and helped with getting some string on my glasses just incase and then came out to do the lesson with us. That mean that the family of Japanese went to the moron to be pushed off, whilst Charlotte and I went to Hans. We spent a good hour and a half catching waves as they rolled in and either falling off and into the water very close to protruding rocks and reefs or just about managing to keep our balance and managing to lie back down on our boards. The string for the glasses turned out to be unnecessary, as they stayed on fine. Charlotte got the hang of it slightly more than I did, pretty much like everything else we do together, probably thanks to her previous experience of windsurfing. Typically, just as I was maybe slightly getting the hang of it, the time elapsed and we all headed in with our boards in tow. It had been a fun time, it had just been a shame to worry about the glasses problem when there was nothing to really worry about. When we got back to the shop, we were given a cd that contained all the photos they'd taken from they day, which was a bit of a bonus as we thought we were going to end up with nothing to show for all of our effort. Unfortunately, the photos won't be making an appearance on the blog just yet though, as we've no way to get them off the cd. After our lesson, we returned to our hostel for a quick rest, a change of clothes and some lunch before heading out for an afternoon stroll. We were heading in the direction of Diamond Head, which is a state monument and looms over Waikiki. Its an extinct volcanic crater and can be hiked up, so we deemed it a good thing to do for an afternoon. After initial trouble finding the right way to go, we found the entrance and started the walk up. We were surprised to find we had to pay to get in but it was only a dollar each, so we didn't kick up too much of a fuss. The path was in pretty poor condition but we managed to get up to the top in pretty good time. The views from the top were pretty impressive, we could see all along the south coast of O’ahu, which was name of the island we were on, all the way to the end in the east and as far west as the airport. Waikiki and Honolulu stood just below us and despite all the high-rise hotels and buildings, it didn't really spoil the view or look out of place. Once we'd gotten over the sweating, we headed back down for a cold drink and then headed back to Waikiki to relax. There wasn't an awful lot to do that wasn't surf/sea/beach related, so we were pretty happy we weren't missing out on anything. We were still in need of rest and sleep, having not quite caught up from the overnight flight but we resisted the urge to lie on the bed and snooze by relaxing in the kitchen and having an early dinner. Once we'd eaten, we ventured out into the night and headed down to Waikiki beach for one final visit. We'd heard one of the hotels put on a firework show every Friday evening, so thought we'd try and catch a glimpse of it. It was just a glimpse, as it was mostly covered by the tall buildings between us and it. We took a couple of snaps with the buildings along the beach all lit up and then walked back to our hostel to repack the mess that was our bags after our customs inspection. As ever, they just seemed to be getting heavier and heavier, although we were guilty of adding things. Eventually we could collapse on the bed and rest our weary bodies.

Saturday 1st April

We had another early starts in our hands though and our alarm awoke us at quarter to 6. With our bags packed we shuffled down to the roadside, checked out and waited for our shuttle to turn up. Despite reading horror reviews saying that they were always late, ours turned up bang on time. There was only one pick up after us, so we were off to Honolulu airport in no time. After arriving, we went through the usual bag dropping processes and then had about 3 hours to kill, which we did by sitting and watching the planes trundle past outside a window. 

Thankfully, the wait wasn't as tedious as the one we'd had in Auckland and it wasn't long until our gate was called and we boarded our slightly smaller than usual aeroplane. It was a prop plane but it also wasn't a normal jet plane. Before we could even blink, we'd taxid, taken off, descended no landed in the city of Hilo on the east coast of the island of Hawaii, or to ease confusion, the Big Island. Where we'd left clear blue skies on the island of O’ahu, Hawaii was slightly different with heavy grey clouds and pouring rain. It didn't dampen our spirits though and we ventured out to pick up our bus to the city centre. After a short wait it trundled up and we squeezed on with our backpacks. $2 seemed a bargain, so we weren't complaining about the cramped conditions. By the time we'd arrived in the city centre, the rain had stopped and we had a short dry walk onto our hostel. We were pleasantly surprised to find that not only could we check in 2 hours earlier than we thought but we'd also booked ourselves a private room for the next 3 nights. We resisted the urge to have an afternoon nap and ventured out into town to have a look at the Hilo farmers market. We'd planned our visit to Hilo deliberately around the market, although somewhere along the line our wires must have got crossed, as we were convinced the market took place on a Sunday and not a Saturday like it was. Just incase, we hunted it down and had a browse round the numerous stall it had to offer. It consisted of one part that features fruit and veg and 2 blocks that sold local arts and crafts. We weren't after anything in particular but still had a browse around for something to do. Once we'd had our full, we visited the supermarket that was just next door and picked up a few things that were no more expensive than they'd been at the market. It was then that we retired back to the hostel and crashed out, still suffering from jetlag. We spent the rest of the day drifting in  and out of consciousness and cooked up an interesting dinner of spaghetti, veg and gravy.

