The first day of our holidays, finally. After months of waiting I thought it would never get here. Packing needs to be done, and the house needs to be cleaned. Worst of all: We need to take the girls to their holiday address: Les and Ruth. I'm sure they will have a great time there, but still don't like the fact that we have to uproot them just so we can have a holiday.

We dropped them off around 9 am: Lisa seems fine, Kay is real scared and stressed. Back home to finish packing and getting ready. Before we left for the airport we went to check on them. Lisa has the run of the house by now. Kay seems to settle a bit once she recognised us. She even went exploring. Now I'm comfortable in knowing they both will be fine for the 5 weeks we're away.

On to the airport. We had a good run through, no problems handing back the rental car, and check-in was fine. tax free shopping is not all its cracked up to be. Things are cheaper when purchased with tax paid than at the airport 'tax free'. We had a bit of a wait: We had an airplane, all food & luggage were aboard, but the aircrew was yet to arrive on a delayed flight from Auckland. They had fog in the morning and all flights were delayed. We ended up leaving at 7:20, an hour after its projected departure time. We made good time tho, and arrived at midnight, only 30 minutes late.

Shuttle took us to the Oakwood Manor. An airport hotel. Small rooms, narrow corridors: the suitcase barely fit in sideways. Fire doors opened in the middle, which made navigation with bags hard. We were in bed at 1 am. Wake-up call for 6:30 as we had a 8 am check-in to make for our flight to Hawaii

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Waking up just before the wake-up call, getting ready for our first long flight. Check-in was a bit of a wait, line was long, however it went really smoothly. We had to get an "airport tax exemption" thingy on our boarding pass. You have to pay cash/credit when flying out of Auckland. Not sure about the other airfields. Shopping at the airport here was definately more interesting than in Brissy. The layout of the airport is nice. You have a foodcourt first, with some other shops, then though customs and after customs you get a shopping 'avenue' after which there are a few eateries, and then the terminals. Logical flow and nicely setup.

The 10:05am flight left at 11 am. The back of the plane boarded first. Boarding went nice and quick. The flight was uneventful. Some small turbulence half way through. The pilot climbed above the weather and all was well again. Beautiful sunset, unfortunately no photos as the camear was packed inside one of our bags (hand luggage, but hard to get to).

The thing that surprised me, when looking down at the Pacific: You know there are waves, and you see the structure of waves from above, however, they are stationary, or atleast they appear chissled in the surface of the water, not moving. From 10km up things just look a tat different.

The guy behind us had long legs, so I'm afraid I have permanent knee-prints in my kidneys. The flight landed 9:20, only 5 minutes late from our original itinary. Oh and we crossed the date-line on the way there so....

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So far we'd dealt with the efficient immigration/customs of Holland, Malasia, Australia and NZ. Then we got to Hawaii. It is a whole different kettle of fish there. It took us 2.5 hours to get from leaving the plane to opening the door to our hotelroom. The wait at customs was long, but not as long as the wait at the check-in counter at the honolulu airport hotel. Which is situated next to a highway. No bar, no drinks no nothing in the room, or in the hotel. There were a few vending machines in the hall. So we were in bed by 11:30 with a scheduled wake-up call at 6 am so we could check-in at 7 for a 9 am flight. Even inter-island needs a 2 hour check-in. We both could feel the fatigue kick in by this time.

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Honolulu looks much like Brissy in vegitation. At the airport, the back-drop is like it is at Palm cove, but with more buildings. The floors are dirty with chewing gum everywhere and the airport is very 70s style.. We checked our bags in and went to have breakfast at the airport. There was really one place to have breakkie, that is if you don't count burger king. We went to "stinger rays" or something close to that. oh and they turned on music in the airport: Sound track to the Blues brothers.... that'll be right, now they'll have muppetshow as in-flight entertainment *sigh* At te moment We're sitting here waiting for our flight for Kona to depart. In an open hallway. Temperatures are around the 26C. They have the aircon going full speed inside so we're sitting outside. Its nice to wear summer clothes again.

Ok back again, well the in-flight entertainment wasn't muppets, there wasn't any actually. The flight lasted barely 30 minutes. The airport here in Kona is different. No terminals, just the tarmac and sets of stairs. There are a number of huts etc and thats about it. We disembarked the plane and waited about 30 minutes for our luggage, then the shuttle bus to the car rental.

The car here is a bit of a challenge. First of all: Its a small 4 doors car, according to the rental place. Its HUDGE (for a small car). Its an automatic, with the gearstick on the wheel. If you want there can be 3 people in the front seat. There are 3 sets of seatbelts in the front. Duane is having a bit of problems finding everything. This car does not have a handbreak. Its got a foot break instead. Also, it locks all the doors as soon as you take off. You have to put it in "P" mode before it allows you to leave. This only goes for the passengers mind you, not for the driver. Lights come on and go off automatcially.

