Aloha USA

We landed in Hawaii the day before we left Fiji, which is a very strange feeling indeed. We landed at around midnight which is not a great time to arrive in any place. After going through immigration and baggage claim, we called for a cab to take us to a 24-hour restaurant/diner, where we whittled away the hours by playing with camera settings while eating breakfast at 3am.

We arrived too early in the morning to check in to our hostel, so we had to find somewhere to wait until a reasonable hour was upon us.

Our introduction to American portions... this was an all-you-can-eat pancake special, but neither of us could finish the first three on the plate. 

Once the sun came up, we checked in with the our hostel (although the rooms weren't ready yet) and made our way to the beach to catch a few hours kip under the early sun. 

This is Waikiki Beach in Honolulu at around 8am.

There were some really wide trees along the beach, with roots growing back into the ground.

This statue symbolises pretty much what Hawaii is known for. 

Our plan for Hawaii was to spend four nights in Waikiki and then the next 10 further inland staying with locals rather than in expensive hostels. You can book rooms with locals who rent out their spare bedroom on a website called AirBnb, and not only does it work out cheaper than hotels but you also get to talk to people who live on the island with precious and interesting local knowledge.

Snorkelling is the second most popular beach activity to surfing, probably. We did plenty of snorkelling, even taking a taxi to a coral hotspot called Hanauma Bay. It was just like swimming in a real-life tropical fish tank! In parts of this bay there are sometimes turtles that swim on by, but we were unfortunate not to see any on this day.

A picture that's been taken many times before, but this is a good viewpoint overlooking Hanauma Bay.

I can't remember the last time I saw a film camera, let alone used one. They were selling them for a fair price... well I wasn't going to take my Canon compact underwater. 

27 shots of fish and water are on this camera but we haven't found anywhere to get them developed. Writing this, I still have no idea if we captured any fish at all...

After staying in Waikiki, we moved inland to live in between the valleys of O'ahu. There weren't many available couch surfers on the island at the time, so using AirBnb, we stayed a local family at their home for the next three nights. 

We rented us a car for the weekend to take us around the island to see some of sites. Although buses are an option to get out and about, they still have a tendency to be very delayed or not even turn up at all.

Us trying an alcoholic beverage that looked a lot like nail vanish (see below). It actually tasted okay. 

Mmm...

During our stay with this AirBnb family, we also tried some of the local foods such as pickled lemon peel. We also had some lobster one evening.

O'ahu is home to Pearl Harbor, which we visited a couple of times to get the most out of the free museums. We educated ourselves on the events of Pearl Harbor and learnt more about American and Japanese involvement in WWII.

An interesting sign at Pearl Harbor. I'm not sure what it shows though.

I took this picture on a boat ride across to the USS Arizona Memorial.

This is the USS Arizona as it has been since 1941 and is a tomb to over 900 people. We were lucky enough to sit and watch a live video stream from a team of pro divers who were doing their regular checks surveying the ship.   

Inside the memorial are all the names of those who died on the USS Arizona.

Even today, oil continues to flow out of the sunken USS Arizona. Incredible really, considering it's been under there for over 70 years.

I captured the moment when a woman was attempting to push her eyes back into her sockets.

During our time with the rental car we drove up to the north of O'ahu to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center. The official website will explain it all if you're wondering.

We spent just the afternoon watching shows and demos performed by the people from the numerous islands in the Polynesia triangle.

This is a Fijian woman demonstrating that if you hit this piece of wood for ages it will eventually flatten out and you can make a patterned sheet like the one hanging behind her.

This was a lot of fun to watch. Songs and dance were performed on these boats to show the differences between the islands' cultures. This was Samao with their comparatively mellow set piece. 

Tonga gave a livelier performance. Good work guys.

This was very entertaining...

Tahiti, ladies and gentlemen! Contrary to what we see in films, the hula dancing is from Hawaii that doesn't involve this memerising hip rotating movement. This is actually from Tahiti... damn you Hollywood!

We drove to see the famous Pipeline beach area north of the island where there were lots of surfers trying to hone their cutbacks. I don't think the waves were at their highest at this time of year but were still very high,

There were plenty of wipeouts that day.

This guy had no problems riding the waves. Show off.

Oh dear, face plant!

Meanwhile on solid ground, just down the road from the surfers was a skate competition.

We couldn't miss out on going to one of the waterfalls on the island. There are lots of places on Hawaii which have been in films and featured in TV series; this particular location was featured in Lost and also Jurassic Park, I think. 

Me under a weird looking tree.

Lisa and a load of bamboo. People carve things into the bamboo which is sort of a shame to damage them.

And this was the waterfall... not the most impressive but still was a pleasant walk, although quite humid.

Now let me talk about the weather for a moment. On this island, because of the mountains in the centre, it rains a lot in the middle. But, get out to the beach and chances are there'll be beautiful sunshine. The pics below show the clouds building up. 