Sunday 2nd April

When we woke up, we were finally starting to feel as though we were adjusting to the time differences and sleep deprivation, although we still weren't in a rush to get out of bed. We decided to skip breakfast, as we had nothing in, in order to treat ourselves to an Hawaiian inspired lunch. Once we were ready to head out, we set about wandering the streets and quickly realised we wouldn't be getting much done. Everything was closed with it being a Sunday, so we headed down to the bay front and followed the coast round until we reached the large resort hotels. We were after a place where we could get what the Hawaiian call shave ice, which is like a flavoured ice cone but we couldn't find it for the life of us, so we gave up and walked back in the direction of the city centre, passing through the Japanese gardens on the way. By this time, it was pushing 1 o'clock and our stomachs were giving us grief for not giving them any food for the day, so we walked past the farmers market and found a restaurant called pineapples that had been recommended to us by someone who  worked at the hostel we were staying in. I'll mention now just how obsessed Hawaii as a whole seems with pineapples. It's in all the food, well stocked in every supermarket, it's on t-shirts, shirts, flip-flops, towels, curtains, even the lamp stands and gates at our hostels featured pineapples, so it was no surprise to find a restaurant with that particular name. When we arrived it was pretty packed out but they found a table for us, just next to the band playing the ukulele. We were after typical Hawaiian fare, so after receiving our locally brewed beer, we ordered from the specialities menu. Charlotte plumped for the island style tacos, which contained freshly caught swordfish with cheese, salad and, believe it or not, a pineapple salsa and I went for the Hilo local plate which had local ribs and pork with rice, potato salad and, you guessed it, pineapple salsa. The one thing that you can't fault America for is that when you eat, you really do eat. The plates were $14 each, which we thought was quite cheap and therefore they would be fairly small, but they were both huge portions and but the end, we were both struggling to finish them off. With tips expected in the USA, we left the smallest one possible and hit the road before the waitress found out. From then, we were at a loss with what to do with ourselves. Everything was closed and anything else that was relatively close by, we would be covering the following day, so we thought we'd make the most of our free time and continue to rest  around the hostel. We did venture out once more, to visit a shop that Charlotte had found but by the time we got there it was too late and had closed. Instead, we went to the shop, picked up some dinner and headed home. After about 20 months of travelling, we were surprised to find that we could still find new, simple things to eat for dinner and it has to be said that we’ll definitely be having pasta and sardines again.

