Hawai'i the Big Island

I am so blessed!

One thing I have learned during my travels – place your friends strategically around the world and you will always have a place to put your feet up when you are on the road. My very “bestes” friend from years and years back now lives in Hawai’i.
How lucky can one get!!!!!
I had my first taste of the U.S. when I visited her.  I loved every minute of it.

I mean how can you not?
Although my friend lives on Oahu on the absolutely breathtakingly beautiful North Shore, we decided to do a bit of island hopping.
Our first stop was the Big Island and when we were there, Kilauea was going for all its might.
It still is, but we had a lucky break.
The lower road to Hilo is completely covered with cold hard lava from years and years of eruptions  and all we had to do was drive to the point where the road closure  started.

And this is where the fresh lava was now crossing the road once again.

Daily updates of the lava flows were posted in the hotel, so we set off to see some “hot stuff”.
And did we see some?  YES, and then some more.

We were mesmerised watching the slow moving lava. Up to that point I had not been a friend of video cameras, but standing about a meter away from a live lava flow, seeing and feeling the heat, for the first time I was sorry I did not own a video to capture this wonder of nature.

The Ranger who was standing by to make sure no fool would put a finger into the lava to see if it was real, had seen it all before.
On our way back to the car we were approached by two eager young girls. “Is there any lava?”  Before we could answer a man’s voice behind us said: “No, there is no lava, very disappointing.”  And he was serious. We looked at each other and quietly told the girls to walk a couple of hundred metres and they would indeed see live, red hot lava.  Poor man. We told him, but he did not believe us.
We drove around the area on the Chain of Craters road and thought we were in another world. We were so caught up in all the activity that we forgot to check the fuel gauge. We made it to the service station on the smell of an oily rag and lots and lots of prayers.
The next day we went to explore the island a bit more and that night attended a Lu’au. The food was excellent,  I liked the Kalua pig the best.  

I also had my first taste of Poi. The jury is still out on that one.
Another not so ‘memorable’ event was our Mai’tai crawl. What I mean is I do not remember much of it, except that it was great fun. We went from one Hotel to the next and tried their Mai’tais. Most of them were veddy veddy good indeed!!!!!

I could have stayed in this laid back place forever, but Kaua’i was waiting for us.  That, my dear friends  is another post.