Waikiki Beach with Honolulu in the background. This was taken at the top of the Diamond Head crater.

Lisa and the crater.

That marked the end of our two weeks in Hawaii and a week away from seven months travelling. At this point, we were really looking forward to travelling across the mainland States and moving away from island/beach life for a while. We also have to get used to being behind Europe in terms of time now that we had crossed over the date line.

On the other side of the world...

It turns out that the island we stayed on in Fiji, called Taveuni, is where every new day officially begins. It's 180 degrees around the globe from Greenwich, London, and it definitely felt like we were the furthest away from home at this point.

There were a couple of signs between someone's house and a football field that were split in two... one side for today and the other for yesterday!

Stuck between yesterday and today.

Our flight to Nadi from Auckland lasted just over three hours and we landed at around 4pm local time. As soon as we landed, it became apparent that people look at time very differently. We were directed to a waiting area in the airport where a shuttle bus was apparently going to take us to the hotel, but that never came. So we called the hotel and they kindly arranged a hotel transfer to come and pick us up, but that never came either... around 2 hours later waiting for things that never arrive, we met someone else staying at the same hotel and we shared a taxi that, fortunately for us, the hotel paid for. When we got to hotel, which ironically was situated just behind the airport runway, it was around 7pm, so we had dinner... don't get me started on dinner.

That aside, the weather was gorgeous, the people were unbelievably nice and welcoming. Our first two nights were spent in an affordable and quite decent resort.   

We can recommend staying at the Wailoaloa Beach Resort.

The swimming pool wasn't massive but was cleaned everyday.

Fiji is known for its beautiful islands and beaches, and there are something like 333 islands to choose from. As a tourist it's easy to to get sucked into an island hopping deal for a couple of grand that will show you around maybe 4 to 5 islands over 8 or 9 days. 

Having been moving from place to place in New Zealand, and consistently being on the move, never spending on average more than 2 days in one place, it can be quite demanding. We were completely put off by the idea of island hopping, and also spending a fortune in a place that is actually quite cheap to be in in the first place!

It is advised however to get away from Nadi on the main island, so we bought two flight tickets to an island called Taveuni, which is the third largest of the 333 islands.  

This was our plane which flew from Nadi to a small airport on Taveuni, via Suva.

Our plan for the next 7 nights was to be as lazy as possible, catch up on some blogging and plan our USA road trip. Achieving all these things proved challenging because, as is the case for most places on Taveuni, they only turned on the generators for power between 6 and 10pm every evening. 

We did manage to see some of the island by taking buses to nearby villages, walking to the local shops, visiting the island's waterfalls and also kayaking to a tiny island that was barely 50 metres across.

We camped on the beach at a small place called Beverly's Campground. We had returned our tent just before we left NZ, because the shop we bought it from, called The Warehouse, has a 365-day return policy! We had the option at this campground to use their tent, which was bigger than ours was. This was to be our home for the next 7 nights.

Every morning when we stepped out of the tent we saw this. The water is warm and there are so many fish. We spent a lot of our time snorkelling (the coral is just visible in this picture).

In the mornings at breakfast, when the tide was in, the water came right up underneath the decking of the campground.

Running the campsite was a humble family of two, who were very nice.

On Fiji, cats suckle dogs...

We went for a climb up to some waterfalls on Taveuni. This is a view of the island, and in the distance is Vanua Levu and Rabi Island.

Swimming under this waterfall is surprisingly difficult because of the current. It's also much colder than the sea.

On the bus, the driver handed out packets of pineapple to random people it seemed... whether he didn't have the right change to give people so he paid them with pineapple, we couldn't quite work this out. This is Lisa talking to some American travellers who were also waiting for the bus. 

We took this opportunity to take a cheesy sunset selfie!

For one of the days we were there, we hired a kayak (later realised it was only a one-person kayak), so we could paddle out into the ocean and to an island whih they called Honeymoon Island (I'm not this is the official name though). It took us about 45 minutes to get out there, over some of the clearest water I've ever seen.

This is on Honeymoon Island on its one, and only, beach.

A view back towards Taveuni from Honeymoon Island

We did some snorkelling around the island. We found Nemo!

I dropped Lisa off at the shops further down the island to get some food and I paddled the remainder of the way back to the campground.

A successful day with the kayak, even though it was a single seater...

For our last night in Fiji we flew back to Nadi and stayed in the same hotel as before because we knew what we were getting. We flew out of Fiji to Hawaii on the 17th April, crossing the International Date Line, and time travelling back to night time on the 16th to live the 17th all again!

New Zealand's North Island

Wellington is known as the culture capital of New Zealand, and also NZ’s windiest city. We camped in a small tent space in one of the backpackers' hostels for a couple of nights. Fortunately we were out of the way of the wind.