Monday 3rd April

Today was our big day on Hawaii. We'd booked a tour that would take us to some of the more notable sites on the windward side of Hawaii. Unfortunately, we weren't staying in a posh enough place to warrant the van picking us up, so after breakfast, we had to walk half an hour or so to the fancy hotels out of town. Along the way we made a couple of quick stops, one at the shop we'd tried to visit the previous today but it turned out the arts and crafts on show were mostly made elsewhere than Hawaii. Second stop was a ukulele shop but when we got there it was closed. We weren't actually after one, as we had absolutely zero room in our bags for frivolities such as a ukulele, so it was probably a good thing it was closed. Finally, we stopped by a little piece of history in the town of Hilo. In 1960, the city was hit by a tsunami that had been caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile. The warning system in place in Hilo had sounded but not everyone had evacuated. After 13 hours or so had passed, the remaining people thought the danger had too and a lot had gathered on a bridge to see if there actually would be a wave. Eventually, there was and it was 33 feet high and the people standing on the bridge didn't fare too well. Quite a few people lost their lives but we weren't there to see a memorial. We were there to see a clock that stopped at the exact time the tsunami wave hit the town at 1:04 in the morning. The clock had been restored but the townsfolk had decided not to restart it as a sign of respect for the locals that died in the tsunami. From the clock, it was only a short walk down to the hotel we'd be meeting the tour bus at. We had about 20 minutes to wait before we were picked up by our driver, Ed. We did a lot on our trip, so I'll try and keep it brief so this blog doesn't waffle on too much. Our first stop was at Richardson’s beach park, which was just a little further out of town than we already were. It was notable for being a black sand beach, with the black there due to the presence of volcanoes nearby. We spent a little time at the beach, admiring the black sand and watching the waves crash over the rocks in the bay. Next up, we headed back through Hilo, straight past our hostel, which was annoying, as they probably could have picked us up anyway. We were heading for Rainbow Falls (not to be confused with Rainbow Falls in Kerikeri, New Zealand for you hardcore blog readers out there!), which was about a 5 minute drive out of town. It was a pretty standard waterfall but we can't help but always find them impressive; there were no rainbows to be seen though. Due to the fairly late start (11:00), our next stop was lunch, which we had at a place called Nane Mau gardens. There was a buffet on offer for $18 per person but we opted for our own packed lunch. After lunch we had one more stop before we finally got into the meat of the tour. We swung by the Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory. We drove through some of the 2500 acres of macadamia nut trees and then arrived at the visitor centre and factory. It was just a stop to bring money to the factory store, which I'll admit, we did by a small tub of Macadamias but we also stocked up on every free sample that was available to us. There was milk chocolate coated, dark chocolate coated, onion and garlic flavour, wasabi and tentative flavour, honey roasted in toffee but we ended up buying just the basic dry roasted with salt, which we deemed by far the best. Once we'd purchased out nuts, we headed out and peered through the tinted windows of the factory that gave a glimpse onto the production line of the nuts being roasted and packaged and then some being covered in chocolate, inspected and then dried. After half an hour, we were all back on the bus and ready to move on the the main event of the day, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Our first visit was to the volcano, Kilauea. It doesn't sound too exciting however it was actually erupting when we arrived and had been for the past 30 years. It wasn't spewing lava 100 feet into the air but we could just about make out the glowing red of lava in the crater. It wasn't much but it still took our breath away. After having about half an hour at the crater, we spent the next few hours driving around the park and looking at various volcanic features such as craters, lava flows and collapsed holes. The flows were something to behold and we could walk on them and pick up small pieces of cooled lava. The guide was unamused when I asked him if it's frowned upon to take a piece home and he told me I would incur the wrath of the fire goddess Pele if I did. I wasn't too worried about the goddess, it was more the border guards at the airports I was afraid of, so I left it where it was. We were able to duck into what used to be cooled lava that had bubbled out of a vent in the ground and had left a mound and we also got the chance to walk on what was the old highway that had been destroyed by the eruption of Kilauea. From the old road, we could see all the way down the side of the volcano and way away in the distance where one of its current erupting vents was pouring lava into the sea and creating a large plume of steam. From the road we turned round and headed back towards the peak of the volcano, where we stopped off at our penultimate stop of the tour. We walked down some steps and through some rainforest and made our way through an old lava tube. A lava tube is an old flow of lava, where the top layer has cooled and the remaining lava within has flowed out and left a hollow tube. It was an eerie place to walk through but also one of the highlights of the whole trip. After the lava tube, we paid one more visit to the summit of Kilauea, where the darkening of the skies helped show off the red glow of the lava a bit more. It seemed the evening was peak time though and we had to push our way through crowds in order to get a glimpse of the crater. As 3 of the group were flying out from Hilo airport after the trip, we were on a tight schedule, so we had to leave the crater at 18:45 to arrive back in town in time. We dropped the group of Aussie’s of at the airport, 2 of whom had rather cheekily got engaged at the summit of Kilauea, before we were dropped off at the hotel. We escaped without tipping (why should we when they won't pick us up?!) and walked the half an hour or so back to the hostel, past the interesting collection of Hilo life, one of whom was bashing a hockey stick against a lamppost.

