Aloha Oahu

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a couple of days. I didn't have internet access until now. I'll do separate blogs for each day as if it was the end of that day.

Today (March 17th) was moving day again. We didn't have to leave until 11 am, and our flight wasn't leaving until shortly after 5 pm, so we had a lot of time to kill. We had a leisurely morning, while we drank coffee, ate, and packed up. I wandered around and noticed these characters hanging around.

Right on 11 am, we drove north on the road just to see what was there. The Turtle Bay Resort was just north of us. Beautiful location, and golf course. We drove as far as the most northern point of the island, then turned around and headed back the route we came.

We stopped at the Waimea Valley Audubon Center where they had some nice gardens, and...peacocks. OK, if it’s not roosters, now it’s peacocks. They certainly have an annoying call, and when we broke out lunch, one spotted my bright green top and came after me. He essentially chased me around the picnic table all during our lunch. That’s “eating on the run”.

After packing up lunch, and escaping the peacock, we headed down the road and stopped at Turtle Beach again. There was another big guy there, even bigger than the last one at 233 lbs (I think). His name was Kuhina. Amazing creatures.

And before we left Turtle Beach, someone yelled that a whale had just breached the water. I looked up and just saw a big tail going in and splashing down. Couldn’t get a shot of that one.

We stopped again at the Dole Plantation as well just to get an ice cream cone of pineapple/vanilla swirl. It was really good.

We then headed off to the airport and after circling around a few times to burn off some gas in the car (and to try to locate the Alamo car rental return), we finally were able to check in. The bad news is, all the flights for the airline were delayed because they had to take 1 plane out of service and reschedule/reroute the remaining planes for the day. So we didn’t take off until 7:35 pm - 2:30 hours late. Oh well...the pains of travelling.

We didn’t get to our place on the Big Island of Hawaii until almost 1 am. It was a long ride, but we made it, and were quite amazed with our Ferntree Hideaway in Volcano Village. These are from our upper floor balconies - ferns that are 2 storeys high, at least!

Because we're now over 4,000 feet above sea level, it's quite cool, and it was great to get under some comforters in bed. We were all done in for the day.