North coast of Big Island

Everyone a little tired this morning but still awake fairly early. The room's not well air conditioned and the beds a little hard - well, in my opinion anyway. Dad went looking for a laundromat while mother bathed, packed and went looking for a supermarket.

It wasn't really that far away, but a few groceries add up. I was also conscious that time was ticking away, but in a strange supermarket with goods and brands I'd never seen before, it was hard to hurry. I even walked past a tank of live lobsters waiting to be chosen as somebody's meal (in a supermarket?).

Under the weight of my parcels I trudged back to the hotel. Everyone was waiting to go for breakfast. Pete had only just got the computer going again after it hadn't wanted to start, so it was another 10 minute delay.

By the time we got to McDonalds the breakfast menu had finished! We stayed anyway and then made our way up north. We were making for the Waipio Valley and possibly Hilo.

Stopped at one or two places along the Northwest coast, but it was torture for the boys as the weather was very hot but we didn't have time for a dip. We promised them we would have a swim later in the day.

A bit further north was an historic "Heaion" or temple where the Hawaiians worshipped. A second was built by King Kamehameha. From here we drove inland to Waimea with museums and ranch houses and the like, so we didn't stop. Continued across to the north-east of Hawaii and made our way up to Waipio Valley which both of us could remember clearly. Very steep high valley walls with a flood plain between. We had our packed lunch here and were chatting for quite some time with a bus driver from Los Angeles who was giving Pete some tips about our time on the mainland.

We decided not to go exploring much further as we wanted to have a fairly early night and early morning, so we made our way back the way we had come, and stopped at Honalua Beach. The boys went careering toward the water, while I settled for a nice bake in the afternoon sun.

After a couple of hours we set off with the day coming to an end. With the roof down we drove along, the coast to our right with the sun descending toward the water, the wind blowing all around us and sunset Hawaiian music playing on the radio. What could be closer to paradise? It was just magic and I put the memory in a corner somewhere to extract at a later stage.

We wanted to stop somewhere and watch the sunset, so we pulled into Kona Beach park, a rough 1 1/2 mile track through lava fields. When we got to the end we almost missed it!

By the time we got back to Kailua it was nearly 7.30. So we stopped at a place called Tom Bombadils which we had noticed before. Menu items are laced with names from Tolkien's books. The prices a little higher than we would have liked but still OK. That's another day in paradise.Read more