We caught the Interislander from Picton on the South Island to Wellington on the North. 

In Wellington, we had enough time to look around the botanical gardens, which involved an uphill tram ride (most of Wellington is built on hillsides). By now, we'd been to so many different botanical gardens I have lost interest in them! But the tram ride was pretty cool.

This was one of the old tram carriages. Many years ago when it was built, a man's leg was crushed by this incredibly slow moving vehicle.. just unlucky I suppose. 

The view of Wellington from the botanical gardens.

We visited the Te Papa museum. Spent so much time in there we actually got asked to leave because they were closing their doors.

This is a Colossal Squid on display at the Te Papa, the only complete specimen above water in fact. It was huge and a bit gross.

I can't believe that there was a full-sized metal knight on sale at this antiques store.

Instead of cooking in the hostel's kitchen for a change, we ate out one evening. We ended up getting involved in a pub quiz. We called ourselves Din-glish, however after much disbelief about our lack of local knowledge, we came very much last... I tried one of their craft ales though and loved it! Note to self: stop doing pub quizzes.

Napier was the next stop on our route. Situated on the east coast of the North Island, this spread-out township was quiet and very low-key. It had some interesting buildings to look at, some nice boats and marine life, but that was about it for us. We took a break from camping and treated ourselves to a couples of nights in a room with some movies.

A modest harbour in Napier just down the road from our hostel. 

There was a strange starfish thingy on the beach. It looked dead to me (Lisa thought otherwise as it apparently moved a little), so she decided it was better off back in the sea; dead or alive.

Lake Taupo was just over an hour away on the bus from Napier. If you’re thinking of going to New Zealand, Lake Taupo is a must because there are lots of adrenaline-based activities there (much like in Queenstown) such as skydiving and bungee jumping. We were back in our tent, and were fortunate enough to find a hostel with a campsite available that was also walking distance to where the bus dropped us off. Not having a car proved to be inconvenient at times like these.

We got up at the crack o' dawn to set out on this trek through Mordor... this is a popular walk across the Tongariro Nothern Circuit, called the Tongariro Crossing, which is home to Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings.

"No, Mr Frodo!" This is Mount Doom. Not as scary as it sounds.

Mount Doom... believe it or not.

There were so many people taking this hike, probably because of the Lord of the Rings connection. 

Mount Doom... Lisa, did you pack the ring?

There were some really nice lakes along the way.

This walk took us around some very beautiful lakes and also an active volcano, which was pumping out smoke at the time. It took us nearly seven hours to complete, along with hundreds of other people doing the same thing.

We took a dip in the lake which is pretty bloody cold, but just what we needed after a long walk (that's Mount Doom in the background... at least I think it is)

The sky turned orange just as the volcano erupted... no it didn't erupt, but this sunset was quite something.

We caught the next bus to a town called Rotorua. We had heard about an affordable place to do bungee jumping, and although Lisa wasn't too keen on the idea I managed to convince her. We bought two tickets to an extreme adventure park that provides bungee jumping, a tandem swing, a fast boat ride, a wind tunnel, and a pedal race in a Schweeb.

The wind tunnel was a lot of fun but really tricky to hold the right posture once horizontal.

The swing was amazing. You're lifted up to 40 or so metres in a bag and dropped! For a moment you are freefalling then the rope tightens and you're swinging forwards and backwards. Just like flying!

This is the Shweeb. Google it and you'll find a load of info on this technology and how it might change the way we get around. Here in Rotorua, this is its official race track and first place it was made open to the public.

And now for the bungee. That's me jumping from 43 metres after about five seconds of thinking about it!

They fail to mention about the amount blood that rushes to your head during a bungee, but I guess that's kind of a given.

Now it is Lisa's turn! After 8 minutes of thinking about it, she jumped... Meanwhile on solid ground my battery went flat. We had a spare just for moments like these.

[insert caption here]...  comments welcome!

To help us wind down from the events of the previous day, we took a stroll around one of the few Maori villages in NZ, operating in part as a tourist attraction and also an actual home. This is called a thermal village because of the hot mud pools and boiling water springs that are dotted all about the place, smoking out the streets with harmless but smelly steam.

The full name of the village is on the red bit. It's dead easy to pronounce.

You've been warned!

We watched a performance by Maori showing some of their customs and culture through song and dance.

The Haka dance. A big part of the dance are the facial expressions to intimidate the enemy to put them off from fighting. You can't really make them out of this low quality video.

Here are some other images from the thermal village to show just how steamy it was. They use the hot water pools to cook food and bathe in. Too bloody hot for me!

After Rotorua we got back on the HelpX bandwagon and looked up a family staying in a small town called Raglan, situated down the west coast of the North Island. We spent most of our time gardening, pulling out weeds and looking after their two children and a 3-month old puppy.