Thats not the only weird thing here. Toilets are half filled with water. You do what you need, (which then floats and circulates in the bowl) and when you flush some more water gets added to the bowl. First time I thought it was going to spill over. Then some suction thing kicks in and sucks all the water right out of the bowl, including its content. There are even toilets that do this as soon as you lift your bum. That scared me silly the first time.

The hotel is nice. We're at the outrigger hotel here in Kona. There isn't much in the way of a white sandy beach. Its got all black lava-rock. Pretty to look at, but hard to walk across. Lots of fish, which you can see from a deck. The water is chrystal clear. We'll be going snorkling someday, just here in the bay. The people are real nice. It is funny tho, some people can sound soooo insulting here saying 'sorry', I don't think I know how to do that.

Oh last thing before this day is over: We went to dinner last night. The menu confused me: It had "appetisers" and "entrees". It looks like the US is the only country that hasn't quite figured out that an entree is a starter and that a main course is a main course. They actually call the main course an entree. Mind you, the entree was large enough to share between a family of four. and the appetiser wouldn't be wrong for a main course for one... Tomorrow we're going to the volcano national park. More then :-)

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Boy this diary writing is sure challenging. Today was a day full of impressions. Its hard to know where to begin.

We got up early as it is a 2.5 hour drive to the volcano national park. The road to it is basically highway 11. This might be called highway 11, but its more like a country road. Winding and up and down in places, straight as anything in other places. Surprisingly enough Duane had to pull over a few times to let people go past... He wouldn't do that down under. Speed limit signs are confusing. They have two kinds: One tells you the maximum speed, the other the minimum speed. They look a lot alike, and are not placed near one another.

Hawaiians are pious people. One village had 5 churches, all different denominations. Oh and on that subject, the drawer next to the bed has both a bible and 'the teachings of buddha'. No Koran tho.

Getting to the volcano national park, we first went to the visitors centre. We watched this introductary movie. Did you know that Hawaii gets about 200 inches of rain per year? Thats about 5.10m. That comes to an average of 9.5 cm per week. I think we got about half of that today... It rained most of the day.

The big island is one of stark contrasts: In places its real barren, then you turn a corner and there are beautiful palms, flowers, trees, gasses etc. The lushiousness we generally associate with Hawaii. The barren places are all black. Its all lava. Yet, in the cracks there is the beginning of new life. It is truly amazing here. Flowers are georgeous, and plentyful. Besides this contrast: the island is small in comparison to Australia. A 2.5 hr drive was considered long by locals. "make sure you take the whole day". We had rain in the volcano national park. Lots of it. It was cold, and chilly and the water was blown straight through our ponchos. Yet, in Kona, where we were staying, the day was sunny and hot and people were complaining about that when we got back. The two mountains keep the rain on the other side of the island.

Now to the volanoes. Thats why I wanted to come to the big island. We didn't get to see actual lava flow. I wasn't too interested in that anyways, that stuff is dangerous. We went on "crater rim drive" and parked at a look-out spot. It had a sign "0.8 to lava tubes". Me not thinking that this is the US and all measurements are in miles not in Kms, I suggested we walk there and back. In our ponchos, with our cameras ofcourse. The lookouts gave us great views of the steam vents in the crater. it was a real shame it was soo foggy and rainy, the visibility was not good at all.

We walked to the lava tubes, walked through them, walked back up, and I , in all my wisdom, decided that we should take the other route back to the car. (there were two ways to go, I thought the second one went along the crater rim some more). This path led down the crater, to the crater floor. With steam-vents and cracked surfaces and all. It was amazing. Like a moon landscape, but with ferns growing out of fissures. Oh, this crater last erupted in 1956, but is still active, Where the steam was coming out, the ground was hot. Stepping over fissures, you got some hot air playing around your legs. With the cold wind/rain that was quite pleasant. We crossed the crater floor, and this contained the two kinds of lava the Hawaiian people have named " a'a " and 'Pahoehoe'.

After climbing back up to the crater rim, we walked the rest of the circuit. All up it took us about 2-2.5 hours. At the end we were cold, wet, hungry and about 75 photos richer *grins* We then continued around crater rim drive, and took the chain of craters road. This goes past a number of now semi-active volcanoes and through places where recent eruptions have travelled through. They have been dated. The road stops where the 1985 eruption covers the road. From that point it is about a 2km hike to a point where you can see the steam of lava streaming into the ocean. You can see the red of the lava, but only at night. We didn't go that far. there were soo many people there, too crowded. Parking was only on one side of the road and nearly a km away from the entry point. It would be nice to do sometime, but on a better day with nicer weather. Instead we drove back and stopped at lots of places to take pictures. Lava is fascinating stuff. When you walk on the a'a lava, it sounds like fresh snow under your shoes. Paoehoe lava can take strange stringy forms, If you look closely you can see the different colours of different minerals in the lava, it is however, predominantly black.

