Holiday within the holiday: Day 3

Up at 5am for the short flight to Honolulu. Heather was well pleased after being given the choice of hire car and selecting the Fiat.

FIRT

Ever since she visited Edinburgh in 2009 and spotted a car with what looked like FIRT written on the badge these have provided a kind of in-joke and shouts of "firt" nearly every time they are spotted. They are actually reasonably popular in NYC and they have only imported the sporty models.

First stop was the Nu'uanu Pali lookout for views over Honolulu.

I discovered that there's lots of Japanese tourists in Honolulu. One of the streets has a luxury row of shops, Gucci, Burberry, Prada, etc after one another catering to these visitors in particular.
In the same way New York has a lot of signage in English and Spanish, Hawaii has signs in English and Japanese especially in the high tourist areas.

Even in Honolulu you notice a slightly more of a city feel especially compared to Kuaui.

Another of Heather's old friends now runs the Hawaiian Chip Company along with her husband. So we stopped of to visit their building and came away with some purchases and freebies including some freshly baked chips, mainly taro and sweet potato. We subsequently had to carry a bag full of these packets of crisps all the way back to NY as excess hand luggage. Luckily we made it look like we'd just bought them in the airport.

We spent most of the rest of the day in the massive Ala Moana shopping mall. I discovered it was the largest open-air shopping mall in the world and is sadly Hawaii's most visited destination!

We did a little drive past Waikiki Beach and the Diamond Head area and then went back to the mall for dinner.

The airport was only 7miles away and in normal conditions we would've left in plenty of time to refuel the car, hand it back, get the shuttle bus to the airport and get on our plane, however.....

It started pouring down with rain just as we were coming back to the mall. While listening to the radio in the car we discovered that a couple of the roads had flooding and combined with rush hour traffic we were at a standstill for a lot of the drive. Thus we got to the check in desk about 15 mins before the flight was due to depart, the last flight of the night.
But I guess due to that more relaxed way of life and the general friendliness of everyone, it wasn't a problem and in fact the flight was delayed 10mins while they waited for the other half dozen passengers to arrive. There was only about 30 people on the little propeller plane.

Home by 8.30pm and just in time for one of many meals with the many visiting members of Heather's family!

Holiday within the holiday: Day 2

Day 2 featured a special trip.

One of Heather's old college friends is a pretty pretty smart guy, and works at the observatories up on top of Mauna Kea. "Normal" visitors can drive to the top and go inside the viewing gallery but with our special access pass (no actual pass was given) we got a mini tour. This really was right up there with the coolest things I've ever seen & done.

While packing my bag the night before we left for this mini island trip I did a little reading on where we were headed and was somewhat shocked to discover how high we were headed, around 14,000 feet!
A quick temperature check revealed it to be around 3 degrees but with a low wind, hopefully that would be the same when we got there as I had only really packed light clothing.
Indeed, Mauna Kea is technically the highest point on earth if measured from its undersea beginnings. I put it in perspective for myself by discovering the amount of ascent we covered that day would be over three times that of Ben Nevis. The fact we drove all but the last 200m doesn't make it any less cool, ha ha.

The 100 mile drive from our hotel was the opposite from the day before, both in direction and in scenery. A lot of it reminded me of Scotland, with a lot of greenery and highland-type roads.

We drove our hire car on the regular surfaced road up to the visitor centre around 9000ft where we met our "guide" Mark and spent 20 minutes there to acclimatise to the height. He then drove us up to the top in his truck. Around 50% of this part is on a very loose gravel road complete with scare stories of tourists driving over the edge when their brakes fail on the way down after they overuse them and the lack of oxygen can't cool them down enough!

And then inside on our special tour!

A lot of the technical stuff went over our heads but seeing the largest observable telescope in the world is gonna be impressive no matter what you learn or already know.

Cue jokes of that's not a camera, THIS is a camera.

We learned about the plans to build another mirrored lens three times larger than this one and why the temperature inside the telescope had to be kept at zero, so much for warming up inside!

We walked back inside and happened upon them cleaning one of the mirrors.
Threat level AMBER indicated not to go in, ha ha.

About 200m on a trail path to the side of the observatory is the actual high point so if course we couldn't go all the way up and not walk that.

In the end I felt okay at altitude (40% less oxygen apparently) not even out of breath just a little sore headedness, but this could have been hunger and before heading down we both had what at the time tasted like the best food EVER as we enjoyed a Cup Noodle at the visitor centre.

The scenery on the way down was pretty desolate, lots of volcanic rock by the roadside.

Kapu signs signify sacred land

We got back to Kona late afternoon and spent a little time walking along the beachfront promenade. It's a little touristy of course, but in a really nice old-style way.

THE Ironman

Hawaii's first church

Hawaii style shopping centre

Sunset then food before collapsing back at our hotel after 10pm. Apart from borrowing a cool box, we didn't get to use any of the facilities at what looked to be a really nice resort!

Holiday within the holiday: Day 1

Heather and I did a bit of island hopping. We spent two days in Kona on the Big Island and one day  in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. The flights are only about 35 minutes and I got to see the slightly funny departure gates at Lihue airport, where the weather is so good that you are basically sitting outside under a roof.

The good news was after we got our hire car I got to drive, for the first time in ages! The bad news was we covered nearly 400 miles in the two days!
It was barely 10am and because we couldn't check into our hotel until 4pm we set off straight away for one of the three main places we had planned for the short visit.

The City of Refuge was a sacred place where ancient Hawaiians could be absolved of crimes... if they could make it there. The weather was scorching but the restored site was pretty impressive.

A quick stop for food at a superb roadside BBQ place, thank goodness in this day and age for the phone maps and Yelp app. I don't know how you'd find places like that without a smartphone as they are not very visible from the road and at this point on the island there really wasn't much choice.
The next 80-odd miles round the south of the island had even less! One small town and a lot of volcanic rock.

The main tourist stop for today was the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, a World Heritage Site and sight of the world's most active volcano.

As you enter the park then drive round towards the main visitor centre you can see the hot steam just coming up from random areas alongside the road, but not too close to the road! It whets your appetite for what is to come.

Even though the weather had changed and was now a little cloudy and damp the site that greets you as you walk round the corner at the visitor centre was still pretty awesome.

You get to learn interesting snippets of Hawaiian history such as the Hawaiian volcanoes were considered sacred by the Hawiian people and the Halemaumau Crater pictured served as the site of Pele, goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes.

Unfortunately we couldn't stay until the sun had set in order to see any glowing lava and the road further round was closed. There were also warnings to be careful about leaving your windows open especially if it gets windy as the sulphur smells pretty bad and there can be a lot of acid rain.

The landscape was real barren as you'd expect.

But then after heading slightly further around the park drive you hit a more tropical area where you get access to the walk through the Thurston Lava Tube.

Out with the smartphone on the 100 mile drive back to find some food and then we finally checked in around 9.30pm, shattered.