Hawaii

Kaopala Gulch

Well I survived 4 weeks on a Tropical Island. Temperature was around 26-28 most of the time with an odd day of tropical storm thrown in, not ideal for cycling especially as I am not very fit at the moment, but I managed around a 100 miles in total on my sisters ancient bike. She seems to have a habit of keeping things forever, she has a hockey stick from when she was at school and still reminds me that I pinched her Squash racket! 

When we were young my sister and I were very close, but over the years we have drifted apart, mainly because of her living in America for over 30 years, but also we are very different people. We did get on very well though, 4 weeks with someone is a long time., but we didn't fall out, we both have a big interest in photography and love dogs, which really helped.

Nakalele Point and Blowhole

We did go to some amazing places, one way my sister Pauline and myself have loads in common, is she will explore where she lives, walking long distances finding forgotten paths and hidden beaches and fantastic coastline. The above shots were taken on a walk, or should I say scramble over the rocks to the Nakalele Blowhole. There is a relatively easy tourist route from the road, but we went over the cliffs by an anything but easy trail, and boy was it worth it! The site and sound of the Pacific pounding the cliffs was quite incredible, I had to keep reminding  myself that we were over 2000 miles from the mainland, the Island of Hawaii are recognized as the most remote on the planet when it comes to distance alone.

Maui is really a very beautiful Island and has everything you would expect of a Tropical Island if you look hard enough, unfortunately a lot of it is like an American playground, vast hotel complexes and Golf courses and cars, lots of cars, mind you if you took away all the rental Mustang Convertibles the car population would be halved!

Sunsets and Whales are two of the biggest things you will see in Hawaii and we saw loads.

This is the view from Pauline's apartment, during the day even without Binoculars you could watch the Whales breaching. Pauline has two dogs so walking them in the evening as the sun set was a great way to end the day, you could see why the Islands are such a big draw for American vacationing,it is so peaceful and despite the Mustang Convertibles an incredibly friendly and relaxing place to visit, one advantage of the playground aspect in the north of Maui is the complete lack of litter, and the way the area is looked after, it does of course mean that the problems are pushed out of sight, Maui is no different from anywhere else, there are homeless people, true Hawaiians resentful of the American invasion, very little work and as always a big traffic problem.