They had a pretty special view from their balcony.

A preying mantis on a fence post. There were quite a few of these around. 

We stayed with the family in Raglan for around a week, and when not working were checking out the local beaches and finding places to get away from it all, of which there are many.

From Raglan we hopped back on the buses to take us across to Tauranga. We were back in the tent for a couple of nights.

We made use of the campsite's bbq, cooking up some homemade burgers, spuds and veggies.

Our tent still holding strong, but gradually acquiring scuffs and mould after having to put it away wet on some occasions.

We walked about 6km along the beach in Tauranga towards the hill in the distance. By the time we got to the hill, we were too knackered to take the hike up it, so we had some lunch and walked back.

There's a place in NZ called Hot Water Beach, so named for the hot water springs that occur underneath the sand. The idea is to bring a spade and to dig a hole when the tide goes out, and then bathe in it. 

Sunrise at the Hot Water Beach.

The water from the springs is around 50 degrees, maybe hotter, but unfortunately for us the tide didn't go out far enough and no-one on the beach that morning could dig a successful hole, although there were many admirable yet failed attempts.

We stayed in Hahei, another coastal town not too far from Hot Water Beach. Like most coastal towns in NZ, the beach is beautiful and so are the surroundings. We went on a hike, taking us from the town to see the Cathedral Cove and other rock formations and small bays along the way.

The nice town of Hahei. Lucky for us the sun was shining the day we went to Cathedral Cove.

The "Tree of Distinction" along the path to Cathedral Cove.

Lisa under the "Tree of Distinction". Wow, what a tree...

We made it to Cathedral Cove after a slippery walk through some bays and woodland.

And this is what all the fuss is about, a hole in the cliff!

The scenery in Hahei was breathtakingly vast - we really enjoyed staying here when it wasn't raining.

By the time we reached Auckland it was the 30th March. The day after was Lisa's birthday, so we had booked ourselves in for a trip to Hobbiton in Matamata.

This is us at Hobbiton

One of the many hobbit homes. The fronts of these were made smaller than actual homes to make Gandalf look taller than the hobbits.

For the Hobbit film trilogy, they built these additional homes. I think they only appear for a split second in the films.

The insides of the houses weren't made because they didn't need to. The inside of Bilbo's home was shot in a studio somewhere in Wellington.

This is Hobbiton lake and 'town centre'. This was very cool to see and hear about how they built this place and customised everything, even if it didn't make the final cut.

The mould on the wood is fake, but I love this sign and letterbox.

The tree above Bilbo's home is also fake. When they shot Lord of the Rings they had brought in an oak tree from Matamata, but when it came to filming the Hobbit films they had to build a younger replica of the tree (60 years younger) than the original. Each leaf was sown on individually. Fooled me!

There is so much attention to detail with these homes. They had to reconstruct everything in Hobbiton for the Hobbit trilogy using materials that would withstand the test of time, for the purposes of being a tourist attraction.

Which way to the pub?

There is a big dragon carving inside the pub. The inside of the pub was also shot in a studio in Wellington, not in Matamata, but they finished off the inside of the pub just for the tours.

Around New Zealand there are many iSites (or tourist information buildings). This one in Matamata was quite special as it was designed and constructed to look like something from Hobbiton.

A bronze statue of Gollum. Inside is Andy Serkis.

Instead of putting up with anymore public transport, we acquired a car for the next five days to take us north above Auckland. It was an old Nissan Sunny... a Nissan Sunny! Even so, it ran good and proper and got us to where we needed to go.

We came across a campsite that was completely vacant. A bit of privacy is excellent, especially when cooking dinner.

With the car we were able to visit places out of the main bus route... like this waterfall.

Driving in NZ was ok as they drive on the left. The views however are a bit distracting.

We drove up to the very top of New Zealand's North Island, to a lookout point called Cape Reinga. This offers a view of where the Tasman Sea says hello to the Pacific Ocean, and is made visible by swirling currents and wave direction.

That's Cape Reinga in the background.

This is where the Tasman Sea tries to interact with the Pacific Ocean.

There were some strange ripples happening around these rocks...

A sign post showing distances too large for me to comprehend.

London is a short plane ride away.

The view left to the lighthouse looking out over the Tasman Sea. Behind where I was standing is the Pacific Ocean.

This is breakfast on our last morning with the car. There was so much mist in this campsite everything was soaking wet (fortunately the stove was okay) 

Our last couple of nights in New Zealand were spent in a cheap dorm room with 6 other people. This is Auckland and its Sky Tower, which we didn't get to go up unfortunately.

We flew out of New Zealand on 7th April having had an incredible time exploring this inspiring country from tip to tip. The next stop on our tour - to spend ten days in Fiji putting our feet up as much as possible and enjoying warmer sea temperatures. Expect the next post to be much shorter than this one!