Tuesday 4th April

We'd got the majority of our bags packed the night before for our trip across the island of Hawaii. We were catching the bus and were ready and waiting at the nearby bus stop well before 9. We were picked up about 20 past, which was slightly late but we couldn't complain seeing as we were only paying $2 each for the 3 hour journey. We arrived late but were told the connecting bus we needed to catch would be along any minute. An hour passed and it was nowhere to be seen and the other people who were after the connecting bus had long given up. After almost an hour and a half, we gave up and walked a short distance to a nearby shopping centre to get alternative transport. There was still a half an hour wait for the Kona trolley to come along but we still knew it would actually be turning up. We eventually got to our hostel at about 3, so the whole journey had taken us around 6 hours and we weren't overly impressed that the hostel was a fair distance out of town and we were an hours walk away from the nearest supermarket. On top of that, we also had numerous other issues, like how do we get to and from our excursion the following day but that would have to wait. We had various options to get to the supermarket, like bus, hitchhike or trolley but we sucked it up and went for the leisurely walk along the main road. It didn't quite take us the whole hour, which was good but it was incredibly humid and sweaty, which wasn't so good. We stocked up on plenty of pasta, sauce and veg for the following couple of days but were getting more and more dismayed by the lack of baked beans there appeared to be in America. It had been our plan to get the trolley back to the hostel but the wait was so long, we just walked back instead and arrived almost a whole hour earlier than we would have if we'd waited for the trolley. At half past 6, we could finally relax for the day, although we still had our transport issues to deal with, although our dinner took precedence.

Wednesday 5th April

We awoke to our final full day in Hawaii. The time had flown, despite gaining the extra day coming across the International Dateline. We had really enjoyed ourselves though and had seen and done some things that we wouldn't never have believed we would do. We still had one day to enjoy though and so after breakfast, we walked the 2 and a half miles into town, simply to have a look around. Charlotte was on the look out for a souvenir to take home but didn't want to buy anything for the sake of it. To give ourselves a break from looking round the souvenir shops, we walked to the Kona brewing company, in order to quench our thirst. We went for a pineapple IPA and a lavaman red ale and thoroughly enjoyed them both. To finish we shared a pint of lager between us, which was also pretty tasty before settling the bill and heading off. We tried to buy a couple of pint glasses on the way out but the cashier made up some story about them not having any and then said I wasn't able to purchase the ones we'd just drank out, so we gave up and headed back into town. In hindsight, we should have just stolen them. After our liquid lunch, we moved on to what was a liquid pudding in the shape of some shave ice. Shave ice is a popular Hawaiian sweet that is exactly what is says on the tin. It fine, shaved ice that is then flavoured with colourful syrup to make it tasty. Charlotte and I picked 3 flavours each, both opting for pineapple as one of ours and then sat out the front of the shop and attempted to eat it before it melted all over us. We achieved this but only by utilising the handy straw that came with the sweet treat. After so much liquid, we were incredibly uncomfortable but we'd really enjoyed the beer and I enjoyed the shave ice slightly more than Charlotte. We spent the rest of our time in town continuing around the shops but eventually left with nothing, despite the tremendous urge to by a ukulele, just for the hell of it. We thought it best to save the money we'd spend on the trolley back to the hostel, so walked back. We had a couple of hours to kill in our schedule when we arrived, so we had lunch and tried to get this blog up to date ready for posting. When the time came, we donned our swimming costumes and caught the trolley to the end of the line. It was there that we picked up our evening excursion, which was a night swim with manta rays. We were given some prescription goggles, a wetsuits each and we joined up with around 26 other people, who were split between 2 boats. By the time we were out on the water, it was pitch black and we only had vague outlines to follow to see where we had to go. The guide explained that the manta rays feed in that particular location due to lights facing the water from the nearby hotel on the shore. The lights attract tiny plankton and the manta rays feed on the plankton. The time came to take the murky plunge and it was a bit of shock to the system at how cold the water was. Eventually, we acclimatised to the water temperature, got the hang of the breathing through a snorkel for the first time in well over a year and swam over to a large float that we could all cling on to. The float had lights which attracted the plankton and therefore attracted the manta rays. It didn't take long for a huge black manta ray to glide past just below us, feasting on the waiting plankton. For 45 minutes we floated about, clinging to the raft and watching the occasional manta ray swim past and before we knew it, the time was up and we all had to reboard the boat and head in. We didn't manage to get too many good photos, as it was quite dark and we were more focused on watching the spectacle in front of us. Back on dry land we were given some cookies for a bit of energy and we dumped our wetsuits and all went our separate ways. Unfortunately, we had to bite the bullet and get a taxi back to our hostel from a nearby hotel. It came to $17, which we told ourselves we'd saved by walking to and from town over the 2 days we'd been in Kona. 

Arriving back signalled the end to our Hawaiian adventures, which was sad but we were looking forward to some cooler weather.

It's at this point that I'll write up half of the lyric clue that will give away our next destination. I'm well aware that the majority of people who read this blog will already know where we are going but it will allow you to get the hang of the concept. In case you don't know, it's quite easy.

“When the Sunday sun….”

Mahalo

James and Charlotte