We did this at the end of our National Parks leg of our trip and we thought it might be fun to do the same now that we’ve finished our Hawaii leg too. We have each done a round-up of our highlights without conferring, and based on a few different categories which are below. Si’s Picks Best island I’m going to go with Maui for the best island, which was the fourth and final island we visited. This was the…
Following our long and busy day at Haleakala National Park we decided to have a few leisurely days, and by leisurely I mean beach days. We visited two beaches, one we’d seen on a previous walk, Polo Beach, and Makena Beach which was a bit further down the coast. It was lovely and hot so we spent most of the time in the sea. The Maui Country Band The one thing that has been a bit lacking in this trip…
We set off quite early at around 7.30am this morning to drive the 1hr30 to the top of Haleakala, the extinct volcano that forms the vast majority of the island of Maui. This felt like a bit of a return to our hiking days round the west coast National Parks in Utah and Arizona as by the time we’d reached the 10,023 foot summit, it was much colder, windier and wetter than it was down at sea level where we…
We arrived on our 4th (and final island stop in Hawai’i) yesterday so there is not much to report so far, therefore this is just a brief update. Again, we had a very short flight from the Big Island to here which took all of about 25 minutes in the air. The descent was pretty bumpy due to the windy conditions (which resulted in some passengers personal items hurtling down the aisle!) but aside from this, it was another straightforward…
Sorry for the lack of blog posts the last few days, we’ve had a couple of long days visiting the East coast of the Big Island, which is about 2 hours drive or so away from where we are staying on the West coast. This island definitely feels a lot bigger than the others we’ve been to before! Volcanoes National Park On Sunday we set off early at about 6.30am to get over to the East coast to visit the…
We have been on the Big Island for a few days now. This is our third Hawaiian island stop (after Oahu and Kauai). It’s called the Big Island because it’s the biggest (and youngest) of the islands. All the other main islands we’ve been to/ are going to, would actually all fit in the area of the Big Island…a fun fact for you there. You can tell it’s a lot bigger as a lot of the places we’ve earmarked to…
Over the last few days we’ve had a real mix of long, difficult hiking and chill out time by the pool or at happy hour. Ha’ena State Park and Hanakāpī’ai Waterfall On Sunday we went to Ha’ena state park which is on the North shore of the island, and requires you to get a shuttle bus from a park and ride area just to get there. Because the shuttle is booked in advance and it’s a very popular place to…
We took a helicopter tour around the island and it was AMAZING! I’m not going to lie, I was slightly nervous about the trip having never been in a helicopter before, but a few minutes in those worries slipped away (we had a great female pilot) as I was swept away into the beautiful scenery and breath-taking views that you just wouldn’t get from anywhere else. We took the “Grand Skies Island Tour” which is a 55 minute tour around the…
Today we decided to get up early at around 6.45am to go and watch the sunrise from our local beach. It was a bit of an early start but worth it, right opposite our Airbnb so we quickly grabbed our beach chairs and walked over after the alarm went off. That same day we had booked on to one of Hawaii’s most popular excursions, a “mounting tubing” trip which takes you down a former irrigation system of the Līhuʻe Plantation….
Today we travelled to our second Hawaiian island – Kauai (nicknamed the “Garden Isle” because of how lush and green it is) and my first impression of the island was how different it was to Oahu. This is the picture of what Hawaii looked like in my head before coming here – very much a tropical island. Anyway more on this later… Let’s go back to the flight from Oahu to Kauai. It took all of 21 minutes. After take off,…