After this we started our trip back to the hotel. We stopped at black sand beach. Which is exactly what it states: A beach of black sand. Basically weathered down lava particles. It is not as fine as the sand on the beaches of Australia or Holland, but it does resemble a beach more-or-less.

So now we're planning our trip for tomorrow. We're going to the north of the island. Wei'pio Valley. More then.

oh and a few more oddities: All Americans we've come across here have been nice, pleasant, helpfull and really cheerful. Nothing like our previous experiences :-) Lets see if it sticks all the way to indianapolis.

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Our second day in Hawaii was again spent driving and walking and taking photos. We went up to the north side of the island. The trip there there was again the obvious difference between the areas on the islands. Lots of lava fields, and the areas of the island which obviously get less rain than other parts. The vegetation on this side of the island is no where near as pretty as on the south side. On that side is far more variety in flowers and plants. Here its more cultivated and just the whole atmosphere seems different somehow.

We went to Waipi'o Valley today, it is georgeous to see. We didn't actually get to go into the valley. It is only accessable by 4wd, and we didn't have one of those. Duane suggested we do the trip walking, and ofcourse, said we didn't need our hiking boots. So on our sandals, down a slippery wet long steep side of the valley. He fell flat on his bum once. I hated every step as it was really hard to keep my footing. My leg muscles were shaking. Our driveway is easy compared to that. The sights were georgeous tho. I wanted to go further into the valley and look around, but due to rain earlier in the week the roads into it had turned to slushy mud, which were hard to walk through. We waited down the bottom and hitched a ride up with someone.

After this we decided to go for a drive a bit further along the north coast of the island towards Hilo. A winding road along cliff-faces and definately a beautiful drive. Yet, I find this side of the island far less attractive than the south. It reminds me a lot of north queensland, but then badly managed re: invasive plants etc. There does not appear to be a lot of visible biodversity in plants in the north, where in the south there are soo many different flowers everywhere.

We went to this thing on a map we had where there are 3 cascading waterfalls, and this was on privately owned land. They were charging for access, $11 us per person!!. We decided against it and went about 5 minutes down the road to the national park which was at the base of the bottom of the 3 falls. You can't see the other two from there, but still spectacular and totally free. I took some nice photos.

The one experience we had which still causes me to giggle: We had to get some petrol as we were running low. We went into the petrol station. The pump thingy has a gazillion buttons. You can feed it your credit card, or pay inside. Then trying to get petrol: the thing wouldn't work. I went inside to ask, and ofcourse they looked at me asif I was retarded. I had to pay for my petrol before I could put it in my car ofcourse! (I got a bit flustered, and mentioned, how do I know how much I'm going to spend if I don't know yet how much is going to go into the tank?) the lady behind the counter looked a tat exasperated and said she would unlock it but we better pay afterwards. *strange people, americans*

It was a good day all-in-all, but not as impressive as the vulcano national park. Tomorrow we fly to chicargo and then on to Indi.

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ur last day in Hawaii. At 5 pm our flight to Chicargo is due to leave the airport in Kailau-Kona. Today we spent packing, checking out and shopping in the tourist district in Kona. Every other store is a jewelry store. They all sell pearls and opals. Expensive and mostly very over-the-top. There were some nice things, however, we were good and didn't buy anything exept a chain for Duane (no pearls and/or opals).

During this trip we will experience lots of diffent airports. So far, the international airport on Kona is definately the more confusing of the lot.

Picture this: You arrive, and you walk to the counter to check in. You are then told you have to have your luggage checked by the departement of agraculture first to make sure you don't have any plant material/fruit in your luggage. Then you check in. They weigh your luggage, do your tickets and then give you your luggage back. You have to take it to a conveyer belt yourself where the luggage gets checked for explosives etc. Then you go through the check-through process where you have to take off your shoes etc, and they make sure you do not have metal on you. Then you get to go into the "tax free" zone at the airport. The airport at Kona consists of a few huts. Its predominantly open-air. Signing is sparce at best. Boarding 'any' airport happens though external stairs. They do not have those walkway thingies.

We were upgraded to economy plus, and for anyone flying long trips: consider it. It gives you a little bit extra leg-room and makes a long trip better managable. This flight, as it was considered a national flight, did not have any food available, you had to buy it all. Weird, but ah well, atleast we were forewarned so we brought sandwiches.

Arrival in Chicargo on time, on to our flight to Indianapolis. That went rather smoothly besides a small delay due to heavy weather. Checked into the hotel, which is located in an old railway station.

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